This sub should really be called r/letsignoretheactualsubtitleandjustupvoteanyvisualisationaboutatopicthatinterestsmeespeciallyifitsaboutapoliticalhottopicevenifthevisualisationhasobviousissuesthatmeanitisanythingbutbeautiful
Bro, I’m not saying that *these* are among them, but it’s *possible*.
It’s really simple. As the graph shows, it’s a ratio between old and young people. In many nations, such as Japan or South Korea, very few people have been born compared to the population. This leads to an increased percentage of the population being old, and again, more young people have to take care of the old.
If these nations had followed their population growth rate seen in prior decades, the ratio would be more sustainable, and we would have less percentage of old people.
I mean I was talking about this chart, but this is also a general, almost inescapable rule in sociology.
Lower infant mortality leads to higher life expectancies and lower fertility rates. It’s part of the demographic transition.
So you admit I’m right? My logic is sound, and a definite possibility. If you continued this graph, it could show outliers, although I’m not sure which that would be.
Some poor nations, as you said, with lower life expectancy/higher mortality rate, would have a lower percentage of old people.
Still, in nations that prosper, and get many kids, would in fact be an outlier.
The better question is: why isn't this a table?
2 data points for 10 countries, that's table material, not graph material. Bonus: it would actually convey the actual number, not a vague approximation.
In fact, a lot of the posts on this sub would be better suited for a simple table.
I think this is a very sensible chart for comparing numbers. Most people don't care particularly what the specific proportion of people will be over 70...
This gives a good way to easily compare numbers now, to their projections.
Much better valid and easier than a table of numbers, or some of the more dubious quality visualisations (things wizzing about over time, pie charts where it's hard to compare arcs etc).
Just a simple linear visual comparison.
Those South Korea numbers are apocalyptic. Adult children will be expected to take care of what the state can't/won't which will only increase stress on the younger generations and SK economy. I can't see society functioning with that high of an elderly burden. It's a slow motion trainwreck with a birthrate of just 0.8. Their population is going to race back near 1950s levels by 2100.
That sounds bleak as hell. Maybe there's some silver lining in a reduction in competition for jobs and housing?
South Korea is interesting because it's the most sudden of all aging countries. If the population decline is so bad as everybody says, we will see on Korea
Many people believe this is getting so dire it could make reunification with the North unavoidable.
But Korea is small all things considered, China's demographic collapse is going to be a much bigger deal.
Immigration to Korea is fairly easy already.
I've lived there and there's no way they're ready to import millions foreign workers, even from relatively close cultures in SEA countries.
Legally yeah, but it's gotta change culturally. Both Japan and Korea, immigration is INFINITE times easier than US but people still go to US because of the opportunities an immigrant might get there, and its just easier to "fit in", at least in the handful of big cities.
Despite South Korea having twice the population of North Korea in terms of people aged 0-14 it's almost the same. 5 million for North and 6 million for South. It'll give Korea a new lease on life, a massive infusion of young people.
Correct. China’s population will also have to work for longer as well - that will not go down well where women expect to retire at 50, women in the civil service at 55, and men at 60.
Source that MANY think unification is unavoidable?
Never heard this before from numerous Korean/Korean Americans.
Also, the odds of reunification go down everyday as old people die, esp. when the youth have zero connection to or direct contact with North Koreans. Source:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/706376/south-korea-necessity-of-korean-reunification/
>Maybe there's some silver lining in a reduction in competition for jobs and housing?
Likely - Japanese real estate prices, for example, peaked a couple decades ago iirc and have never been that high since. China's real-estate sector is in a big slowdown lately as well, as low selling prices make new builds non-viable for developers.
Likewise, China & Japan are both heavily invested in robots & automation wherever they can be. Workers are getting more scarce (and thus more expensive) as the population ages, so it's increasingly necessary to invest in productivity if you still want things to get done.
The real danger is in infrastructure. If you built out for 1.5 billion people but you only have 0.5 billion, all that infrastructure for that population deficit decays and any debt tied to that infrastructure goes bad. Plus the economies of scale that make that infrastructure possible (population density) begins to falter making the remaining infrastructure even more insolvent. Considering how much China has overbuilt over the past half-century, the debt bomb will be a fascinating experience.
> debt bomb
How hilariously typical of long-resisted epoch changes it would be if this is why the worldwide economic model shifts.
Not because infinite growth was always ridiculous. Not because corporations became too large to be governed or to fulfill their roles as stability-generating employers. Not because hunger for speculation had become too widespread.
Just large economies saying, "Aw shit. We bought way too much. Welp, ain't nothin to do 'cept a reimagination of commerce & investment."
Japanese real estate is strange. Their houses depreciate as they get torn down with each generation. Basically after 30 years Houses are torn down and rebuilt.
>Likely - Japanese real estate prices, for example, peaked a couple decades ago iirc and have never been that high since.
It's because they had an insane real estate bubble lol, a popular comparison is made that the land below the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was worth more than the entire state of California. And California had high real estate prices even in 1990 (when this bubble on the cusp of bursting). This bubble popping and never getting back up is not a sign real estate is doing better, it's a sign of how insane the bubble was.
If there's anything helping Japanese real estate prices, it's that they just keep building whereas it's literally illegal in much of the Western world (because of zoning). Japan adds as much new housing stock (relative to existing stock) as Australia and Australia is a country undergoing incredible population growth.
Country|Share of new housing stock
:--|--:
NZ|1.7%
Australia|1.6%
Japan|1.5%
Canada|1.25%
USA|1.2%
England|0.9%
Germany|0.7%
Spain|0.4%
Latvia|0.25%
Japan's population is growing at -0.5% annually while Australia is growing at 1.5%, yet they have basically the same housing construction rate. Latvia's population is actually "growing" at the same rate as Japan's.
>China's real-estate sector is in a big slowdown lately as well, as low selling prices make new builds non-viable for developers.
I swear people have no frame of reference what any of these situations are like. China's housing bubble was nuts compared to any other country. Here is median home price to median income ratio, aka how many years of income do you need to afford a home:
City|Home price-income ratio
:--|--:
NYC|9
London|13
Tokyo|14
Shanghai|33
Beijing|42
Shenzhen|43
Chinese cities have per sqm price comparable to cities like NYC *without the NYC income*. These bubbles aren't comparable to anything within Western history.
Population declines aren't responsible for the price drop. It's a complex mess, but to keep it TLDR, Chinese people rushed to invest in real estate as that's one of the few viable avenues to invest in (as financial markets are state controlled, so stocks are unstable), this resulted in people owning 2nd or 3rd homes with no one to live in em. Chinese state which had encouraged this bubble in the first place then imposed rules on construction companies to keep debt within limits (as they were scared of the bubble popping under uncontrolled circumstances) which was *the* immediate cause of real estate price crash.
Japan will always construct relatively many new houses because they keep getting destroyed by natural disasters on a pretty high rate. Also, torn down and reconstructed according to newer standards.
Robots.
SKorea and many other developed countries will have access to mechanized android help. No, it won't be the same as a human assistant (even with 2050 tech), but it allow one human assistant to help many senior citizens (whereas now, it's a low ratio).
Not really, jobs are a product of demand; which can be food or anything. The problem is paying for that and what it looks like for older generations then.
Housing will take the route of small towns. Those houses become run down and basically not worth investing in and better torn down. Fabric of society will likely fray away.
Yeah, I just like to try to imagine something hopeful. Loss of people means a loss of a lot of “economies of scale” - certain levels of R&D and academics would die, many services would cease to be profitable.
Losing a quarter of their population in the next 35 years is pretty devastating. Then you worry that only leads to bleaker economic outlook, worse social fabric, less births.
What does South Korea mainly contribute to the rest of the world? What’s its main Export? Will other nations take over or will we have to deal with less of that thing?
South Korea is a pretty important market. They produce a huge amount of the world’s DRAM and NAND memory through Samsung and SK Hynix. They’re also a significant exporter of cars, commercial appliances and industrial equipment.
South Korea disappearing tomorrow (though that’s not what we’re saying is happening) would be very bad for the prices of consumer electronics, and probably worsen the automotive market by loss of competition.
No, because there are metrics to calculate these, and italy doesn't have these issues. Italy birth rate is far better than Korea's, it started aging long ago, the birth rate gradually declined, it didn't fall off a cliff
Two of those three countries are leading the world in terms of high tech innovation, then there's a country in the Mediterranean with cute villages and olive oil.
>Maybe there's some silver lining in a reduction in competition for jobs
It doesn't work like that. People have this idea that the jobs market is finite, like more people having babies/women entering the workforce/immigrants will decrease available jobs, but it doesn't work like that. When someone joins the job market, they spend that income on products and services in the economy, the demand for those will rise and the producers will make more in response creating more jobs.
