Arnab Neil Sengupta
Picture the scene — a city filled with people above the age of 40, with very few young couples in sight and even fewer happy pairs pushing prams or rushing to pick up their kids from school. Some neighborhoods of Tokyo and Rome, given the two cities’ fast-greying reputation, are probably already familiar with such scenes. But in the not too distant future, if the reality of the situation in many cities and towns turns out to be a lot more chaotic or even more charmless, there would be no shortage of reasons.
For one, the global population is aging and declining at an uneven pace owing to forces that are beyond the control of intergovernmental organizations, to say nothing of policymakers and heads of government. The imbalances are triggering a surge in both legal and illegal human migration, a phenomenon that is stirring political discord and ideological polarization in several economically advanced countries, notably the United States.
For another, a shrinking pool of taxpayers and productive citizens does not bode well for the future of any country, especially one with an aging workforce and a growing cohort of people who will need social support and medical care. Young people in such countries will have fewer incentives to stay on, work hard and create jobs if they know that a big chunk of the taxes they pay will be distributed by the state in the form of pension and public health services for the aged.
To look on the bright side, the fact that people are living much longer than before is a colossal achievement. Indeed, boosting life expectancy was a strong motivation behind the development of the vaccines and drugs that wiped out smallpox, tuberculosis, leprosy, plague and polio. The problem is that lifespans have increased, or are increasing, in some countries or regions at the same time as couples there are choosing to have fewer and fewer children.
This is causing a strong imbalance in young versus older people both within a nation and across geographical borders. In numerical terms, the global population aged 60 years and above is expected to double by 2050 and triple by 2100, according to the World Health Organization. Yet, by 2100, an overwhelming majority of countries globally will not have high enough fertility rates to sustain their population size.
According to newly published research in The Lancet, the global fertility rate will drop from 2.2 births per female in her lifetime in 2021 to about 1.8 in 2050 and 1.6 in 2100.
The average fertility rate in the high-income Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development bloc is already at or below 1.6 children per woman, compared with the 2.1 births per woman needed to stabilize the population.
The number of babies born in Japan last year fell to a record low since the world’s largest creditor nation started compiling the statistics in 1899. In Italy, another OECD member country with an aging population, the number of deaths far surpasses the number of births, with the median number of children per family plunging to 1.2.
Those who argue that it is not the duty of the individual citizens to ensure that their country sustains its native population size have a point there. There are enough members of the human race at present to stave off population decline at the planetary level for decades to come. According to the UN’s 2022 population prospects, the world’s population will reach a peak of about 10.4 billion people during the 2080s and will remain at that level until 2100. Population aging and decline also maybe, just maybe, an acceptable price to pay so that young men and women can today exercise the right to stay single or childless.
But because “demography is destiny,” as the old maxim puts it, the voluntary depopulation of an entire country is not cost-free; it postpones problems that future generations will struggle to tackle. Stein Emil Vollset, of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, says the world faces “staggering social change through the 21st century” due to a “baby bust” in some countries and a “baby boom” in others. The study quoted by The Lancet found that sub-Saharan Africa will account for “one in every two children born on the planet by 2100.” This means that “many of the most resource-limited countries in sub-Saharan Africa will be grappling with how to support the youngest, fastest-growing population on the planet in some of the most politically and economically unstable, heat-stressed and health system-strained places on Earth.”
The unfolding challenges faced by North America and Western Europe owing to this “staggering social change” were glossed over by President Joe Biden when he told an audience of mainly Asian American political donors in May that America’s economy was thriving “because we welcome immigrants,” adding: “Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants.”
While it is true that all the four countries in question have suffered owing to their unwillingness or inability to attract foreign students and immigrants, they may also have dodged the bullet of polarized politics, fueled in part by mismanaged or unchecked immigration.
A Gallup poll released in February found that Americans are most likely to name immigration as the most important problem facing the country. “The imagery at the (US-Mexico) border — the wall, the Border Patrol officers, the crowded detention facilities — serves as a potent backdrop for drawing attention to the crisis or, increasingly, for seizing on the issue to attack political opponents,” said a recent report in The New York Times.
Closer to home, a 2017 report prepared by the UN Population Fund’s Arab States Regional Office and the Arab League predicted that nearly all Arab countries that entered the demographic windows — a period when the proportion of population of working age group is particularly prominent — by 2015 would have more than 20 percent of their populations aged over 60 by 2050. By the same year, the Gulf Cooperation Council’s aging population is expected to be at an all-time high of 20.66 percent, the highest in the Arab region, followed by the Maghreb, the Mashreq and the Least Developed Countries.
Like their peers across the Arab world, GCC citizens will also become economically less productive and need more healthcare as they become older. But as a recent report by PwC Middle East points out, “there are good reasons why tomorrow’s highly digitalized GCC ‘knowledge economies’ can also be societies that value the region’s best traditions, ensuring that older citizens lead fulfilling lives to the end of their days.”
While governments, the private sector, healthcare providers, insurance providers and research and academia each have clear roles to play, the report says that thanks to ambitious transformation strategies, the GCC region “is well positioned to become a global innovator for developing policy and solutions to address the rapid change in the demographics.”
In 1968, American biologist Paul Ehrlich and his wife Anne became well known for “The Population Bomb,” a controversial book whose name reflected the fears of previous generations.
Today’s global economy faces a problem that is quite the opposite and more insidious: a population bomb that will not explode but keep ticking for decades until it implodes.
