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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| The Global Baby Bust : short term benefits for the WOT, long term costs |
| 2006-05-12 |
| Excerpted from a loooong article in Foreign Affairs Magazine. Hattip Instapundit. Lots of meat, and concisely written. The writer is very worried about the long term situation, but I read it that those who have faith in the future will end up inheriting the earth through their grandchildren, even if there will be pain for a while. ;-) Read the whole thing. Summary: Most people think overpopulation is one of the worst dangers facing the globe. In fact, the opposite is true. As countries get richer, their populations age and their birthrates plummet. And this is not just a problem of rich countries: the developing world is also getting older fast..... [A] closer look at demographic trends shows that the rate of world population growth has fallen by more than 40 percent since the late 1960s. And forecasts by the UN and other organizations show that, even in the absence of major wars or pandemics, the number of human beings on the planet could well start to decline within the lifetime of today's children. Demographers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis predict that human population will peak (at 9 billion) by 2070 and then start to contract. Long before then, many nations will shrink in absolute size, and the average age of the world's citizens will shoot up dramatically. Moreover, the populations that will age fastest are in the Middle East and other underdeveloped regions. During the remainder of this century, even sub-Saharan Africa will likely grow older than Europe is today. The root cause of these trends is falling birthrates. Today, the average woman in the world bears half as many children as did her counterpart in 1972. No industrialized country still produces enough children to sustain its population over time, or to prevent rapid population aging. Germany could easily lose the equivalent of the current population of what was once East Germany over the next half-century. Russia's population is already contracting by three-quarters of a million a year. Japan's population, meanwhile, is expected to peak as early as 2005, and then to fall by as much as one-third over the next 50 years -- a decline equivalent, the demographer Hideo Ibe has noted, to that experienced in medieval Europe during the plague. Although many factors are at work, the changing economics of family life is the prime factor in discouraging childbearing. In nations rich and poor, under all forms of government, as more and more of the world's population moves to urban areas in which children offer little or no economic reward to their parents, and as women acquire economic opportunities and reproductive control, the social and financial costs of childbearing continue to rise.... Today, when Americans think of Mexico, for example, they think of televised images of desperate, unemployed youths swimming the Rio Grande or slipping through border fences. Yet because Mexican fertility rates have dropped so dramatically, the country is now aging five times faster than is the United States. It took 50 years for the American median age to rise just five years, from 30 to 35. By contrast, between 2000 and 2050, Mexico's median age, according to UN projections, will increase by 20 years, leaving half the population over 42. Meanwhile, the median American age in 2050 is expected to be 39.7. Those televised images of desperate, unemployed youth broadcast from the Middle East create a similarly misleading impression. Fertility rates are falling faster in the Middle East than anywhere else on earth, and as a result, the region's population is aging at an unprecedented rate. For example, by mid-century, Algeria will see its median age increase from 21.7 to 40, according to UN projections. Postrevolutionary Iran has seen its fertility rate plummet by nearly two-thirds and will accordingly have more seniors than children by 2030.... Over the next decade, the Middle East could benefit from a similar "demographic dividend." Birthrates fell in every single Middle Eastern country during the 1990s, often dramatically. The resulting "middle aging" of the region will lower the overall dependency ratio over the next 10 to 20 years, freeing up more resources for infrastructure and industrial development. The appeal of radicalism could also diminish as young adults make up less of the population and Middle Eastern societies become increasingly dominated by middle-aged people concerned with such practical issues as health care and retirement savings. Just as population aging in the West during the 1980s was accompanied by the disappearance of youthful indigenous terrorist groups such as the Red Brigades and the Weather Underground, falling birthrates in the Middle East could well produce societies far less prone to political violence.... Even if the United States could compete with Europe for immigrants, it is by no means clear how many potential immigrants these regions will produce in the future. Birthrates are falling in sub-Saharan Africa as well as in the rest of the world, and war and disease have made mortality rates there extraordinarily high. UN projections for the continent as a whole show fertility declining to 2.4 children per woman by mid-century, which may well be below replacement levels if mortality does not dramatically improve. Although the course of the AIDS epidemic through sub-Saharan Africa remains uncertain, the