Remember that the US had 76 million people in 1900, but today has 340 million people and there are more workers today (132 mil) than there were people in 1900. This wasn't magic, it was enabled by the new workers creating the demand for new workers in a positive feedback loop.
>and housing?
South Korean housing market functions differently than much of the developed world as they're a recently developed country and they're still on a race to buil enough housing for the expanding middle class. With enough time, it'll stabilize even without population dropping.
Much of the housing (un)affordability issue in the rest of the developed world is an issue of simply not building enough housing at the locations people want to live which have good jobs and nice amenities, aka near big cities. This is because of zoning laws that forbid construction of say a 5 story apartment instead only allowing single family homes. The population aging is not gonna "solve" this issue, at least not when the older generation is still alive and the elderly population is gonna take like 70 years to start declining. In the meantime, the younger working population is squeezed harder and harder to support the elderly population, more of the declining workforce is needed in healthcare drowning out industries like tech and manufacturing. Also btw, in a low birthrate environment, the elderly will *always* be a gigantic % of the population.
What will solve the issue is zoning reform, tax reform to incentivize building land value taxes instead of property taxes.
It won’t get to that. There are many ways that will break the trend, some more peaceful than others. A very old population is a burden to the productive population and a massive liability to the country’s defense. South Korea would have a hard time defending an enemy invasion.
>Those South Korea numbers are apocalyptic.
Settle down. It really isn't.
Productivity growth is already more than enough to sustain seniors financially, if there's political will to do it. And if there isn't political will to support poor seniors, those same kids would be fucked anyways since their parents wouldn't have pensions.
We'll need to hire a few more nurses and a few les preschool teachers, that's all.
We always praise good healthcare increasing life expectancy but ironically it might not be the best thing when it comes to the economy. The old people need a large young population to support them
Two counter arguments here - Wealth of a Nation is basically accumulated over time and as long as the created value is above the overall depreciation the overall economy is still improving as we have seen in Japan over the last years and if population is shrinking and he wealth per capita can stay stable or even improve if the overall economy does shrink. In a global economy things get even more complicated since goods are created elsewhere.
Not enough people to take care of the elderly is hurting people but it is not likely enough to tank the economy unless - again - the overall wealth is not declining because of it.
To make this in an example - if a super small Nation of 100 people would make their entire wealth from a casino, a supermarket and their investment bank then citizens would work at either when they are at working age and accumulate savings over time to later retire which the bank invests into the casino but also in international companies and goods. The casino also mostly makes money from foreign tourists. It’s a small scenario but here an aging population would only mean the casino and the supermarket have fewer employees (without immigration) which they would have to automate or partially close but everyone who already accumulated savings will absolutely still be fine via the invested money and as long as the supermarket can stay open people will also be clothed and fed… with a shrinking population also every person would inherit likely from two older people so the savings not spend at the end of a live would further feed the next generation…
This is in a nutshell what’s happening to Japan - large amounts of savings per capita, an international economy selling to other countries still but also powerful banks owning a lot a value around the world and an aging population that is also leading to good inheritances for a lot of people.
Norway is another example where aging population is absolutely a non-issue (except of course for societal issues and some towns dying out but the economy and people‘s wealth will be fine)
This is also btw. why Germany would be much much scarier scenarios without immigration - the economy is even more international sure, but savings are low and too unequally distributed. Pensions are paid by employees today and not accumulated wealth but at least Germany slowly is starting a pension fund…
*Fixed income people don't consume much.*
Ftfy
Srsly, old people that are rich spend plenty. Go lookup what Rudi Guliani is saying about how he can't possibly live on 45k *per month*.
The problem is money, not age.
Young people buy houses, cars, furniture, raise kids, they consume all the entertainment, they travel and go to restaurants, etc. When you're old, the house is paid off, the kids are off to college, you are no longer chasing the latest fashion trends, etc. Young people drive consumerism, old people invest in that.
Right, let's use a public figure (read: wealthy American politician) as a point of comparison for what the average human will do. Surely that will lead to valid conclusions as to what will happen
If you're open to the conversation, I'd say consumption is not needed. Our current lifestyle dictates we need to consume to keep the gears of the economy moving, but 2050 is a long way away - many changes lay ahead of us.
We should evolve the metric from a simple 'life expectancy in years' to 'active life expectancy' or something that denotes independence of movement, self-care, thought.
I say this from the perspective of having witnessed my grandmother's decline over 5 years. She's pushing the life expectancy stats up, but is it really life? It's debatable, I'd say.
There are all sort of weird impacts you might not expect.
I'm seeing this at a very local level in my town in the US. I live in a fairly rural / suburban town (8,500 residents, 30 square miles).
In addition to less volunteerism in general (part of the Bowling Alone changes we've seen in society over the last 30+ years) putting pressure to hire more paid firefighters / EMS...as the population ages there is a greater and greater percentage of our ambulance billing is being paid by Medicare (old age) and Medicaid (poor). Those are largest two payers by a wide margin; and they pay rates below the state's default rate we can bill private insurers.
50 years ago our big budget challenges was a booming school population. 35 years ago it was the shock from teacher salaries rapidly rising (arbitrators were awarding three consecutive years of 9% raises). 20 years ago not so much a shock, but expanding the schools despite the enrollment remaining steady in order to further reduce class size and have more special ed capabilities in-district.
Today the next budget shock in my county that is very rapidly coming is having to hire paid EMS and firefighters in relatively large numbers.
Meanwhile, our ambulance was able to operate on a break-even by billing from 2006 to 2020 with a paid daytime crew 7 days a week, 12 hours a day and "volunteers" (paid on call) covering the evening and overnight. The increasing labor cost for the same hours and increasing share of calls falling under Medicare/Medicaid means we now need a $100,000 subsidy from property taxes just to maintain what have, and we're looking probably somewhere around $300,000 needed soon to hire staff to make sure we have a minimally acceptable fire response during the daytime. May not sound like much, but that's a controversial amount of money in my towns like mine that will get lots of voter pushback -- it will more than double what the town currently spends on fire protection.
Add to that fewer (or at least smaller percentage) of young people in prime age for emergency services, far fewer of them in good health for strenuous work (i.e. our obesity epidemic), less interest in police/fire/ems over the last five years, and multiple towns in my area hiring folks the recruitment pool is shallow. 20 years ago we would've shrugged and said if there's not volunteers we'll just have to spend the money to hire folks; now I'm not sure we can hire enough folks at any reasonable cost to not start having to accept longer response times.
It's easy to just say it, harder to implement it when you have to argue at the local council about raising taxes to fund it. Everybody loves to say people like teachers are underpaid and deserve more, but very few actually show it in actions.
A big part of this is that states have spent years cutting parts of land out of the property tax system through various methods. That way the wealthier in those towns don't have to pay into the system because their land is 'agricultural' or they've got a 'homestead' exemption. They don't actually want to contribute to the area they're part of.
Like sorry, but you also use these services and should be paying a fair share for them. Not just sitting in your huge value store in your land.
Because the leaders of those economies decided people were unlimited and were produced for free and children didn't matter and weren't worth considering because their would always be more.
Then folks started to notice thar healthcare, housing, education, and even food kept getting more expensive with no end in sight and the plantery ecology is also collapsing before our eyes suddenly a lot fewer children are being born than anyone expected.
Every OECD country on earth, except Israel, but including China and India, is now under 2.12 children per woman. Israel is so culturaly distinct it's questionable whether any social models could be replicated from it all.
Further, no OECD nation on earth, once entering a peroid of population decline, has ever turned it around. No one has ever done it in the modern times. Ever.
Modern economies and modern culture appear to kill the imputus for child rearing.
This is a problem which is only just being hinted at by world leaders.
This is a global slow-motion collapse of tax bases, military readiness, innovation and tech development, national pension plans, everything.
Modern civilization didn't develop to anticipate or accommodate terminal population decline. This is a problem potentially almost as serious as global warming.
If those are the main thing driving it then why do poorer nations, where things are worse for people financially, still have a lot of people having kids?
Because they are less industrialized. When you live on a farm, kids are free labor. When you move to the city kids become a liability. People do the math and see that having many kids or kids at all is not worth it. Add in education, feminism, secularism enabled due to industrialization and you get the current situation. Countries that industrialized more quickly got hit by it the hardest since they had no time to adjust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x64f7NxQKKk
In addition, when you are rich you can afford to save for retirement. When you are poor, your kids are your retirement. And it's not good to have the weight of supporting you all on one kid, so you have 7 to spread the load.
Exactly. The main drivers of birth rate are consistent access to safe birth control, and the lifestyle opportunity cost of having more kids (which is a function of how wealthy you are). The more money you have, the more having kids will reduce your surplus money. And if you have money you have easy access to birth control.
