BodyButter
Vital Football Legend
As of 2018, the UK fertility rate was 1.8 births per woman. Japan set the record with 1.44 BPW. Even developing countries like Malaysia are seeing falling birth rates. Malaysia now has a birth rate of 1.8, the 4th lowest in South-East Asia. The birth rate to sustain a population is 2.1. The vast majority of countries around the world are facing declining populations and aren't prepared to deal with the consequences.
China famously had the one child policy which they abandoned for the two child policy in 2015 and are now talking about abandoning that.
Is population decline a good thing? Fewer people, less traffic, more for me? Well, maybe not. There are two issues, GDP and pensions. Gross Domestic Product is one of the key measures of an economy. It's the total of all of the goods and services produced by an economy. It has a big effect on government debt and interest rates. National debt is always compared to GDP to assess the health of a government's borrowing. Increasing debt to GDP means higher interest rates. An easy way to boost GDP is to have more people producing stuff in an economy (probably through immigration). The reverse is also true. A falling population would result in less stuff being produced overall and falling GDP. If government debt is static but GDP is falling, interest rates will go up and your mortgage will cost more.
The other big, big factor is pensions. Under the UK system, workers pay in to support the retired population. That works brilliantly if the working population is growing and growing and the elderly don't live that long after retirement age. With advances in medicine, the elderly are living longer and longer and with a shrinking population, there will be ever fewer people supporting a growing population on retirement benefits. Obviously, this situation is unsustainable meaning vastly reduced pension benefits or massive tax increases on the 'squeezed middle' to prop up the system.
The easy solution is to import workers to maintain a balance but that is going to prove much harder to do as other countries face their own population shortages. China's birth rate is 1.63, Brazil's is 1.73, both well below the 2.1 require to sustain a population. The only region of the world with high birth rates is Sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria's 5.5 may be the envy of many countries but it too is falling. Ethiopia's 4.2 is down from 7.2 in 1986. All of the graphs are curving downwards.
So should a falling global population be celebrated? Possibly, it will have a dramatic effect on climate change. It will also effect property prices, demand for land, food and consumer goods. Still, the pension and GDP problems are serious ones which should be prepared for. Is a mature debate about serious issues possible in the current climate?
China famously had the one child policy which they abandoned for the two child policy in 2015 and are now talking about abandoning that.
Is population decline a good thing? Fewer people, less traffic, more for me? Well, maybe not. There are two issues, GDP and pensions. Gross Domestic Product is one of the key measures of an economy. It's the total of all of the goods and services produced by an economy. It has a big effect on government debt and interest rates. National debt is always compared to GDP to assess the health of a government's borrowing. Increasing debt to GDP means higher interest rates. An easy way to boost GDP is to have more people producing stuff in an economy (probably through immigration). The reverse is also true. A falling population would result in less stuff being produced overall and falling GDP. If government debt is static but GDP is falling, interest rates will go up and your mortgage will cost more.
The other big, big factor is pensions. Under the UK system, workers pay in to support the retired population. That works brilliantly if the working population is growing and growing and the elderly don't live that long after retirement age. With advances in medicine, the elderly are living longer and longer and with a shrinking population, there will be ever fewer people supporting a growing population on retirement benefits. Obviously, this situation is unsustainable meaning vastly reduced pension benefits or massive tax increases on the 'squeezed middle' to prop up the system.
The easy solution is to import workers to maintain a balance but that is going to prove much harder to do as other countries face their own population shortages. China's birth rate is 1.63, Brazil's is 1.73, both well below the 2.1 require to sustain a population. The only region of the world with high birth rates is Sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria's 5.5 may be the envy of many countries but it too is falling. Ethiopia's 4.2 is down from 7.2 in 1986. All of the graphs are curving downwards.
So should a falling global population be celebrated? Possibly, it will have a dramatic effect on climate change. It will also effect property prices, demand for land, food and consumer goods. Still, the pension and GDP problems are serious ones which should be prepared for. Is a mature debate about serious issues possible in the current climate?
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