Demographics, immigration and labor.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Demographics, immigration and labor.

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

DrSunshine posted:

I've sometimes wondered about this myself. Let's be optimistic and imagine a world, perhaps a hundred years from now, when every nation has been brought up to OECD standards of living. We can already see trends, even in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the fertility rate is converging on something at or below the replacement rate. That means, in the world where every nation is rich like Europe, there will be negative population growth.

What will happen if all else remains equal? In many respects, this experiment is already in progress in Japan. Absent of any radical sea-change in the methods of production, distribution or social organization, it's reasonable to expect that transfer payments to retired individuals will increase, while net productivity generated by the working population will decrease. This will shrink the economy, and result in steadily degrading standards of living (again, absent of any other influences, in our thought experiment). Once the economy has shrunk below a certain threshold, it is possible that the number of young will again exceed the number of old, and that the situation will become so dire that people will find it acceptable to have many children in hope that at least one will survive.

Therefore in our thought experiment, the conclusion is that society will peak at a certain point, undergo steady decline, until the system reaches a breaking-point and the economy drops to a place where infant mortality rate is high enough to justify 4-6 children per woman again. It's something like the inverse of the Malthusian catastrophe.

Obviously there is no guarantee that this is what will happen, it's just what might happen if things were simply left to continue without any interference.

The most likely result of long term low birthrates is just a shitload of destitute old people shut out of the productive economy to maintain the living standards of the young. I don't think living standards for working people will fall, though growth might sharply decrease or stop. All you have to do is stop paying old people pensions and the problem disappears (for the non-old people that is)

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icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

glowing-fish posted:

Russia is also a really prime counter-example to the easy thesis that smaller families and demographic shift are part of a country improving in terms of economic and welfare. It could very well be that certain countries undergoing demographic shifts in the next 20-40 years will be facing the same problems that Russia is now.

Russia's demographics aren't the cause of their problems. Anyways, it's an even worse comparison considering the most successful post-Communist countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia have demographics as bad or worse than Russia

Seriously look at this poo poo

quote:

Poland is aging rapidly. In 1950, the median age was 25.8: half of the Polish population was younger, half older. Today it is 38.2. If current trends continue, it will be 51 by 2050.[1] As the population is aging, it has also started to decline mainly due to low birth rates and continued emigration which is impacting the economy. The number of children born in Polish families (TFR of 1,31, down from 2 in 1990) is one of the lowest in Eastern Europe.[2][3]

That's significantly worse than Japan, and yet Poland's economy is one of the best in Europe. I think Russia's demographics have actually stabilized too, between higher birthrates among minorities and immigration from Central Asia

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Dec 7, 2014

# ¿ Dec 7, 2014 19:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Demographics, immigration and labor.