Birth rates *are* falling globally, but that doesn't refute the fact that there's still a worldwide negative correlation between birth rate and GDP per capita.
the realities of prevalence of religiosity, family planning, and child mortality are all you need as answers to that
I guess you can roll labour and end of life care into family planning
I’d argue because it’s doable. In an economy hyper focused on personal wealth generation to live securely, anything that could hinder wealth accumulation for yourself (and your partner) becomes a net negative.
Further, if you take America for example, even if you have the financial security to not only have a kid but raise them well (not wanting for food, clothes, education, hobbies) you only have so much before you start sacrificing your lifestyle. And that amount isn’t that much. If it were cheap to raise a kid then more people would do it. But it’s not. It’s expensive, and you have to worry about inflation, housing prices, taxes, etc.
In a poorer economy, everyone is relatively ‘poor’ compared to say, western countries. You can keep your house and raise 6 kids. You can put food on the table for 8 ppl (6+parents). It’s not a luxurious lifestyle, but it’s not as though poorer economies are in a constant state of famine or the inability to afford food. It’s a basic principle of a society that most everyone can eat, otherwise that society wouldn’t exist because everyone would be brutally competing for food.
If children could be raised in an acceptable manner in more industrialized economies with ease, then people would have them. Even something like the concept of a stay at home mom these days is a liability. Most Americans can barely afford to support themselves, tack on another whole ass adult who not only needs to eat, but also has desires and hobbies you have to support two people. Add a kid? It’s becoming more and more infeasible for a single person to do that and live comfortably.
In America the solution is extremely simple, and threefold: higher wages, free/cheap education, free healthcare. I’d be willing to bet childbirth would skyrocket if you gave people those three things.
>In America the solution is extremely simple, and threefold: higher wages, free/cheap education, free healthcare. I’d be willing to bet childbirth would skyrocket if you gave people those three things.
You can be willing to bet that, but there's almost no reason to think it would actually work. There are many countries with free education and universal healthcare, like Germany, that are also struggling demographically. The answer here is not going to be economic.
Wtf is this comment lol. People from poor countries aren't just sitting on their asses watching tv. If anything, they work harder so that they keep their jobs and support their family.
If anything, kids are an insurance plan and source of extra manpower so they can bring home more income. Having a larger family unit means potentially a higher chance of having someone to fall back onto
This chart is misleading. There are three industrialized countries that will escape the worst of demographic collapse; The US, France and New Zealand. The baby boomers from those three had enough kids to keep things fairly stable. Also immigration helps bring in more workers to pay for the retired people.
The chart doesn’t seem to account for that fact that the Chinese overcounted their population. They thought they had 100 million more people of childbearing age. That and the large gender imbalance in China that will affect the the countries ability to increase fertility.
Depending on the source around 18-34 million chinese men will never have a wife.
https://www.newsweek.com/china-has-nearly-35-million-more-single-men-women-1592486#:~:text=The%2034.9%20million%20men%20are,women)%20and%20expected%20to%20marry.
All these countries outside of the US have universal healthcare. Some even have nationalized healthcare. So healthcare costs can’t be the reason, can it be?
> This is a problem potentially almost as serious as global warming
This is only a problem because of our economic system. We're massively more productive then we were even 50 years ago. We could support a larger percentage of retired people if we weren't slaves to a heartless unregulated capitalism.
Cool. Technically correct. Also meaningless.
Just like if O2 levels were to suddenly collapse worldwide and you said 'that's only a problem if you breathe oxygen.'
You don't just revolutionize an entire global macroeconomy into some type of idealized full-blown space communism. Not on any type of time scale in years or decades, anyway. Unless you wanna go full Pol Pot and bring the killing fields global.
Would you support a model where everyone gets so much UBI that they don’t need to work, therefore learn anything in school since they’ll be taken care by the government?
What are the potential downsides of such model?
This entire comment is ridiculous scaremongering and an exaggeration of what's going on.
>Further, no OECD nation on earth, once entering a peroid of population decline, has ever turned it around. No one has ever done it in the modern times. Ever.
It's not like this history is very long. The phenomenon of fertility rates falling below replacement in a developed country has never happened before living memory, and still hasn't been going on long enough to have a serious negative impact on any economies. Actual population DECLINE in developed countries has only happened in a few Asian countries and for less than 20 years, with a total decline of less than 5% from the peak so far.
Population declines are still much more common in non-developed nations due to famines or war, and also by emigration to wealthier and more stable countries.
>Modern economies and modern culture appear to kill the imputus for child rearing.
Lower fertility rate has many causes, but the biggest one is education and economic independence of women. Educated women have more ways to self actualize than by having children, so they postpone child rearing for a decade or so and then limit themselves to having 1-3 children for instance. They are also not dependent on finding a husband for economic security and can reject potential partners for longer.
>Modern civilization didn't develop to anticipate or accommodate terminal population decline.
No, but it's a massive assumption to call a phenomenon that's only a few decades old "terminal". And modern civilization is certainly better equipped to accommodate (temporary, as in a few generations worth) population decline than any kind of pre-modern civilization. It's much easier to deal with an aging population than it is to, say, recover from a war that wipes out 25% of all fighting (and working) age men and large swathes of the rest of the population. Which is something that humans have dealt with countless times.
That's a lot of words to say you dint understand demographic curves.
'But it's not a problem today!'
Yeah, dude. I know.
That's not how this works. It's like global warming... By the time you can see the problem, it's already far too late.
I understand demographic curves, and exponential growth/ decay. Your assumption is that current trends are destined to continue indefinitely. That makes no sense. At some point, the fertility rates will have to start increasing again, assuming climate catastrophe or nuclear war doesn’t wipe out major civilization.
In the long run, either the population is limited by culture and social policy, or by war, disease and famine. Pick your poison.
> At some point, the fertility rates will have to start increasing again, assuming climate catastrophe or nuclear war doesn’t wipe out major civilization.
Why? Why would they start to increase again? Why do they "have" to start increasing again? Because you can't imagine a world without this?
I'm saying that the way things are is likely to stay.
You are saying they are likely to change.
And you think the burden of proof in this dichotomy lies on me?
Naw dude. It's on you. Things are going to change? In this particular instance? Why? What makes this change occur?
Nothing that I can see.
"It'll all work itself out somehow" is just a prayer for someone with no god. Stop praying at me.
China and India are not OECD. However folks also have to remember OECD is no longer roughly a synonym for Western industrialized economies; it does include some of the Central / South American nations as well as the former Warsaw Bloc states in Eastern Europe.
In Japan traditionally people live longer. Traditions like UBASUTE where 70 years old go to hilltop and starve themselves are their culture. There is a beautiful movie by Shohei Imamura called Ballad of Narayama on this theme
I made this chart to highlight the risk of demographic imbalance in world's top economies
Especially in countries like Japan, South Korea and Italy, old age dependency ratio is projected to increase very quickly.
Implication of having a high proportion of elderly dependents can be quite severe and far reaching:
1. Stretched govt services such as state healthcare impacting coverage and/or quality
2. Increase tax rate on the working population to support the government finances
3. Lower pension payouts to retirees
4. Pressure to increase retirement age
5. Decrease in the competitiveness of the country in the global economy
Demographic changes are hard to reverse quickly as many countries are finding out. More details and additional [data stories here](https://www.trendlinehq.com/subscribe)
Note that this data doesn't cover employed people, and is only measured based on age
Source: Our world in Data
Tools: Google Slides
Additionally, Japan has a higher birth rate than Italy and Spain.
But what's interesting is that most of the Western media I see only seems to cover Japan's birth rate.
And these Westerners, as if they've been brainwashed, criticize Japan for "overwork culture, racism, sexism, misogyny" lol.
Dude, better childcare, government grants for kids and great maternity leave systems have no measurable impact whatsoever on birthrate…
On a global scale the less free a country and the less laws it has in this regard the higher the birth rate…
The leaders of many of these countries still implemented such rules since it’s the right thing to do to give the fewer children and families an easier life. Japan is a good example here with 12 month of paid maternity leave. Didn’t change anything but made families so much more happy and women could stay at their jobs afterwards - but it can’t change the trend.
The brutal truth is that some people don’t want kids, some can’t have them (not the right partner, infertile etc.) and the ones who have usually stop at 2 since it’s our ideal of a family and also kind of a limit what people can really cope with…
The only ways to reverse this are all tyrannical in nature and highly morally questionable… Restrict access to abortions and birth control as the most radical (you might see that there is more than just Christian ideology for right wing groups to support this…) but already governments toy with the idea to severely punish childless people when it comes to taxes and healthcare costs…
So the question will apparently be if the free world will abandon some of its ideals to stay relevant, get migration till the breaking point (and the third world is also starting to age… migration is not a sustainable solution forever) or go quietly small like Japan and hope that no enemy will prey on that…
Pretty bleak view forward, the best scenario might be indeed a future where after this generation of childless people died out the next generation hopefully have a more sustainable view on having kids and automation also makes having kids easier… (frankly, having witnessed now two births I am pretty sure ever women would rather have kids made in an artificial womb than to be pregnant and having to birth them naturally)
And this long game is why providing social services and excellent public education to younger generations is vital to the growth & stability of ... any country.
