OPINION:
China shocked the world earlier this year with news that its population fell in 2022, For the first time since the Maoist famines, deaths outnumbered births and the headcount slipped by 850,000 to a mere 1.41 billion.
Analysts reactions range from a remembrance of how overpopulation fears in the West pressured Beijing into a one-child policy in 1979 to pronouncements that China’s economic decline has arrived.
Pundits lament that China will endure worker shortages, financial stress to support more older adults, and higher capital costs as resources are diverted to mitigate those challenges, but don’t wait for China’s collapse to eliminate it from the race for global supremacy.
The demographic clock is ticking for the West too. Birthrates are too low to sustain populations just about everywhere in advanced industrialized countries, and skilled workers are already scarce.
Western governments face the challenges — currently a crisis in the United Kingdom — of financing investment in infrastructure and technology, maintaining living standards for working populations and paying pensions without running up unsustainable deficits.
That’s the crust of the debt ceiling problem here. Through a similar contraption — the Stability and Growth Pact — the European Union intended to limit deficit spending and cap accumulated national debts, but those limits are routinely violated and raised there too.
Cookbook progressive remedies — from subsidies to have babies to government-financed and industry-mandated child care — haven’t and won’t halt this inexorable disappearance of humanity.
Panic about apocalyptic trends and alchemists solutions plague civilization because the people who like to alarm us — tunnel-visioned academics and pundits — are captive to thinking about the world 25 or 50 years hence in terms of the technologies and social arrangements now or aspirations that fit their political agendas.
Until the early 19th century, economic growth was largely determined by population growth — the productivity gained by the wheel, three-part plough, etc., were gradual and absorbed into paying for the monuments and follies of religion and autocracy — cathedrals, palaces and armies.
Only with the Age of Invention, Industrial Revolution and widespread development of modern capitalism and banking to hold money accountable for its uses did we see economic growth per capita take off and the emergence of a large empowered middle class — first in the West and now increasingly elsewhere.
At once, accelerating technological advancement and labor force growth determined economic growth, and nowadays we don’t need an ever-expanding or steady global population to live well and confront climate change, pandemics and the machinations of dictators.
The global headcount now stands at 8 billion and will peak above 10 billion late in this century. To raise the half of humanity living in poverty with the requisite goods and energy use and avert raising sea levels enough to sink Australia, two things appear certain: People have to work longer, and a smaller population consuming fewer resources would help.
The male retirement age, as defined by full government benefits in China, the U.S. and Europe, ranges between 60 and 67. Whenever a leader like French President Emmanuel Macron tries to raise it, all hell breaks loose. Progressives tell us how working longer may be fine for the Acela class doing corporate deals and sitting in front of computers, but cleaning ladies can’t be on their knees into their 70s.
The Japanese faced the problems of an aging population and declining workforce sooner and have sustained per-capita incomes by accepting immigrants from poorer nations, working smarter — redesigning physical tasks so that older workers could do them — and flexing their superior acumen with robotics. Those could beat the cleaning ladies’ arthritis too.
For the inexorably increasing share of workers in front of computer screens, problems with focus, memory and processing speed — some form of mental decline — caused by early-stage dementia is the challenge to working longer.
Until now, treatments have focused on removing plaque from the brain after dementia begins. But medical researchers are closing in on the equivalent of statins, which often cut off heart disease before it can develop, for the brain. We could take these medications in our 50s to keep us working at near top level well into our 70s.
In modern societies based on intellectual as opposed to physical labor, children cost too much to raise and educate. Once women start pursuing careersm those take on a priority beyond having three or even two children — one-child and childless marriages are becoming more prevalent.
Schools and universities simply take too long and use too many resources to educate the young. We need to bring forward vocational and professional training to start earlier in schools.
For example, law and medical training start earlier in the U.K. than here. For less demanding occupations, training and internships could be moved into the final two years of high school.
By extending the working life at each end, we can manage an aging population and prosper quite effectively.
Correction: An earlier version of this column incorrectly stated the population of China.
• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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