I’ve been reading Thomas Friedman’s “Flat, Hot and Crowded” about the challenges facing the world and the necessity of American leadership. Then in Sunday’s Oregonian, a summary of a new study for the Center for Strategic and International Studies gives yet another reason for this. The U.S., alone among major developed nations, is not aging into irrelevance. A lot more is riding on the next administration than just getting us through the current economic hardships. America will need to stand up and reassume the world leadership we’ve been abandoning since the ‘80s.

Here are some selected excerpts:

The rich countries have been aging for decades, due to falling birthrates and rising life spans. But in the 2020s, this aging will get an extra kick as large postwar baby boom generations move into retirement. According to the United Nations Population Division, the median ages of Western Europe and Japan, which were 34 and 33 respectively as recently as 1980, will soar to 47 and 52, assuming no miraculous change in fertility. In Italy, Spain and Japan, more than half of all adults will be older than the official retirement age – and there will be more people in their 70s than in their 20s.

…Meanwhile, with the demand for low-wage labor rising, immigration (assuming no rise over today’s rate) will double the percentage of Muslims in France and triple it in Germany. By 2030, Amsterdam, Marseille, Birmingham and Cologne are likely to be majority Muslim.

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An important but limited exception to hyperaging is the United States. Yes, America is also graying, but to a lesser extent. We are the only developed nation with replacement-rate fertility (2.1 children per couple). By 2030, our median age, now 36, will rise to only 39. Our working-age population, according to both U.N. and census projections, will continue to grow throughout the 21st century because of our higher fertility rate and substantial immigration – which we assimilate better than most other developed countries.

…The declinists have it wrong. The challenge facing America by the 2020s is not the inability of a weakening United States to lead the developed world. It is the inability of the other developed nations to be of much assistance – or the likelihood that many will be in dire need of assistance themselves.

All told, population trends point inexorably toward a more dominant U.S. role in a world that will need us more, not less. For the past several years, the U.N. has published a table ranking the world’s 12 most populous countries over time. In 1950, six of the top 12 were developed countries. In 2000, only three were. By 2050, only one developed country will remain – the United States, still in third place.

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Consider China, which may be the first country to grow old before it grows rich… by 2030 it will be an older country than the United States… Russia, along with the rest of Eastern Europe, is likely to experience the fastest extended population decline since the plague-ridden Middle Ages…

The study is called “The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century” by Richard Jackson and Neil Howe. The major findings of the actual report are here (PDF).

In the context of this blog, what are the implications for all of the world creative centers, especially in Europe and Japan, that will face aging populations?