Yes. This isn't surprising -- why would they have more/multiple kids when it's a struggle to think of good jobs and financial independence (regardless of safety nets).
It depends by state. Some states offer far more currently than others (California is probably at the top of the heap). Universal single-payer healthcare would be by far the most impactful. Guaranteed paid family leave would be amazing, too, and after that, free (or very inexpensive) daycare/preschool. Start by enacting programs to help the populace stay healthy and be able to work without concern for childcare and it's hugely boosts the economy.
For those who've not been paying attention to this issue --and I count myself among that number until probably the last year or so-- demographic collapse is going to be a much bigger deal than the level of attention it's drawn so far might lead one to suspect.
Seriously folks; don't sleep on this stuff. It's going to have giant downstream effects that are by definition unpredictable and chaotic.
That's gonna be super dumb solution because they are not treating the cause of problem , what happens when immigrants encounter similar problems? They just f*d themselves royally.
I think that's largely horsepoop.
In 1804, world population reached an estimated one billion people.
123 years later, in 1927, world population reached two billion.
33 years later, in 1960, world population reached three billion.
15 years later, in 1975, world population reached four billion.
12 years later, in 1987, world population reached five billion.
12 years later, in 1999, world population reached six billion.
12 years later, in 2011, world population reached seven billion.
12 years later, in 2023, world population reached eight billion.
Hell we haven't even slowed the population INCREASE. I'm not worried about not having enough people. If South Korea wants more young people around they can encourage immigration, it's much more of a catastrophe to continue adding people at the current rate.
Seriously. There's 8+ billion humans on Earth and people are freaking out about not having enough people? WTF is this nonsense? The problem is capitalism and its reliance on infinite growth. We've had an easy time with this so far just because we have massively more people every single year. Increasing growth without increasing people is harder. But that's a capitalism problem that we've invented and could opt out of with a better system then unregulated runaway capitalism.
There's a multiplier by how productive those productive people are. A 1:1 ratio in 1950 isn't the same as in 2024. One person today is accomplishing the work of 5 in 1950 ([source](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/opinion/global/jobs-productivity-and-the-great-decoupling.html)). So if we didn't have such an awful unregulated mess of an economic model, 1 person could support 5x as many people as they did in the 1950s.
A few questions:
* Is par of the legend or plot missing? because I don't see any grey data points for 2020 and I also don't see any legend for flat navy.
* Why is the title the conclusion?
* Why not just present it as a percentage? Showing it as *old divided by not-old* is an unnecessary calculation step that does not help anyone.
Third bullet - agreed. Or better yet, divide 65+ by 15to64. That is the number of workers it takes to support the pensioners. So for example, Japan has 1.4 workers/pensioner instead of saying it has 100 workers for every 71 pensioners.
1) the legend colour is an error - should have been navy
2) title represents the conclusion which is that the democratic imbalance in these 3 countries are the worst
3) the metric is a widely accepted economic metric. It shows how many older dependents exist per capita of working age population
What a confusing graph…. Damn.
But still fascinating to see countries collapse in our lifetime.
Countries are so focused on money they forgot it’s getting too expensive to raise kids.
I’m more and more convinced humans have no clue what are the consequences to their actions
Good chart however one thing is ignored in the data: which is culture. In India, for example, elders live with their children until they die. In USA, this is not the case. With another axis/data point -- Elders Living with Children -- I do not really see the point of this particular data set
Yea it's valid but it looks at the outcome in only one dimension. What it means to "support" a growing population is dependent on the country and culture. I'm sure in the west it's almost a burden to "support" the elders but in east Asia it's considered an honor. Just my opinion
I know you’re joking, but Canada is actually in a pretty good state to handle the future demographic crisis because a) immigration is an option (unlike Japan) and b) the Canada Pension Plan has been well-run and has enough money for at least the first part of the demographic crunch.
what revelance is 15 as a starting age? All these tax paying 15 year olds working in mines? The average age someone starts a steady job must be low twenties, right? These are all knowledge economies with most ppl going into higher education of some sort...
Some of the most sexist societies of all industrialized countries. Not surprising, but sad. They would all be wonderful places to live otherwise. Xenophobia is another element of course, but the native anti-natalist trends are purely a response to sexism.
Many of these countries could help alleviate the aging population problems by allowing for more immigration. Japan is known for its strict immigration policy.
You can buy yourself a few years breathing room, but *everyone* is having fewer kids. You can't avoid the problem, only shuffle it onto someone else - not really a long-term solution.
Long-term, societies need to adapt to having fewer workers. More people will have to work in the sectors that are critical to society (healthcare, utilities, agriculture, EMS, etc.) and many less important roles (services, entertainment, etc.) will just go unfilled if they can't be automated.
I don’t think Japan wants other people who are not Asian in their country. To be honest they’ll accept us as Tourist , but not astheir resident. They rather maintain their culture and pride and just let their country collapse.
The numbers required to make any significant difference would be impractically large. Even countries with established traditions of welcoming immigrants would struggle. And these countries are traditionally insular. It wouldn't work.
> The numbers required to make any significant difference would be impractically large.
The numbers of things required to replace the population that currently exists would be enough to support the population that currently exists.
Japan desperately needs a cultural shakeup and immigration. But it's my fear that they'll dig their heels in worse as their economic woes increase. They'll just double down on the same behaviors that got them in this mess.
Not sure what needs to happen here.
Help.me underatand...I've always thought that Japan and South Korea had similar demographic and econ data (SK only partially behind in GDP per capita). Can someone explain why there's such a gap in the 2020 ages between the two?
You know it's ironic because the Trump supporter want to make America great again. This graph clearly shows that immigration is the key to that. Yet his platform is vehemently against said immigration.
Tell me, why would the economy *not* be worse off if there are more retired people and less people working? Doesn't matter what economic system you have, there would still be a shortage of labour, no?
Why is the dot for 2020 gray on the legend but navy blue on the chart?
That’s just the r/dataisbeautiful level of quality control and proofreading
This sub should really be called r/letsignoretheactualsubtitleandjustupvoteanyvisualisationaboutatopicthatinterestsmeespeciallyifitsaboutapoliticalhottopicevenifthevisualisationhasobviousissuesthatmeanitisanythingbutbeautiful
rolls right off the tongue
Idk which is worse, this sub or r mapporn. I swear some of these are deliberate shit posts. They have to be
People up vote the title and don't look at the content.
At least it’s not just an Excel line graph
The Excel graph would have consistent colors
It upsets me far more than it should.
You’re upset the right amount.
This chart is also known as the countries with the world’s highest life expectancies.
Not really. Even nations with high life expectancy can be low on this chart. Just if the people of said nation have enough kids.
Which of these countries on the chart is the exception to the rule?
Bro, I’m not saying that *these* are among them, but it’s *possible*. It’s really simple. As the graph shows, it’s a ratio between old and young people. In many nations, such as Japan or South Korea, very few people have been born compared to the population. This leads to an increased percentage of the population being old, and again, more young people have to take care of the old. If these nations had followed their population growth rate seen in prior decades, the ratio would be more sustainable, and we would have less percentage of old people.
I mean I was talking about this chart, but this is also a general, almost inescapable rule in sociology. Lower infant mortality leads to higher life expectancies and lower fertility rates. It’s part of the demographic transition.
So you admit I’m right? My logic is sound, and a definite possibility. If you continued this graph, it could show outliers, although I’m not sure which that would be. Some poor nations, as you said, with lower life expectancy/higher mortality rate, would have a lower percentage of old people. Still, in nations that prosper, and get many kids, would in fact be an outlier.
Where did I say that? I think you were the one that just admitted that you weren’t sure if there were any exceptions to the rule?
I never said there were? And you basically just explained my logic.
The dude who made it is getting older. Give them a break.
The better question is: why isn't this a table? 2 data points for 10 countries, that's table material, not graph material. Bonus: it would actually convey the actual number, not a vague approximation. In fact, a lot of the posts on this sub would be better suited for a simple table.
I think this is a very sensible chart for comparing numbers. Most people don't care particularly what the specific proportion of people will be over 70... This gives a good way to easily compare numbers now, to their projections. Much better valid and easier than a table of numbers, or some of the more dubious quality visualisations (things wizzing about over time, pie charts where it's hard to compare arcs etc). Just a simple linear visual comparison.
Probably because that way the post gets more comments, like yours, for example, or mine.
its probably not representative of the data in 2020, and instead trying to shanghai some "creative" points data in there.
