via Max Roser
The world population in 2018
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Tag Archives: demography
Is Asia Aging Prematurely?
China’s working-age population peaked in 2011 but its per capita income was just 20.7 per cent of the US level. Thailand was a little wealthier, at 28.9 per cent, when its working-age share peaked in 2013, but Vietnam was far poorer still, at 10.4 per cent of the US level, when it reached the same point a year later. Malaysia, Indonesia, India and the Philippines are projected to be somewhat better off when they reach peak working-age share, probably between 2020 and 2056, but still some way below the income levels reached in the west, as the third chart shows.
In February of this year, projections by Standard Chartered suggested that, by 2050, the likes of South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and China would have a higher share of pensioners in their population than most developed countries, depicted in the second chart [see below].
These are pretty sobering figures. Basically (East) Asia’s dependency ratios will quickly begin to look a lot more like what obtains in low-income as opposed to high and upper middle income states. And that means a stagnation or even decline in per capita income.
It will be interesting to see how these countries — most of which have historically been averse to immigration — will deal with this demographic challenge.
In addition to the obvious economic challenges, Asian countries will also have to figure out how to take care of the medical needs of an aging population that will likely be living longer.
Population trends and the potential for a demographic dividend in Africa
Bloom, Kuhn, and Prettner write:
We assess Africa’s prospects for enjoying a demographic dividend. While fertility rates and dependency ratios in Africa remain high, they have started to decline. According to UN projections, they will fall further in the coming decades such that by the mid-21st century the ratio of the working-age to dependent population will be greater than in Asia, Europe, and Northern America. This projection suggests Africa has considerable potential to enjoy a demographic dividend. Whether and when it actually materializes, and also its magnitude, hinges on policies and institutions in key realms that include macroeconomic management, human capital, trade, governance, and labor and capital markets. Given strong complementarities among these areas, coordinated policies will likely be most effective in generating the momentum needed to pull Africa’s economies out of a development trap.
Dependence Ratios Across Different Regions
Demography is Destiny (or why two heads are better than one)
Bradford DeLong has a fantastic blog post on the relationship between population size and economic growth and development. He writes:
In Kremer’s model, population will grow and eventually population will be high enough that research and development will proceed fast enough to push income per capita high enough to trigger the demographic transition and thus break the Malthusian proportional link between resources and technology on the one hand and population on the other. After that link is broken, economic growth will predominantly take the form not of Malthusian increases in population but rather Industrial Revolution and Modern Economic Growth increases in living standards and labor productivity.
The breakthrough to an Industrial Revolution, Modern Economic Growth, and our present prosperous global post-industrial economy is therefore baked into the cake. It is an all-but-inevitable event in human history produced by the simple fact that when it comes to generating useful ideas two heads are better than one: “the fundamental nonrivalry of technology as described by Paul Romer (1986)…”
DeLong then tests an alternative theory in which the economic takeoff of WENA countries after 1750 could have been a fluke, and concludes that the British industrial revolution at most saved the world 150 years — that is, “if you take the association between global populations and global economic growth back before the British Industrial Revolution seriously, as a causal relationship.”
The whole post is worth reading. The empirical bits are clear and easy to follow. See also here.
In my Political Economy of Development class I make sure that my students understand the relationship between demography and human development — (i) the impact of demography on state development; and (ii) the impact of state development on markets and economic growth and development. To that end I often use these three illustrations.
Up until the mid 1990s tiny Europe had more people than all of Africa. In the next 30 years Africa’s population will grow by about 800 million people. By 2050 the Continent is projected to have 2 billion people; and half of the children being born in the world will be African. There is no reason to believe that the African experience after these demographic changes will not follow established correlations between population size, state development, and technological change.
Chinese demography fact of the week
Howard French has a fantastic piece on Chinese demographic trends over at the Atlantic. Consider this:
China today boasts roughly five workers for every retiree. By 2040, this highly desirable ratio will have collapsed to about 1.6 to 1. From the start of this century to its midway point, the median age in China will go from under 30 to about 46, making China one of the older societies in the world. At the same time, the number of Chinese older than 65 is expected to rise from roughly 100 million in 2005 to more than 329 million in 2050—more than the combined populations of Germany, Japan, France, and Britain.
And here is a summary of global population projections for perspective:
kenopalo.com 