CIA projects that AIDS and related diseases could kill as many as a quarter of the region's inhabitants by 2010. The writer also talks about how with increased social welfare costs of aging populations, nations will not be able to afford armies or wars, not even the US, so there'll be no more wars. Less innovation from oldster-heavy populations as well, so no increase in productivity from the remaining youngsters, and no discussion of the impact of a Bird Flu or other pandemic. My personal view on the army thing is that, at least in the Anglosphere and Israel, while the median age of the troops will increase, there will be no lack of those willing to serve. I wouldn't have thought so before I started hanging out here, but now I know that old sheepdogs never really stop standing guard. I'm not as worried about the innovation thing either -- my father discovered interferon just before being pushed into retirement, which meant the world had to wait another decade before someone else came up with it (and got the cover of Time Magazine and all the other rewards as a result -- Daddy was *not* happy about that, poor man). In a culture that rewards innovation, innovative people don't stop just because the clock turns over. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #24 Well, there goes the Ai theory, LOL. Check the IP, please - is it really Joe M, the future UN SecGen? |
| Posted by: Phiter Phavilet5544 2006-05-12 21:15 |
| #23 whoop! Joe M! No mention of the gender imbalances caused by the Chinese HillaryClintonBettyCrockerOneChild policies? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-05-12 21:10 |
| #22 Re: #20 Very good points. A pity so many have so much wrapped up in falsifying your points. Still, I'm not particularly thrilled at the idea that "letting nature run it's course" is going to wind up being the default policy position after 2025. Waitaminnit.... Who are you? What have you done with our Joe? |
| Posted by: N guard 2006-05-12 21:00 |
| #21 Singapore cuts off access to various forms of state funding for healthcare when a person reaches 80 years of age. After 80, people can still access healthcare, but it becomes a lot more expensive. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-12 20:48 |
| #20 The more weaker or primitive a society is, gener the more children they have as a means for enhancing the society's probabilities of survival - over time, however, and regardless of econ class, once it becomes realized that having too many kids isn't resolving the base situation, people will stop having them, like the human body eating itself after so many days or weeks without food or water. Both CHINA and INDIA, despite their massive populations, or even world Muslim nations as a class, collectively are all suffering from serious to severe abnormal demographic patterns. Progressivity is best achieved when opportunities for private wealth is closely matched with having large family units. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-05-12 20:47 |
| #19 Interesting article. Whenever I hear some granny-glasses baby boomer talking about overpopulation I have the urge to shout "DEAD MEME WALKING!" If socialism and welfare-state capitalism produce societies which have wonderful lifestyles, diminution of stress and anxiety, and elimination of some human suffering for 2-5 generations but ultimately end up lacking the will to reproduce in numbers sufficient to continue existing, are they really utopias? Are they even better than the "heartless" capitalism they purport to replace? I submit that they are not. The Founding Fathers seemed to have a sense that no matter the the good things possible from a nanny state and the numerous faults of small government free market societies, in the end the free market small government societies had the best combination of outcome plus sustainability. How wise they seem now. Some stress and risk and possibility of negative outcome in every day life seems to inoculate against demographic immolation. As Gene Burns used to say, freedom is meaningless unless it includes the freedom to fail. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2006-05-12 16:25 |
| #18 sorry about the grammer! |
| Posted by: Rightwing 2006-05-12 15:54 |
| #17 Interesting take from everyone. Having studied demographics for some time I have a bit of extra info to add. The next 50 years show a dramatic increase in populations through Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Gamabia, Ivory Coast. North Africa will have less dramatic as mentioned before r/e Algeria and Morrocco. Egypt is trying desperately to reduce their birthrate while Sudan's population is exploding despite civil war. In the short term do to the GROWTH RATE reduction the population will continue to rise globally. The factors controlling global population are not wars, famines, plagues but social programs. If China reverses the 1-child policy and economic incentives are offered for larger families then growth rates can and will rise. The current issue being the governments are unwilling to give substantial amounts to families haing more children because it's contrued as welfare and there is to much of that going around. I assure you being a father of 4 it's difficult in more ways than one. But I can't imagine life without any of them. |
| Posted by: Rightwing 2006-05-12 15:53 |