Damn. By the time I am a pensioner I will be considered a spring chicken... The prerequisite for being young will be being able to climb stairs
Those South Korea numbers are apocalyptic. Adult children will be expected to take care of what the state can't/won't which will only increase stress on the younger generations and SK economy. I can't see society functioning with that high of an elderly burden. It's a slow motion trainwreck with a birthrate of just 0.8. Their population is going to race back near 1950s levels by 2100. That sounds bleak as hell. Maybe there's some silver lining in a reduction in competition for jobs and housing?
South Korea is interesting because it's the most sudden of all aging countries. If the population decline is so bad as everybody says, we will see on Korea
Many people believe this is getting so dire it could make reunification with the North unavoidable. But Korea is small all things considered, China's demographic collapse is going to be a much bigger deal.
North Korea’s birth rate is down to 1.8 and falling.
Instead of re unification, which probably won’t happen, easy immigration for youth seeking work seems much more likely. From third world countries.
Immigration to Korea is fairly easy already. I've lived there and there's no way they're ready to import millions foreign workers, even from relatively close cultures in SEA countries.
Legally yeah, but it's gotta change culturally. Both Japan and Korea, immigration is INFINITE times easier than US but people still go to US because of the opportunities an immigrant might get there, and its just easier to "fit in", at least in the handful of big cities.
How does reunification with North Korea help with demographics?
They'll eat SK's geriatrics
Despite South Korea having twice the population of North Korea in terms of people aged 0-14 it's almost the same. 5 million for North and 6 million for South. It'll give Korea a new lease on life, a massive infusion of young people.
Correct. China’s population will also have to work for longer as well - that will not go down well where women expect to retire at 50, women in the civil service at 55, and men at 60.
Source that MANY think unification is unavoidable? Never heard this before from numerous Korean/Korean Americans. Also, the odds of reunification go down everyday as old people die, esp. when the youth have zero connection to or direct contact with North Koreans. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/706376/south-korea-necessity-of-korean-reunification/
>Maybe there's some silver lining in a reduction in competition for jobs and housing? Likely - Japanese real estate prices, for example, peaked a couple decades ago iirc and have never been that high since. China's real-estate sector is in a big slowdown lately as well, as low selling prices make new builds non-viable for developers. Likewise, China & Japan are both heavily invested in robots & automation wherever they can be. Workers are getting more scarce (and thus more expensive) as the population ages, so it's increasingly necessary to invest in productivity if you still want things to get done.
The real danger is in infrastructure. If you built out for 1.5 billion people but you only have 0.5 billion, all that infrastructure for that population deficit decays and any debt tied to that infrastructure goes bad. Plus the economies of scale that make that infrastructure possible (population density) begins to falter making the remaining infrastructure even more insolvent. Considering how much China has overbuilt over the past half-century, the debt bomb will be a fascinating experience.
> debt bomb How hilariously typical of long-resisted epoch changes it would be if this is why the worldwide economic model shifts. Not because infinite growth was always ridiculous. Not because corporations became too large to be governed or to fulfill their roles as stability-generating employers. Not because hunger for speculation had become too widespread. Just large economies saying, "Aw shit. We bought way too much. Welp, ain't nothin to do 'cept a reimagination of commerce & investment."
Japanese real estate is strange. Their houses depreciate as they get torn down with each generation. Basically after 30 years Houses are torn down and rebuilt.
>Likely - Japanese real estate prices, for example, peaked a couple decades ago iirc and have never been that high since. It's because they had an insane real estate bubble lol, a popular comparison is made that the land below the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was worth more than the entire state of California. And California had high real estate prices even in 1990 (when this bubble on the cusp of bursting). This bubble popping and never getting back up is not a sign real estate is doing better, it's a sign of how insane the bubble was. If there's anything helping Japanese real estate prices, it's that they just keep building whereas it's literally illegal in much of the Western world (because of zoning). Japan adds as much new housing stock (relative to existing stock) as Australia and Australia is a country undergoing incredible population growth. Country|Share of new housing stock :--|--: NZ|1.7% Australia|1.6% Japan|1.5% Canada|1.25% USA|1.2% England|0.9% Germany|0.7% Spain|0.4% Latvia|0.25% Japan's population is growing at -0.5% annually while Australia is growing at 1.5%, yet they have basically the same housing construction rate. Latvia's population is actually "growing" at the same rate as Japan's. >China's real-estate sector is in a big slowdown lately as well, as low selling prices make new builds non-viable for developers. I swear people have no frame of reference what any of these situations are like. China's housing bubble was nuts compared to any other country. Here is median home price to median income ratio, aka how many years of income do you need to afford a home: City|Home price-income ratio :--|--: NYC|9 London|13 Tokyo|14 Shanghai|33 Beijing|42 Shenzhen|43 Chinese cities have per sqm price comparable to cities like NYC *without the NYC income*. These bubbles aren't comparable to anything within Western history. Population declines aren't responsible for the price drop. It's a complex mess, but to keep it TLDR, Chinese people rushed to invest in real estate as that's one of the few viable avenues to invest in (as financial markets are state controlled, so stocks are unstable), this resulted in people owning 2nd or 3rd homes with no one to live in em. Chinese state which had encouraged this bubble in the first place then imposed rules on construction companies to keep debt within limits (as they were scared of the bubble popping under uncontrolled circumstances) which was *the* immediate cause of real estate price crash.
Japan will always construct relatively many new houses because they keep getting destroyed by natural disasters on a pretty high rate. Also, torn down and reconstructed according to newer standards.
Robots. SKorea and many other developed countries will have access to mechanized android help. No, it won't be the same as a human assistant (even with 2050 tech), but it allow one human assistant to help many senior citizens (whereas now, it's a low ratio).
Not really, jobs are a product of demand; which can be food or anything. The problem is paying for that and what it looks like for older generations then. Housing will take the route of small towns. Those houses become run down and basically not worth investing in and better torn down. Fabric of society will likely fray away.
Yeah, I just like to try to imagine something hopeful. Loss of people means a loss of a lot of “economies of scale” - certain levels of R&D and academics would die, many services would cease to be profitable. Losing a quarter of their population in the next 35 years is pretty devastating. Then you worry that only leads to bleaker economic outlook, worse social fabric, less births.
What does South Korea mainly contribute to the rest of the world? What’s its main Export? Will other nations take over or will we have to deal with less of that thing?
South Korea is a pretty important market. They produce a huge amount of the world’s DRAM and NAND memory through Samsung and SK Hynix. They’re also a significant exporter of cars, commercial appliances and industrial equipment. South Korea disappearing tomorrow (though that’s not what we’re saying is happening) would be very bad for the prices of consumer electronics, and probably worsen the automotive market by loss of competition.
They need immigration. There is that or economic collapse.
They need less sexism and toxic workplace culture.
Would you say these are also root causes of the low fertility rate in Italy?
No, because there are metrics to calculate these, and italy doesn't have these issues. Italy birth rate is far better than Korea's, it started aging long ago, the birth rate gradually declined, it didn't fall off a cliff
"Italy doesn't have sexism issues" WHAHAHA
So what Is Italy’s problem?
I love how people in the internet are "Japan is near the aging apocalypse, S.Korea is close to the end times! Italy? Who gives a shit…?“
Two of those three countries are leading the world in terms of high tech innovation, then there's a country in the Mediterranean with cute villages and olive oil.
>Maybe there's some silver lining in a reduction in competition for jobs It doesn't work like that. People have this idea that the jobs market is finite, like more people having babies/women entering the workforce/immigrants will decrease available jobs, but it doesn't work like that. When someone joins the job market, they spend that income on products and services in the economy, the demand for those will rise and the producers will make more in response creating more jobs. Remember that the US had 76 million people in 1900, but today has 340 million people and there are more workers today (132 mil) than there were people in 1900. This wasn't magic, it was enabled by the new workers creating the demand for new workers in a positive feedback loop. >and housing? South Korean housing market functions differently than much of the developed world as they're a recently developed country and they're still on a race to buil enough housing for the expanding middle class. With enough time, it'll stabilize even without population dropping. Much of the housing (un)affordability issue in the rest of the developed world is an issue of simply not building enough housing at the locations people want to live which have good jobs and nice amenities, aka near big cities. This is because of zoning laws that forbid construction of say a 5 story apartment instead only allowing single family homes. The population aging is not gonna "solve" this issue, at least not when the older generation is still alive and the elderly population is gonna take like 70 years to start declining. In the meantime, the younger working population is squeezed harder and harder to support the elderly population, more of the declining workforce is needed in healthcare drowning out industries like tech and manufacturing. Also btw, in a low birthrate environment, the elderly will *always* be a gigantic % of the population. What will solve the issue is zoning reform, tax reform to incentivize building land value taxes instead of property taxes.
