Basicly as soon as you cross what is now considered middle income status a countries birth rate has dropped below replacement. This has been true for both capitalism and communis, democracies and dictatorships and for every single culture in the world. So it is a good idea to help potential parents to have children, but lets not kid ourself, natural population growth is not going to happen once a country dropped below replacement for a few years.
The only way to transform a country with a naturally declining population into population growth is with migration.
That being said labour shortages are hardly an awfull problem to have. We come from decades of low wage growth, but massive capital gains in the richer countries. At the same time the economy grew. So this is a great oppurtunity to balance the system again. We also have all the great infrastructure built over decades, which we just have to maintain, and still develop great new technologies. So gdp per capita is propably not going to drop, but wages might rise. So it is possible that most Europeans benefit of this.
Also important to say it, but right now of all continets only Africa has a above replacement birth rate. China is well below it, South America is about at it and even India is there right now. Globally birth rates are dropping. Population growth is going down even in absolute numbers. In 1990 the global population grew by 92million people, whereas in 2021 it was only by 62million. Since people do live for some decades this is going to take some time, but in many countries populations will peak around 2050. It really depends on fixing Africa to get it down.
Oh and for anybody wondering. Global emissions per capita are relativly stable. This is going to help a lot to tackle climate change.
As a Japanese I feel so weird to see FP fall for this BS.
For context, Japan rejected immigration and advocated the same nonsense (look at the result). The good thing was that, until today, I haven’t seen western mainstream media fall for this nonsense.
Now FP is starting to follow the Japanese narrative. I wonder if it has anything to do with it being owned by a notorious Japanese newspaper (Nikkei). The Economist is also influenced by Nikkei, afaiu, and recently praised Japanese economy without considering negatives. It’s even weirder because the actual mood inside Japan on economy is still pessimistic.
Anti immigration is not a new postion for Western news media at all. Trump and many others got elected on these platforms.
The issue is that the baby boomers. A large generation born after WW2, when Europe as a whole still had higher birth rates, is retiring right about now. So there is a massive decline in the size of the workforce. So we already see unemployment falling in many regions and regions with high rate of employment are starting to have issues finding qualified personal. The right is anti immigration and lacks a proper answer for that and they need one to get donors. So that is the “solution”. It is also hardly new to Europe at least.
I disagree. Although right wings have been anti-immigration for long, centrists like FP did not spew the illusion that the birth rate can be improved without immigration.
Basicly as soon as you cross what is now considered middle income status a countries birth rate has dropped below replacement. This has been true for both capitalism and communis, democracies and dictatorships and for every single culture in the world. So it is a good idea to help potential parents to have children, but lets not kid ourself, natural population growth is not going to happen once a country dropped below replacement for a few years.
The only way to transform a country with a naturally declining population into population growth is with migration.
That being said labour shortages are hardly an awfull problem to have. We come from decades of low wage growth, but massive capital gains in the richer countries. At the same time the economy grew. So this is a great oppurtunity to balance the system again. We also have all the great infrastructure built over decades, which we just have to maintain, and still develop great new technologies. So gdp per capita is propably not going to drop, but wages might rise. So it is possible that most Europeans benefit of this.
Also important to say it, but right now of all continets only Africa has a above replacement birth rate. China is well below it, South America is about at it and even India is there right now. Globally birth rates are dropping. Population growth is going down even in absolute numbers. In 1990 the global population grew by 92million people, whereas in 2021 it was only by 62million. Since people do live for some decades this is going to take some time, but in many countries populations will peak around 2050. It really depends on fixing Africa to get it down.
Oh and for anybody wondering. Global emissions per capita are relativly stable. This is going to help a lot to tackle climate change.
As a Japanese I feel so weird to see FP fall for this BS.
For context, Japan rejected immigration and advocated the same nonsense (look at the result). The good thing was that, until today, I haven’t seen western mainstream media fall for this nonsense.
Now FP is starting to follow the Japanese narrative. I wonder if it has anything to do with it being owned by a notorious Japanese newspaper (Nikkei). The Economist is also influenced by Nikkei, afaiu, and recently praised Japanese economy without considering negatives. It’s even weirder because the actual mood inside Japan on economy is still pessimistic.
Anti immigration is not a new postion for Western news media at all. Trump and many others got elected on these platforms.
The issue is that the baby boomers. A large generation born after WW2, when Europe as a whole still had higher birth rates, is retiring right about now. So there is a massive decline in the size of the workforce. So we already see unemployment falling in many regions and regions with high rate of employment are starting to have issues finding qualified personal. The right is anti immigration and lacks a proper answer for that and they need one to get donors. So that is the “solution”. It is also hardly new to Europe at least.
I disagree. Although right wings have been anti-immigration for long, centrists like FP did not spew the illusion that the birth rate can be improved without immigration.