| #16 Interesting link, Nimble Spemble. I remember reading about the possible link between the good doctor's innoculant and AIDS, although the epidemiologists were also looking at needle contamination due to multiple re-use without sterilization between innoculations -- the responsible parties being too cheap to pay for disposable needles or proper sterilization. And when some of the innocuees came already infected with one of the various types of ape AIDS endemic to the continent, the viruses got a chance to recombine, dammit. Thus today's lesson: Always clean your tools between uses. ;-) In Daddy's case, though, what was taken from him was the time to demonstrate interferon's efficacy; a pity, because Mr. Wife (then in his cancer researcher phase, before he discovered the joys of cooling towers and negotiations) tells me Daddy laid out an elegant experimental plan. *shrug* Part of the strength of science is that it does not in general rely on individual genius, but on each bringing his own bit of discovery and verification to a group effort. Much like Rantburg, in fact (a good thing, for were genius required here, I'd not even be allowed to sign on!). |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-05-12 15:11 |
| #15 anon1, I agree with moose also, but I'd wait to hear from Dr. White before agreeing with you, at least as to tretment in the U. S. . In fact, my experience watching my father and grandfather die is that doctors will keep one alive as long as the bills are paid and long past the time when it is humane. It's hard to know when that line has been crossed and they have no interest in losing customers. How they treat non-payers I don't know. But I know that I'm never taking 36 different prescriptions from "specialist" doctors who won't call back in 24 hours. I'll take a Smith and Wesson Brothers cough drop first. It's an inhumane system now. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-05-12 13:23 |
| #14 In a race to the bottom, the one who gets to the finish line last wins. With native European birth rates of 1.3-1.5 and muslim immigrants 3.5, it's not hard to see how this race ends. |
| Posted by: ed 2006-05-12 12:34 |
| #13 anonymoose: I agree with you. Some medical proceedures are a pure waste of public money. But in the system, at least in Australia, the medical professionals do make those decisions which allow some to die all the time. My dad died of cancer in a hospice. My friend, a head nurse at a hospital, said they'd just up his morphine dose until it's lethal. They did this for 'pain relief' and sure enough that's what they did. and they didn't bother sucking the phlegm out of his rattling chest so like all comatose humans who can no longer swallow or cough or move at all, he drowned in his own phlegm, hopefully so dosed up on morphine he couldn't feel it anyway. So nurses and doctors do make decisions that allow people to die quicker and free up the beds for the next one. They just don't tell you they do it. Bye the way: If you are young and the hospital knows you have young children, and you are in the emergency ward after an accident, you have about 10x the survival rate of an older person known to have children who are fully grown or who has no children. THink about that next time you fill out those next-of-kin sheets at emergency! if they think you have dependants, they try harder to fix you. and if you have no dependants and are old, write a will because they just won't try too hard on you. |
| Posted by: anon1 2006-05-12 11:46 |
| #12 It's the slowing of the growth RATE of populations not of the absolute number. What does the writer think you can grow and grow the population until we are all shoulder-to-shoulder? It is ok to shrink the GROWTH rate, and stable numbers could be happily kept at a lower rate than what we have now. I'm glad, less people the better. It's quality not quantity that counts. Quantity is when you get the problems. Now secondly i just don't believe this report. Yeah right the Middle East with it's female baby factories churning out 5-7 kids apiece (and they do it when they migrate here too, you see them walking down the street with the double pram, a kid in tow and a younger sister holding another kid all walking along to the nearest Dole office) as if those third world countries have a shrinking population! Bring on the next Tsunami the first one didn't kill enough!! Oh for a plague to wipe out Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Jordan. Oh happy day that would be. Bring on the Bird Flu, God, I'm waiting! |
| Posted by: anon1 2006-05-12 11:34 |
| #11 phil_b: the US is facing a demographic bubble as the baby boomers enter retirement, that when associated with "rising health care costs", eventually will force rationality onto the system. In a purely free market, that would mean that only those who could pay in cash could get extraordinary medical services, which would limit "vanity" life-preservation to a relative few. Most people would still have reasonably good care up to the point where their doctor would advise them that "it's just not worth it." However, in the US, the government is rapidly reaching the point where it *cannot* offer vanity health coverage either by paying for it directly, or by coercing private concerns, such as insurance companies, to pay for it. This in no way implies coercive euthanasia, just that the public must embrace the concept that everyone will die, no matter how beloved, and spending millions of dollars to give an 80-year-old another week in a coma on a ventilator is unrealistic. It is the recognition that there is a finite amount of funds available, so that medical procedures such as heart-lung replacements of extremely premature infants, with a statistically insignificant chance of