‘Birth Dearth’ Will Strangle Economies

The recent announcement that the earth is now home to more than 7 million people sparked new concerns about overpopulation. Yet the real problem ahead is that there are not enough young people, according to a new report.

“To be sure, continued population increases, particularly in very poor countries, do threaten the world economy and environment — not to mention these countries’ own people,” writes Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeorgraphy.com and an adjunct fellow of the Legatum Institute in London.

“But overall the biggest demographic problem stems not from too many people but from too few babies.”

He adds: “This is no longer just a phenomenon in advanced countries. The global ‘birth dearth’ has spread to developing nations as well.”

Of the 59 nations that have fertility rates under 2.1 births per woman — the number needed to maintain population levels — nearly one-third are now developing countries, including Brazil, China and Iran, Kotkin notes.

As a result, these countries during the next two or three decades will have to care for growing numbers of the elderly and suffer from labor shortages.

Adults over the age of 65 already make up more than 20 percent of the population in Japan and much of Europe, including Spain, Portugal, Greece, Germany, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe, and their numbers could double by 2030. (In the U.S., the figure is 15 percent.)

“By 2030 the weight of an aging population will strangle what’s left of these economies,” according to Kotkin, author of “The City: A Global History” and “The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.” His article on the birth dearth appeared at NewGeography.com and at Forbes.com.

Germany, Japan, Italy, and Portugal, for example, will have just two workers for every retiree. The U.S. will have three. Shrinking labor pools and an aging population will also afflict South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Fueling the growing birth dearth is the rise of childlessness. In increasing proportions, young women in countries as diverse as Japan and Italy are claiming that they do not intend to have even one child. In Japan today, one-third of women in their 30s are unmarried and childless.

Among the factors likely responsible for the childlessness phenomenon are urbanization, high housing prices, rising employment prospects for women, and secularization of society, according to Kotkin, who observes:

“If this trend gains momentum, we may yet witness one of the greatest demographic revolutions in human history. As larger portions of the population eschew marriage and children, today’s projections of old age dependency ratios may end up being wildly understated.”