It won’t get to that. There are many ways that will break the trend, some more peaceful than others. A very old population is a burden to the productive population and a massive liability to the country’s defense. South Korea would have a hard time defending an enemy invasion.
Who would invade South Korea? What would the US and UN do to the invaders if they tried?
>Those South Korea numbers are apocalyptic. Settle down. It really isn't. Productivity growth is already more than enough to sustain seniors financially, if there's political will to do it. And if there isn't political will to support poor seniors, those same kids would be fucked anyways since their parents wouldn't have pensions. We'll need to hire a few more nurses and a few les preschool teachers, that's all.
We always praise good healthcare increasing life expectancy but ironically it might not be the best thing when it comes to the economy. The old people need a large young population to support them
Two counter arguments here - Wealth of a Nation is basically accumulated over time and as long as the created value is above the overall depreciation the overall economy is still improving as we have seen in Japan over the last years and if population is shrinking and he wealth per capita can stay stable or even improve if the overall economy does shrink. In a global economy things get even more complicated since goods are created elsewhere. Not enough people to take care of the elderly is hurting people but it is not likely enough to tank the economy unless - again - the overall wealth is not declining because of it. To make this in an example - if a super small Nation of 100 people would make their entire wealth from a casino, a supermarket and their investment bank then citizens would work at either when they are at working age and accumulate savings over time to later retire which the bank invests into the casino but also in international companies and goods. The casino also mostly makes money from foreign tourists. It’s a small scenario but here an aging population would only mean the casino and the supermarket have fewer employees (without immigration) which they would have to automate or partially close but everyone who already accumulated savings will absolutely still be fine via the invested money and as long as the supermarket can stay open people will also be clothed and fed… with a shrinking population also every person would inherit likely from two older people so the savings not spend at the end of a live would further feed the next generation… This is in a nutshell what’s happening to Japan - large amounts of savings per capita, an international economy selling to other countries still but also powerful banks owning a lot a value around the world and an aging population that is also leading to good inheritances for a lot of people. Norway is another example where aging population is absolutely a non-issue (except of course for societal issues and some towns dying out but the economy and people‘s wealth will be fine) This is also btw. why Germany would be much much scarier scenarios without immigration - the economy is even more international sure, but savings are low and too unequally distributed. Pensions are paid by employees today and not accumulated wealth but at least Germany slowly is starting a pension fund…
that depends on how much labor can be replaced by technology
You also need consumption, old people don't consume much.
They do in Sectors like healthcare.
*Fixed income people don't consume much.* Ftfy Srsly, old people that are rich spend plenty. Go lookup what Rudi Guliani is saying about how he can't possibly live on 45k *per month*. The problem is money, not age.
Young people buy houses, cars, furniture, raise kids, they consume all the entertainment, they travel and go to restaurants, etc. When you're old, the house is paid off, the kids are off to college, you are no longer chasing the latest fashion trends, etc. Young people drive consumerism, old people invest in that.
Right, let's use a public figure (read: wealthy American politician) as a point of comparison for what the average human will do. Surely that will lead to valid conclusions as to what will happen
Rudy is not Korean how tf is that relevant?
If you're open to the conversation, I'd say consumption is not needed. Our current lifestyle dictates we need to consume to keep the gears of the economy moving, but 2050 is a long way away - many changes lay ahead of us.
We should evolve the metric from a simple 'life expectancy in years' to 'active life expectancy' or something that denotes independence of movement, self-care, thought. I say this from the perspective of having witnessed my grandmother's decline over 5 years. She's pushing the life expectancy stats up, but is it really life? It's debatable, I'd say.
Old people is fine, it’s more that the birthrate is low.
There are all sort of weird impacts you might not expect. I'm seeing this at a very local level in my town in the US. I live in a fairly rural / suburban town (8,500 residents, 30 square miles). In addition to less volunteerism in general (part of the Bowling Alone changes we've seen in society over the last 30+ years) putting pressure to hire more paid firefighters / EMS...as the population ages there is a greater and greater percentage of our ambulance billing is being paid by Medicare (old age) and Medicaid (poor). Those are largest two payers by a wide margin; and they pay rates below the state's default rate we can bill private insurers. 50 years ago our big budget challenges was a booming school population. 35 years ago it was the shock from teacher salaries rapidly rising (arbitrators were awarding three consecutive years of 9% raises). 20 years ago not so much a shock, but expanding the schools despite the enrollment remaining steady in order to further reduce class size and have more special ed capabilities in-district. Today the next budget shock in my county that is very rapidly coming is having to hire paid EMS and firefighters in relatively large numbers. Meanwhile, our ambulance was able to operate on a break-even by billing from 2006 to 2020 with a paid daytime crew 7 days a week, 12 hours a day and "volunteers" (paid on call) covering the evening and overnight. The increasing labor cost for the same hours and increasing share of calls falling under Medicare/Medicaid means we now need a $100,000 subsidy from property taxes just to maintain what have, and we're looking probably somewhere around $300,000 needed soon to hire staff to make sure we have a minimally acceptable fire response during the daytime. May not sound like much, but that's a controversial amount of money in my towns like mine that will get lots of voter pushback -- it will more than double what the town currently spends on fire protection. Add to that fewer (or at least smaller percentage) of young people in prime age for emergency services, far fewer of them in good health for strenuous work (i.e. our obesity epidemic), less interest in police/fire/ems over the last five years, and multiple towns in my area hiring folks the recruitment pool is shallow. 20 years ago we would've shrugged and said if there's not volunteers we'll just have to spend the money to hire folks; now I'm not sure we can hire enough folks at any reasonable cost to not start having to accept longer response times.
Honestly, firefighters and EMS should be paid positions, not volunteer.
It's easy to just say it, harder to implement it when you have to argue at the local council about raising taxes to fund it. Everybody loves to say people like teachers are underpaid and deserve more, but very few actually show it in actions.
A big part of this is that states have spent years cutting parts of land out of the property tax system through various methods. That way the wealthier in those towns don't have to pay into the system because their land is 'agricultural' or they've got a 'homestead' exemption. They don't actually want to contribute to the area they're part of. Like sorry, but you also use these services and should be paying a fair share for them. Not just sitting in your huge value store in your land.
Am I the only one bothered by the fact that they got the color on the legend wrong?
First thing I noticed...
Because the leaders of those economies decided people were unlimited and were produced for free and children didn't matter and weren't worth considering because their would always be more. Then folks started to notice thar healthcare, housing, education, and even food kept getting more expensive with no end in sight and the plantery ecology is also collapsing before our eyes suddenly a lot fewer children are being born than anyone expected. Every OECD country on earth, except Israel, but including China and India, is now under 2.12 children per woman. Israel is so culturaly distinct it's questionable whether any social models could be replicated from it all. Further, no OECD nation on earth, once entering a peroid of population decline, has ever turned it around. No one has ever done it in the modern times. Ever. Modern economies and modern culture appear to kill the imputus for child rearing. This is a problem which is only just being hinted at by world leaders. This is a global slow-motion collapse of tax bases, military readiness, innovation and tech development, national pension plans, everything. Modern civilization didn't develop to anticipate or accommodate terminal population decline. This is a problem potentially almost as serious as global warming.
If those are the main thing driving it then why do poorer nations, where things are worse for people financially, still have a lot of people having kids?
Because they are less industrialized. When you live on a farm, kids are free labor. When you move to the city kids become a liability. People do the math and see that having many kids or kids at all is not worth it. Add in education, feminism, secularism enabled due to industrialization and you get the current situation. Countries that industrialized more quickly got hit by it the hardest since they had no time to adjust. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x64f7NxQKKk
In addition, when you are rich you can afford to save for retirement. When you are poor, your kids are your retirement. And it's not good to have the weight of supporting you all on one kid, so you have 7 to spread the load.
Exactly. The main drivers of birth rate are consistent access to safe birth control, and the lifestyle opportunity cost of having more kids (which is a function of how wealthy you are). The more money you have, the more having kids will reduce your surplus money. And if you have money you have easy access to birth control.