success and a million dollar pricetag, just shouldn't be done; especially if the public funds used would be diverted to pre-natal care to dozens of women, which ironically would prevent most cases of extremely premature birth in the first place. This will not be easy. For example, bereaved parents of an extremely premature infant can suffer tremendous loss--and project that loss into endless demands for public monies. They will also feel incredible bitterness at being denied. Conversely, in the name of "fairness", leftists will advocate involuntary euthanasia, depriving those who have the resources from attempting what is most likely, but not guaranteed to be a fruitless endeavor. Or, "Why should a millionaire be allowed to spend their money trying to save their extremely premature infant, when a poor hispanic not be able to try with public money?" Such realism still provides for expensive quality medical service in public charity--it is not cruel. But no longer can we tolerate straight-line cost growth many times greater than the rate of inflation, when the law of diminishing returns makes what is gained through such great expense marginal at best. It does not matter if it is a truly sympathetic case. If it is so sympathetic there is no prohibition against private donations; but at the same time, there is no right for the fickle disbursement of public funds for the vanity of lost causes. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-05-12 11:13 |
| #10 All I know is that with the Middle East aging faster than the West, and all the young terrorists U.S. forces are making dead, I see this as a positive for the west and a big negataive for the islamos. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2006-05-12 10:52 |
| #9 Moose, you used to be good what happened? Or is this another Moose? an unsustainable imbalance. Why is it unsustainable and why is there an imbalance? You can't just assert this stuff. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-12 10:00 |
| #8 Those televised images of [a multitude of] desperate, unemployed youth broadcast from the Middle East create a similarly misleading impression. ..kids blow up so fast, nowadays... |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2006-05-12 09:09 |
| #7 There are lots of problems here, call them variances that have little impact individually, can still add up as a group. For example, in much of Africa, 35 years old is "old", comparable to 65 years old or more in the west. But in the west you have a health care system where 75% of all money goes to people "with four years or less to live", an unsustainable imbalance. What happens when this system returns to balance, and beyond a certain point, it refuses to pay for critical medicine of great expense and little effect. A sharp decline in the number of seniors. Plague, FYI, only have a short term effect on total population. They are much better at attacking a particular strata of a population, such as the very poor, the old and infirm. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-05-12 08:54 |
| #6 So we arent racing towards overpopulating the earth? Oh shit! We're all deadmen! And besides, I thought the arabs in Europe were shitting out litters like there is no tomorrow? |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2006-05-12 08:33 |
| #5 Another interesting scientist who didn't get credit for his discovery. I suspect it happens a lot more than we imagine. The real tragedy is losing the benefits of the discovery for 10 years. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-05-12 08:15 |
| #4 TW, I had my bird flu panic about a year ago. I have a reasonable understanding of disease spread and we are unlikely to wake up to an out of control bird flu outbreak, i.e. we will have warning. Having said that, a stockpile of masks and food basics will do no harm. The problem with panicking, is everyone does it at the same time. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-12 08:15 |
| #3 Thanks, phil_b. I'm sure Daddy isn't the only person ever forced into scheduled retirement at a critical juncture. The other guy discovered interferon independently, I believe, so it's not as if Daddy's idea was stolen or anything. The one thing this article doesn't address is the future of the species homo sapian. For what it's worth(at rough estimate slightly less than you just paid to read this), I don't see that as being at risk -- there are enough of us who like and want children that we should be around for a long time to come. Just keep your pantry stocked with multivitamins, Purell hand cleanser, and canned ravioli in case of a Bird Flu pandemic in the meantime. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-05-12 07:37 |
| #2 TW, that's interesting about your father discovering interferon. The Oz government has just enacted a budget that significantly increases the incentives to keep working past 'retirement age'. Unfortunately, no more incentives for having kids, but they have significantly increased those incentives in the past. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-12 06:17 |
| #1 If declining birthrates are a real problem and I am far from convinced they are, then the solution is straightforward. You give financial incentives. To avoid rewarding welfare mothers you deliver them as tax breaks, i.e. only those with one or more family members working receieve them. Children are expensive and doubling or tripling the tax breaks for kids would do wonders for the birthrate. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-12 06:10 |