If you want to know what countries are already headed for disaster and what countries still have time to change (if they have the courage), you could focus on the declining birth rates in the industrialized world. I saw a story today about persisent deflation in China, well it’s just one symptom of a long economic decine. It’s impossible to have a growing economy when workers and consumers are BOTH declining in numbers. It’s just the gravity caused by the math of demographics. That gravity is declining birth rates. It was caused by industrialization in the last century as humanity moved away from rural agricultural life to jobs in the big city! Children became a liability rather an asset, not a judgement, just a fact. I refer you the “World is Just the Beginning” by Peter Zeihan (Harper Business, 2022) for a scholarly discussion of this topic and the other major forces that will shape the coming decades.
I don’t have a staff of researchers, so I turned to ChatGPT for factual support and have listed the sources it used (Addendum 1) to create the charts below and try to see into the future. For sustained economic growth, a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 births per woman is considered the replacement level needed to maintain a stable population in the absence of immigration. However 1.7 is seen as a point of no return. This chart reorders the top 12 economies in the world according to their declining birthrates. As you can see, many industrialized nations have already fallen below this 1.7 threshold. Only India is expected to remain about this for the next 20 years.
Over the next 20 years, the entire industrialized world is projected to hit this point of no return birthrate of 1.70 and the economic, political and I would venture international conflict pressures will be enormous. Much of the world is looking to China as the great consumer market waiting to be tapped. But, there are already signs that it may be tapped out, and a few people are starting to figure out why. In the US, downward pressure from the declining global GDP cause by this decline will be ignored as long as possible by politicians. Each party will blame the other for the decline and the yo-yo election cycles will likely continue until the foolishness of blaming our immigrants for our decline is understood by the general public. Immagration is the only way economic growth can be sustained if native birthrates are declining.
In Europe, Italy is the next shoe to drop, with a native population in decline and anti immigration policies on the rise. When Russia was circling the economic drain caused by an aging, declining workforce and a corrupt government, Putin sought growth by conquering Ukraine. No one wants to immigrate into Russia, so why not conquere a country and just take their population and resources? Japan, Korea and other ethnically impenatrable cultures have an almost insurmountable problem with population decline. Look for China to follow the Putin playbook with Taiwan.
Here in the good old US, the melting pot of immigrants, we are about the toss away the only life raft that will keep the US afloat as our birthrates hit the tipping point into decline. Deporting millions and slowing immigration is hardly a step in the right direction. In the Western and industrialized world, immigration from other countries could at least slow the decline while adjustments can be made. India will shine for a while because of their higher current birthrates and slower decline, but even that will wane in the next 20 years.
Now the debt elephant hiding in the corner is starting rear its trunk. The truth is, massive accumulated global debt will never be repaid by the fantasy called “projected growth.” The painful reversion down to actual asset values will be inescapable. If you think AI will solve this problem, you are missing the fact the while it can replace some needed workers, AI is not a marketable consumer (it is too smart for a phony sales pitch). Economies need BOTH to grow. Again, if the sources listed below used by ChatGPT are accurate, we are in for a protracted period of slowing growth, based just on the one factor of declining birthrates. (I’ve done other models factoring in the impact of isolationism, tarriffs/ trade wars and global climate change. The outlook is even worse for countries that depend on trade for their survival.) If a rising tide lifts all boats, what happens with the tide goes out? The declining birthrate is that tide.
Summary of Key Outcomes
1. Slower Economic Growth: Aging populations combined with declining birthrates in advanced economies make sustained growth in the next 20 years mathematically impossibe for the world as a whole, though some counties will feel it soon than other. Emerging economies like India will fare better in the short term due to their younger populations. Watch out for China, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Germany to feel the impact very soon. Only immigration can mitigate the problem quickly.
2. Increased Fiscal Pressures: Governments will face mounting costs for pensions and healthcare as dependency ratios rise and incresing the debt burden will become impossible. Lenders will see the deflation of asset prices and declining likelyhood of repayment and demand higher rates.
3. Policy Shifts: Immigration policies, automation, and workforce participation initiatives will become central to mitigating these challenges. However, geopolitical tensions, racial biases and anti-immigration sentiment will get in the way.
4. Global Economic Balance: Emerging economies with stable birthrates may gain more influence in the global economy as labor shortages intensify in developed countries. Countries that work with them will reap the benefits.
We are facing a crisis that will not feel like a tsunami destroying all the ships in the harbor, but a perpetual falling tide that leave all ships just as useless sitting miles from the shoreline. Immigrating can keep moving the boats closer to the water and keep them from starving in countries that don’t have the resources to sustain their populations. Just a thought incase some still care about humanity as a whole.
I invite smarter people and those with more resouces to challenge these assumtions, conclusions and provide better data. I’m just trying to get people at leastalking about something that will be not felt like tsumami destroying a harbor but more like a perpetual falling tide that leaves all boats just as useless, on dry ground miles from the water.
Addendum 1
Sources
1. United Nations Population Division – Birth rate and demographic trends.
2. OECD Reports – Economic projections and workforce analyses.
3. International Monetary Fund (IMF) – GDP projections for aging economies.
4. World Economic Forum – Insights into workforce dynamics and policy responses.
5. Brookings Institution – Analysis of global demographic shifts and economic impacts.
6. Financial Times – Articles on aging populations and economic challenges.
7. The Economist – Fertility rates and long-term economic impacts.
8. Harvard Business Review – Workforce innovation in response to demographic changes.
9. Pew Research Center – Public opinion on immigration and workforce dynamics.
10. Stratfor (Worldview) – Geopolitical implications of demographic changes.
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