They don't. Birth rates have fallen dramatically almost everywhere except parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Birth rates *are* falling globally, but that doesn't refute the fact that there's still a worldwide negative correlation between birth rate and GDP per capita.
the realities of prevalence of religiosity, family planning, and child mortality are all you need as answers to that I guess you can roll labour and end of life care into family planning
I’d argue because it’s doable. In an economy hyper focused on personal wealth generation to live securely, anything that could hinder wealth accumulation for yourself (and your partner) becomes a net negative. Further, if you take America for example, even if you have the financial security to not only have a kid but raise them well (not wanting for food, clothes, education, hobbies) you only have so much before you start sacrificing your lifestyle. And that amount isn’t that much. If it were cheap to raise a kid then more people would do it. But it’s not. It’s expensive, and you have to worry about inflation, housing prices, taxes, etc. In a poorer economy, everyone is relatively ‘poor’ compared to say, western countries. You can keep your house and raise 6 kids. You can put food on the table for 8 ppl (6+parents). It’s not a luxurious lifestyle, but it’s not as though poorer economies are in a constant state of famine or the inability to afford food. It’s a basic principle of a society that most everyone can eat, otherwise that society wouldn’t exist because everyone would be brutally competing for food. If children could be raised in an acceptable manner in more industrialized economies with ease, then people would have them. Even something like the concept of a stay at home mom these days is a liability. Most Americans can barely afford to support themselves, tack on another whole ass adult who not only needs to eat, but also has desires and hobbies you have to support two people. Add a kid? It’s becoming more and more infeasible for a single person to do that and live comfortably. In America the solution is extremely simple, and threefold: higher wages, free/cheap education, free healthcare. I’d be willing to bet childbirth would skyrocket if you gave people those three things.
I would add affordable child care but higher wages might cover that
>In America the solution is extremely simple, and threefold: higher wages, free/cheap education, free healthcare. I’d be willing to bet childbirth would skyrocket if you gave people those three things. You can be willing to bet that, but there's almost no reason to think it would actually work. There are many countries with free education and universal healthcare, like Germany, that are also struggling demographically. The answer here is not going to be economic.
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Wtf is this comment lol. People from poor countries aren't just sitting on their asses watching tv. If anything, they work harder so that they keep their jobs and support their family.
If anything, kids are an insurance plan and source of extra manpower so they can bring home more income. Having a larger family unit means potentially a higher chance of having someone to fall back onto
I think the point they were trying to make is that people in poor countries spend less time commuting to work and more time fucking.
If you don’t have a TV, you gotta find some way to keep yourself occupied.
This chart is misleading. There are three industrialized countries that will escape the worst of demographic collapse; The US, France and New Zealand. The baby boomers from those three had enough kids to keep things fairly stable. Also immigration helps bring in more workers to pay for the retired people. The chart doesn’t seem to account for that fact that the Chinese overcounted their population. They thought they had 100 million more people of childbearing age. That and the large gender imbalance in China that will affect the the countries ability to increase fertility.
I didn’t even consider the one child policy combined with cultural prioritization of boys. Yeah that’s bad
Depending on the source around 18-34 million chinese men will never have a wife. https://www.newsweek.com/china-has-nearly-35-million-more-single-men-women-1592486#:~:text=The%2034.9%20million%20men%20are,women)%20and%20expected%20to%20marry.
"No OECD country has ever put population decline around" Look up Ireland's population from 1800 until now.
All these countries outside of the US have universal healthcare. Some even have nationalized healthcare. So healthcare costs can’t be the reason, can it be?
South Korean healthcare, for starters, is very much not free.
> This is a problem potentially almost as serious as global warming This is only a problem because of our economic system. We're massively more productive then we were even 50 years ago. We could support a larger percentage of retired people if we weren't slaves to a heartless unregulated capitalism.
Cool. Technically correct. Also meaningless. Just like if O2 levels were to suddenly collapse worldwide and you said 'that's only a problem if you breathe oxygen.' You don't just revolutionize an entire global macroeconomy into some type of idealized full-blown space communism. Not on any type of time scale in years or decades, anyway. Unless you wanna go full Pol Pot and bring the killing fields global.
But what good are those things in the face of climate disasters, species extinction, and general environmental peril?
...He said while typing on a device created by a society underpinned by all of those things.
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Would you support a model where everyone gets so much UBI that they don’t need to work, therefore learn anything in school since they’ll be taken care by the government? What are the potential downsides of such model?
This entire comment is ridiculous scaremongering and an exaggeration of what's going on. >Further, no OECD nation on earth, once entering a peroid of population decline, has ever turned it around. No one has ever done it in the modern times. Ever. It's not like this history is very long. The phenomenon of fertility rates falling below replacement in a developed country has never happened before living memory, and still hasn't been going on long enough to have a serious negative impact on any economies. Actual population DECLINE in developed countries has only happened in a few Asian countries and for less than 20 years, with a total decline of less than 5% from the peak so far. Population declines are still much more common in non-developed nations due to famines or war, and also by emigration to wealthier and more stable countries. >Modern economies and modern culture appear to kill the imputus for child rearing. Lower fertility rate has many causes, but the biggest one is education and economic independence of women. Educated women have more ways to self actualize than by having children, so they postpone child rearing for a decade or so and then limit themselves to having 1-3 children for instance. They are also not dependent on finding a husband for economic security and can reject potential partners for longer. >Modern civilization didn't develop to anticipate or accommodate terminal population decline. No, but it's a massive assumption to call a phenomenon that's only a few decades old "terminal". And modern civilization is certainly better equipped to accommodate (temporary, as in a few generations worth) population decline than any kind of pre-modern civilization. It's much easier to deal with an aging population than it is to, say, recover from a war that wipes out 25% of all fighting (and working) age men and large swathes of the rest of the population. Which is something that humans have dealt with countless times.
That's a lot of words to say you dint understand demographic curves. 'But it's not a problem today!' Yeah, dude. I know. That's not how this works. It's like global warming... By the time you can see the problem, it's already far too late.
I understand demographic curves, and exponential growth/ decay. Your assumption is that current trends are destined to continue indefinitely. That makes no sense. At some point, the fertility rates will have to start increasing again, assuming climate catastrophe or nuclear war doesn’t wipe out major civilization. In the long run, either the population is limited by culture and social policy, or by war, disease and famine. Pick your poison.
> At some point, the fertility rates will have to start increasing again, assuming climate catastrophe or nuclear war doesn’t wipe out major civilization. Why? Why would they start to increase again? Why do they "have" to start increasing again? Because you can't imagine a world without this? I'm saying that the way things are is likely to stay. You are saying they are likely to change. And you think the burden of proof in this dichotomy lies on me? Naw dude. It's on you. Things are going to change? In this particular instance? Why? What makes this change occur? Nothing that I can see. "It'll all work itself out somehow" is just a prayer for someone with no god. Stop praying at me.
China and India are not OECD. However folks also have to remember OECD is no longer roughly a synonym for Western industrialized economies; it does include some of the Central / South American nations as well as the former Warsaw Bloc states in Eastern Europe.
That actually only strengthens my point... The problem is therefore wider than I originally said.
In Japan traditionally people live longer. Traditions like UBASUTE where 70 years old go to hilltop and starve themselves are their culture. There is a beautiful movie by Shohei Imamura called Ballad of Narayama on this theme
I made this chart to highlight the risk of demographic imbalance in world's top economies Especially in countries like Japan, South Korea and Italy, old age dependency ratio is projected to increase very quickly. Implication of having a high proportion of elderly dependents can be quite severe and far reaching: 1. Stretched govt services such as state healthcare impacting coverage and/or quality 2. Increase tax rate on the working population to support the government finances 3. Lower pension payouts to retirees 4. Pressure to increase retirement age 5. Decrease in the competitiveness of the country in the global economy Demographic changes are hard to reverse quickly as many countries are finding out. More details and additional [data stories here](https://www.trendlinehq.com/subscribe) Note that this data doesn't cover employed people, and is only measured based on age Source: Our world in Data Tools: Google Slides
Ironically, Japan has the *highest* fertility rate of developed economies in East Asia.
Additionally, Japan has a higher birth rate than Italy and Spain. But what's interesting is that most of the Western media I see only seems to cover Japan's birth rate. And these Westerners, as if they've been brainwashed, criticize Japan for "overwork culture, racism, sexism, misogyny" lol.
Also I think China has been over reporting births. I think the dependency ratio will actually be worse than the chart shows
Dude, better childcare, government grants for kids and great maternity leave systems have no measurable impact whatsoever on birthrate… On a global scale the less free a country and the less laws it has in this regard the higher the birth rate… The leaders of many of these countries still implemented such rules since it’s the right thing to do to give the fewer children and families an easier life. Japan is a good example here with 12 month of paid maternity leave. Didn’t change anything but made families so much more happy and women could stay at their jobs afterwards - but it can’t change the trend. The brutal truth is that some people don’t want kids, some can’t have them (not the right partner, infertile etc.) and the ones who have usually stop at 2 since it’s our ideal of a family and also kind of a limit what people can really cope with… The only ways to reverse this are all tyrannical in nature and highly morally questionable… Restrict access to abortions and birth control as the most radical (you might see that there is more than just Christian ideology for right wing groups to support this…) but already governments toy with the idea to severely punish childless people when it comes to taxes and healthcare costs… So the question will apparently be if the free world will abandon some of its ideals to stay relevant, get migration till the breaking point (and the third world is also starting to age… migration is not a sustainable solution forever) or go quietly small like Japan and hope that no enemy will prey on that… Pretty bleak view forward, the best scenario might be indeed a future where after this generation of childless people died out the next generation hopefully have a more sustainable view on having kids and automation also makes having kids easier… (frankly, having witnessed now two births I am pretty sure ever women would rather have kids made in an artificial womb than to be pregnant and having to birth them naturally)
And this long game is why providing social services and excellent public education to younger generations is vital to the growth & stability of ... any country.
