Demography
Pew reports that most Mexicans see life in the US as better than that in Mexico, and 33% of Mexicans would like to come to the US. Some 18% would do so even if it were illegal.
They identify these issues as “very big” problems in Mexico:
- crime — 81%
- the economy — 75%
- illegal drugs — 73%
- corruption — 68%
That is a lot of people interested in a life in the United States, given that Mexico has a population of 111 million, of whom 68 million are over 19.
- 33% = 22 million adults
- 18% = 12 million adults
The poll was of adults over 18 generally, while likely immigrants would be concentrated among young adults, but they would tend to create chain migration that can bring in children and older people.
(Image copyright FutureAtlas.com — usable with attribution and link)
A researcher has found that fertility may go up again after countries reach a high level of development.
The pattern has long been that fertility is declining pretty much everywhere, and in the developed world is has dropped below replacement levels — about 2.1 babies per woman — in many countries.
Lower fertility has many societal, economic, and environmental benefits, but rapid fertility drops drive rapid “aging” of a society, with rising ratios of seniors to workers.
According to Rob Stein in the Washington Post, Hans-Peter Kohler found that countries which reach a high quality of life often increase their birthrates. The threshold is a human development index (HDI) of 0.9, which reflects high levels of income, longevity, and education.
Kohler speculates that the key may be social structures and employment situations that enable women both to work and have children. This would explain, he notes, why Japan has not achieved this fertility rebound, given its high level of gender inequality.
Immigration could clearly play a factor, as most developed countries (but not Japan) have greatly increased immigration in recent decades, but Kohler says it cannot account for the full effect — and this would not explain why Canada has not had such a rebound.
Sociologist S. Philip Morgan casts some doubt on the development-driven theory, telling the Post that other factors could be at work, such as ideological changes. (These two ideas are not necessarily contradictory; development is an important driver of ideological change, according to theorists such as Ronald Inglehart.)
(Image courtesy yananine, Flickr)
The Washington Post reports on how little will there is to deal with the causes of Japan’s projected demographic collapse.
The article notes that the country may lose 70% of its workforce by 2050, at the same time it is faced with supporting a massive population of seniors.
The oncoming problems could be alleviated with immigration and a higher birth rate, but these are impeded by social malfunction:
- Japan’s strong sense of ethnic unity makes immigration a non-starter: “the issue is too politically toxic for extensive public discussion.”
- The low birth rate has a lot to do with how women are treated in the workforce and at home, but Japan seems to lack the will to do much to change this. The article reports renewed calls for “enlightened government intervention” on the issue, but those have gone and gone before.
Japan does not seem to face a disastrous implosion, like some socially malfunctioning societies of the past — see the Greenland Norse in Diamond’s Collapse — but it may choose diminishing strength, relevance, and perhaps prosperity over change.
See Futureatlas for more on this issue.
Image: usable with link and credit to Futureatlas.com
Der Spiegel reports that German women will be trying to delay birth for the next week, as a new law will make it much more lucrative to be a parent after December 31st.
The government will greatly increase subsidy payments to new parents — up to €1,800 ($2,380) a month for 14 months.
This is an attempt to stave off population decline, which according to the Federal Statistical Office could lower the population from 82 million people to 69 million by 2050. As in places such as Japan and Russia, Germans fear the consequences for the pension system, the labor force, and the nation’s innovation capabilities.
Columnist Fred Hiatt examines Japan’s demographic challenge — “sustained and inexorable population decline” — in the Washington Post.
As a result of this decline, the country’s population is projected to drop from 128 million now to 100 million in 2050. Crucially, the average age will be high and the elderly population large, with some 36 million people 65 and over.
A central issue is that women would like to have more children, but delay or avoid marriage and childbearing because Japanese society in general, and husbands in particular, leave women overburdened and without options.
In essence, Japan has given women too little equality, but enough freedom that they can back away from the system that they feel abuses them.
Hiatt writes:
In fact, robots and other ways to improve productivity are one of four possible routes to economic growth despite an aging population. The others would be making better use of women; immigration, which has increased slightly but remains unpopular in this ethnically cohesive country; and keeping the elderly working longer.
One result will be a continued flow of innovative ideas in robotics from the country.
Hiatt alludes to a fundamental question that Japan will pose: what is the meaning and purpose of economic growth? “What is happiness? Can we be happy without economic growth?” asks a Japanese demographer.
A lot of evidence suggests that growth may not be essential to well-being; income ceases to contribute substantially to happiness when development brings levels to about $10-15,000 thousand dollars a year in per capita income. Japan may test whether a society can remain satisfied without an upward trajectory.
More on the article at Future Uncertain.
The BBC has created an interactive map of world urbanization from 1955 to 2015, including all megacities of 5 million or more.
The 2005 map reveals that we are approaching the tipping point at which, for the first time ever, more people will live in cities than in rural areas.
By 2015, 52% of the world’s population (3.8 billion people) is projected to be living in cities.
Effects will be profound and numerous. For instance:
- Cultural flows will speed up as more people are exposed to cosmopolitan urban culture.
- Information will speed up, as cities tend to be far more wired.
- In future conflicts, controlling contries will mean controlling megacities, a difficult challenge that tends to nullify the high-tech advantages enjoyed by the US and a few other countries.
[Via Social Technologies]
Russia’s president Putin has announced plans to pay families monthly stipends if they have children, to counter one of the country’s most dire problems, population decline, now running at 700,000 people a year.
As the Washington Post explains,
If it continues, officials say today’s population of around 143 million will be down to 100 million by the middle of the century, translating into a weaker workforce and smaller army.