A Swiss Warning Bares the Implications of an Older, Greyer, and Smaller West

Switzerland’s announcement that there are now more Swiss over 60 than under 20 is a reminder that we are going through the largest demographic change in history.The entire pattern of younger people having more children, who then had more children, has been broken. In many countries, the number of young people who are avoiding having children is growing dramatically. The combination of the development of the birth control pill and women’s liberation has led to the startling discovery that many young women conclude they simply do not want to spend their lives as mothers. In addition, there is a growing pattern in that in many economically advanced countries, young males are avoiding sex with other people. They are either ignoring their sexual drive or expending it within an electronic world that folks my age find difficult to comprehend.While Communist China adopted a one child policy in 1979, it was South Korea which became the real pioneer in reducing birth rates. While a stable population requires women to have 2.1 births per female, South Korea’s birth rate last year was 0.80 per female. There were 106,000 more deaths than births in South Korea. At this rate, South Korea is going to be a much smaller country by the end of the century. Japan was in many ways the leader in this transformation. The combination of a work-oriented and largely healthy society led Japanese people to live long lives. The result has been an aging population in which there are fewer young people surrounded by many more older people.One factor seems to be moving to urban from rural life. On the farm, there is work and space for everyone. In the cities, even small apartments can be expensive and the cost in time and money of raising children makes it less desirable. Once it becomes acceptable for your friends to enjoy their own lives and remain childless, it becomes easier for you to remain childless and focus on your life.Virtually all Western Europe is now on this path toward fewer young people and more old people, with significant implications. The burden of taxes to provide help to aging services makes it even less desirable to have children because there is less disposable income available. The willingness to take risks declines as the population ages. A lot of Europe’s desire to appease Russia and Iran come from the nature of older versus younger populations.America remains a relatively young nation, in part because of its immigration patterns. Millions of young people have come to America legally and illegally. America’s birth rate is currently at 1.6 births per woman, below the 2.1 rate needed for stability. However, the migration of millions of young people has more than offset this. By contrast all the countries with high birth rates are in Africa. The population explosion in Africa has not yet impacted the world as heavily as it could because of local wars and poverty. However, the trends are clear.Nigeria has 7.5 million births a year compared to 6.3 million for all of Europe including Russia. At the current rate, by 2100 Nigeria will be the third or fourth largest country in the world in population. The Democratic Republic of the Congo will be close behind.China, which for most of history had been the largest population in the world, has already fallen behind India. By 2100, it is projected to be one-third the population of India as it declines to a projected 633 million from 1.4 billion today. India by contrast is projected to grow to 1.5 billion from 1.4 billion today. Looking back from 2100, the fear of a Chinese Communist hegemony may seem quaint.All of this is an astonishing change from the 1968 bestseller, “The Population Bomb,” by Paul Ehrlich. This book was a darling of the left. It gave every anti-progress, anti-development, anti-technology left-winger a crusade to save the planet from a problem which in the end did not exist. It was a model for climate extremism and other causes which allow leftists to get excited over the destruction of our civilization.We now know that Ehrlich was profoundly wrong. Nothing he predicted happened. No catastrophes occurred.Now the left can shift from worrying about overpopulation to worrying about underpopulation. Of course they can still worry about the dramatic growth in Africa.However, for the rest of us, these dramatic population shifts are going to have large consequences for government policies, society, and our way of life. As we live longer and healthier, we will work longer. As the wealth and numbers of older citizens grows, entire industries will spring up to serve them. There will be a greater bias in favor of control and risk avoidance in an older population.The recent Swiss announcement reminded me how real this revolution is — and how much it will require us to rethink our assumptions about what works.

A Swiss Warning Bares the Implications of an Older, Greyer, and Smaller West

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