But that requires taxing rich people. Which flies in the face of the neoliberal ideals that have dominated world politics for the past 40 years.
Countries with free education, maternity leaves and plentiful social services are also experiencing declining birthrates and aging population.
Yes. This isn't surprising -- why would they have more/multiple kids when it's a struggle to think of good jobs and financial independence (regardless of safety nets).
What more social services would you like to see?
It depends by state. Some states offer far more currently than others (California is probably at the top of the heap). Universal single-payer healthcare would be by far the most impactful. Guaranteed paid family leave would be amazing, too, and after that, free (or very inexpensive) daycare/preschool. Start by enacting programs to help the populace stay healthy and be able to work without concern for childcare and it's hugely boosts the economy.
For those who've not been paying attention to this issue --and I count myself among that number until probably the last year or so-- demographic collapse is going to be a much bigger deal than the level of attention it's drawn so far might lead one to suspect. Seriously folks; don't sleep on this stuff. It's going to have giant downstream effects that are by definition unpredictable and chaotic.
The US will be fine due to immigration. Others won't be so lucky.
Yeah, this is the current wisdom. I think it's probably right, but I am not by any means an expert.
Others will just have to make it easier for youth to immigrate for work.
That's gonna be super dumb solution because they are not treating the cause of problem , what happens when immigrants encounter similar problems? They just f*d themselves royally.
Your overlooking something , they have declining birthrates because they can't sustain themselves so kids are out of option , which is same for US .
We've been aware of the demographic timebomb for decades. Not sure whats been done about it aside from increasing immigration however.
Been reading articles spelling doom for Japan over this for decades. Still waiting for that collapse.
I think that's largely horsepoop. In 1804, world population reached an estimated one billion people. 123 years later, in 1927, world population reached two billion. 33 years later, in 1960, world population reached three billion. 15 years later, in 1975, world population reached four billion. 12 years later, in 1987, world population reached five billion. 12 years later, in 1999, world population reached six billion. 12 years later, in 2011, world population reached seven billion. 12 years later, in 2023, world population reached eight billion. Hell we haven't even slowed the population INCREASE. I'm not worried about not having enough people. If South Korea wants more young people around they can encourage immigration, it's much more of a catastrophe to continue adding people at the current rate.
Seriously. There's 8+ billion humans on Earth and people are freaking out about not having enough people? WTF is this nonsense? The problem is capitalism and its reliance on infinite growth. We've had an easy time with this so far just because we have massively more people every single year. Increasing growth without increasing people is harder. But that's a capitalism problem that we've invented and could opt out of with a better system then unregulated runaway capitalism.
A better system like what?
he won't respond
its not about the amount of people. it is about the amount of productive vs dependant people all of a sudden
There's a multiplier by how productive those productive people are. A 1:1 ratio in 1950 isn't the same as in 2024. One person today is accomplishing the work of 5 in 1950 ([source](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/opinion/global/jobs-productivity-and-the-great-decoupling.html)). So if we didn't have such an awful unregulated mess of an economic model, 1 person could support 5x as many people as they did in the 1950s.
We're adding a billion people every 12 years. I think we'll be OK. We're not even slowed to a replacement rate yet.
A few questions: * Is par of the legend or plot missing? because I don't see any grey data points for 2020 and I also don't see any legend for flat navy. * Why is the title the conclusion? * Why not just present it as a percentage? Showing it as *old divided by not-old* is an unnecessary calculation step that does not help anyone.
Third bullet - agreed. Or better yet, divide 65+ by 15to64. That is the number of workers it takes to support the pensioners. So for example, Japan has 1.4 workers/pensioner instead of saying it has 100 workers for every 71 pensioners.
1) the legend colour is an error - should have been navy 2) title represents the conclusion which is that the democratic imbalance in these 3 countries are the worst 3) the metric is a widely accepted economic metric. It shows how many older dependents exist per capita of working age population
What a confusing graph…. Damn. But still fascinating to see countries collapse in our lifetime. Countries are so focused on money they forgot it’s getting too expensive to raise kids. I’m more and more convinced humans have no clue what are the consequences to their actions
Good chart however one thing is ignored in the data: which is culture. In India, for example, elders live with their children until they die. In USA, this is not the case. With another axis/data point -- Elders Living with Children -- I do not really see the point of this particular data set
Nope, how elders are supported is irrelevant. The fact that there would be more elders to support per young person is still valid.
Yea it's valid but it looks at the outcome in only one dimension. What it means to "support" a growing population is dependent on the country and culture. I'm sure in the west it's almost a burden to "support" the elders but in east Asia it's considered an honor. Just my opinion
Oh please, we are dependent on nonna’s Italian Sunday sauce
Canada is so ahead of the times.. so wise to just import all the young people from India by the hundreds of thousands a year to make up for it!
I know you’re joking, but Canada is actually in a pretty good state to handle the future demographic crisis because a) immigration is an option (unlike Japan) and b) the Canada Pension Plan has been well-run and has enough money for at least the first part of the demographic crunch.
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what revelance is 15 as a starting age? All these tax paying 15 year olds working in mines? The average age someone starts a steady job must be low twenties, right? These are all knowledge economies with most ppl going into higher education of some sort...
Some of the most sexist societies of all industrialized countries. Not surprising, but sad. They would all be wonderful places to live otherwise. Xenophobia is another element of course, but the native anti-natalist trends are purely a response to sexism.
One option to keep the average age young, WAR!
Data does not account for senior deaths from the pandemic.
More likely than not, retirement age will be pushed further and further back.
Incoming 75 years "young" retirement age.
How does this match health care systems
How do you read this graph?
How does Canada be that bad yet replace its population with millions of Indians every year?
Great, more Indian scam call centers
Guess I won’t retire in Como
Many of these countries could help alleviate the aging population problems by allowing for more immigration. Japan is known for its strict immigration policy.
You can buy yourself a few years breathing room, but *everyone* is having fewer kids. You can't avoid the problem, only shuffle it onto someone else - not really a long-term solution. Long-term, societies need to adapt to having fewer workers. More people will have to work in the sectors that are critical to society (healthcare, utilities, agriculture, EMS, etc.) and many less important roles (services, entertainment, etc.) will just go unfilled if they can't be automated.
I don’t think Japan wants other people who are not Asian in their country. To be honest they’ll accept us as Tourist , but not astheir resident. They rather maintain their culture and pride and just let their country collapse.
The numbers required to make any significant difference would be impractically large. Even countries with established traditions of welcoming immigrants would struggle. And these countries are traditionally insular. It wouldn't work.
> The numbers required to make any significant difference would be impractically large. The numbers of things required to replace the population that currently exists would be enough to support the population that currently exists.
Japan desperately needs a cultural shakeup and immigration. But it's my fear that they'll dig their heels in worse as their economic woes increase. They'll just double down on the same behaviors that got them in this mess. Not sure what needs to happen here.
What is Japan‘s issue? The population shrinks, prices get much cheaper and a few rural villages will die out but is that really such an issue…?
The issue is working much harder to support a large populace that cannot work. Japan already has issues with overwork.
The working hours of Japanese employees have only decreased the last 20 years… they work now less than Americans.
They are doomed, but that’s their own fault
These "woke westerners" who insist that Japan should accept immigrants after seeing what happened in Europe are truly disgusting...
What happened in Europe?
I know I’m going to be one day, but man I hate old people
Help.me underatand...I've always thought that Japan and South Korea had similar demographic and econ data (SK only partially behind in GDP per capita). Can someone explain why there's such a gap in the 2020 ages between the two?
Japan started industrializing two centuries ago .. South Korea started two generations ago
If anyone is interested, can they contribute to my economy? onlf
This is what happens when you do not allow immigrants.
Yes, we have about 50 years left until the indigenous people are replaced by black and brown people. Enjoy your last time lol
Who is “we” here?
Yeah, this really isn't the disaster people are predicting.
You know it's ironic because the Trump supporter want to make America great again. This graph clearly shows that immigration is the key to that. Yet his platform is vehemently against said immigration.
Is India still stuck in 1930s?
Yet every week you read that low birth rates are bad for economies. — Nonsense, of course.
They are. But we're at the start of tthe problem, its consequences will be seen in the future.
Tell me, why would the economy *not* be worse off if there are more retired people and less people working? Doesn't matter what economic system you have, there would still be a shortage of labour, no?
It reads 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64 will be older than 65…
How does automation factor in this problem? Wouldn’t less people be a benefit, considering that fewer jobs will be done by people in the future?