The Gray Wave
Even as world population is increasing, it does not follow that every country and continent is growing at the same rate, or even growing at all. Presently we find the highest growth rates in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East. The lowest growth is in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, and Japan. Notice the countries shown in shades of blue below. They are actually shrinking in population.
If you want your nation’s population to grow, you need a higher fertility rate and/or longer life expectancy. Africa has both those factors on its side, though fertility rates are beginning to decline there, too.
Conversely, national leaders can shrink population by reducing fertility rates or lifespans. China’s one-child policy was an example of the first, but even China can’t hold back the benefits of modern medicine and agriculture. Lifespans are growing almost everywhere. (China will be the first nation to grow old before it grows rich, a truly new phenomenon – and one that has serious potential for destabilizing the country.)
Globally, the combination of falling fertility and longer lifespans means that the population is slowly growing older. This will bring something remarkable in the next few years: the world will shortly have more people over age 65 than it has children under 5.
You can see in this chart of UN projections that the elderly population is growing much faster than the child population is shrinking. To use a scientific term, that’s really weird in the context of the last 10,000 years of human experience. The disparity between numbers of old and young will get worse, for the simple reason that (unlike interest rates) fertility rates can’t fall below zero. Meanwhile, our ability to extend life on the other end can grow considerably.
The chart above comes from an excellent and very lengthy (175 pages) US Census Bureau report titled “An Aging World: 2015.” It is chock-full of interesting data that I can’t begin to summarize. You can read it yourself at the link if you want to get into the demographic tall weeds, a safari free of charge thanks to US taxpayers.
Sadly, little else about this story is free of charge. The aging population dynamic means we will have fewer younger people supporting a larger number of older people. Consider also that children too need care, so the real problem will be lack of middle-aged people to support both children and the elderly.
Globally, the old-age and youth dependency ratios aren’t as bad as you might expect. Here is another chart from the “Aging World” report:
By 2050, for every 100 working-age (20-64) people, there will be almost 80 children and retirees who will require support. That sounds bad, but notice how little the ratio actually changes from now until then.
The problem is that we have not arranged ourselves on the planet in neat, homogeneous groups. In fact, most of the children are going to be in Africa and the arc around the Indian Ocean while most of the retirees will be in the developed world and China.
China’s one-child policy is creating an ugly, upside-down pyramid. Each worker in that generation in China will end up supporting two parents, four grandparents, and probably one or more of the worker’s own children, too. That is just not a formula for a successful transition to a more dynamic economy when more than half the population of China is still stuck in a subsistence lifestyle. Life at or near the Chinese coast is far different from that of the interior.
