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.
———————
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.
——————-
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?
January 14th, 2009 at 5:13 am
“By 2030, Amsterdam, Marseille, Birmingham and Cologne are likely to be majority Muslim.”
That is utterly, utterly farcical.
I’ve read many demographic predictions that state that Birmingham will be the first major city in the EU where whites make up a minority by 2020. That’s a statement about ethnicity, not religion.
In the 2001 census, 2.7% of the UK population were Muslim. London (not Birmingham) has the highest proportion of Muslims at 8.5%. Even if this doubled by 2030 as the article suggests, that makes 17%, not 51%. (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/profiles/commentaries/ethnicity.asp#religion)
Unless a lot of white people covert to Islam, it is fanciful and dangerous to publish (and re-post) such ridiculous analysis: what has religion got to do with ageing populations other than pandering to prejudices, extremists, and bigots?
January 14th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Demographic decline and polulation problems are a very serious problem, but sloppy scholarship doesn’t help put the case. The statement that… “By 2030, Amsterdam, Marseille, Birmingham…” is very dubious in the case of Birmingham, if not the other cities. The PDF summary of the research nowhere mentions Birmingham, and there is no indication to be found via Google searches about where this so-called ‘fact’ came from. Birmingham and it’s sprawl (the adjacent Solihull and the Black Country region - no racial slur implied by the latter, it’s an ancient name) is very much multi-ethic - mixed between white, Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Afro-Carribean, British Chinese, and now a great many Polish people and other Europeans.
January 14th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Robert & Stanley,
I didn’t buy the book with the whole study and am certainly not an expert on UK or European populations. However I know Neil Howe is a respected demographer, so if it’s in the original study there’s probably some scholarship behind it. This is just what was in the newspaper article, it could be a misquote(??).
Maybe I shouldn’t have included that sentence, since it has little bearing on the main point about aging societies.
January 14th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Does productivity growth get us out of all this? With or without immigration.
I mean, the singularity is near, right?
January 14th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
First, Buzzcut this isn’t meant to pick on you, you just gave me a phrase and an opening. One of the main problems in America over the last 3 decades has been the idea that something would “Get Us Out Of All This”, so we wouldn’t have to do anything hard ourselves. Two major new books, Friedman’s “Flat, Hot & Crowded” and Zakaria’s “Post-American World” are both about the end of the Myth of the Free Lunch and the necessity for American leadership. So in its way was Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”. This demographics post is just one more reality facing us as we try to clean up our mess.
Some of the “free lunch” myths of recent history were:
• Bankers can make unrealistic mortgages on overpriced houses and nobody gets hurt because they’re bundled and securitized.
• The dot-com economy is a totally new phenomenon and immune to the business cycle or needing to create profits.
• We can make cutting taxes an end in itself and not damage our economy or society.
• We can endlessly build highways, bridges and airports and never have to pay to maintain them.
• We can encourage gas guzzling cars and 4,000 sq foot houses without becoming dangerously dependent on oil.
• The collapse of the Soviet Bloc means we can relax and be lazy.
• The proper reaction to 9/11 is to go shopping.
• Global warming is an unproven theory and can therefore be ignored.
Of course there are dozens more.
All of these chickens are coming home to roost at once. Nothing will “Get Us Out Of All This”. We’ll have to do it ourselves. Hopefully, Obama’s election is a sign that we’re realizing this. But it’s a first small step, not the solution itself.
Richard’s ideas of the Creative Economy are important to the future, but that economy is growing in the context of today’s other realities — financial crisis, global warming, energy shortages, etc. Hopefully it’s not lost in the shuffle but is seen as part of a solution.
January 18th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Shhh! Do you want people to lose respect for you by saying that you read Tom Friedman?
Seriously.
Here’s a guy that earned his money the old fashioned way. He married it.
As far as his new book, sure thing.