Population Decline: Crisis or Opportunity?

this week on the agenda population decline is a falling birth rate of financial disaster in the making or a real opportunity to save the [Music] planet the world's population stands at just over 8 billion but while we used to worry about the world becoming too crowded global fertility rates have fallen for the first time since the black death in The 14th Century by 2050 over 3ars of countries will not have high enough fertility rates to sustain population size over time this will increase to 97% of countries by 2100 now nearly all demographers anticipate that we shall reach Peak population this century and that has big implications for the global economy with fewer people of working age and a huge strain on Health Care Systems especially as it comes as people are living longer there were 23,000 cenarius in 1950 compared to 935,000 in 2024 the global number of people over a 100 years old could reach more than 25 million people by 2100 so how will these future population Trends Rec configure the global economy society and the international balance of power joining me now to consider that are Peter elwin director of fixed income and head of food and land use program at Planet tracker and Steph J Shaw demographer and director of the documentary birth Gap thank you both for for coming on the agenda um Peter let me start with you because there are some um parts of the world where um the population is about to or is already shrinking what's going on well it's a good question I mean birth rates are falling and Longevity is increasing so the demographic pyramid that we've been so used to talking about we have more young people than old people uh already on a global basis is essentially a rectangle so we've no longer got a majority of young people we're now pretty much sort of equal in many countries and the trend is that that will continue so ultimately we'll end up with inverted pyramid with more old people than young people and and I think one of the things that's really interesting obviously you know I'm very involved in the sort of climate nature process and you know this is yet another example of a trend that we've known about for really quite a long time much like the climate and nature crisis and we've really done very little to address this certainly pretty well nothing on a global basis nothing to address the underlying causes I'm sure we'll talk about politics this is the year of Elections as many people have said but I think as a species we're really very bad at dealing with the longer term systemic problems that we Face we will talk about economic models and societal Frameworks and where they where they are how they're adapting in a moment but but Stephen I want to talk to you because for your film Birth Gap you traveled the world to discuss this issue what did you discover yeah the reason I traveled was I couldn't accept that this was all being caused by local factors I couldn't accept that what was happening in Japan was due to work life balance while in Italy it was due to you know High youth unemployment to me there was a an obvious the data was screaming out effectively saying there is a common theme here and yet no one was looking for that the common theme is rocketing childlessness across every single one of these countries if you look at mothers going back to 1970 in Japan 1980 in the US 1970 in the UK mothers today are having the same size a family as they were decades ago the only thing that's changed is delay Parenthood people I think mostly deferring having a family and that connects all of these dots so whilst we try to look at policies that may work the reality is many people are simply running out of time and that that's causing this teal Spin and it is a teal spin no Count's ever been known to come out of this downward spiral let's borrow a little bit further in into your invest investigation and the factors that that you investigated well all the factors can wash out because you can find some possible cause that correlates um indeed these are often spurious non-causal linkages that we find and then you look at another country you I mean take Germany education and Germany is free education is blamed as being part of the problem for this in South Korea and Japan you know the taking long maternity paternity leave is is blamed in Japan where where I'm where I'm based but you look at Denmark and people in Denmark get one year off so the reality again comes down to data and the trends and one other fact I I should put on the table from large scale surveys uh and my own research somewhere between 90 and 95% of women we've got so much data in women I'm sure it's men too mostly 90 to 95% of women either have a child or want a child during their fertile years so the vast majority people are in some way trying to I think juggle their lives to get on with the education that we've as a society told them to to study hard and get as far along that path as you can and then get established in your career those are all great things and I wouldn't want to us going back in those things but then someone turns 30 32 and they might not they might not have a partner or they might go through a breakup or their partner might not be in the same page this is what's happening it's what I call unplanned childlessness and I've seen the tragedy as well I've seen people who uh in front of the camera for the first time I think talking to me shed tears uh men and women because they had had a dream of having a family and I think the interesting thing on that Stephen is you know one of the things that we we still don't really know but there are clearly linkages been freeding for example plastic pollution and the rise of microplastics which we're finding sort of you know throughout uh Human Society including in fetuses um there's the rise of of other forms of pollution as well we've got a great deal of medicines for example that are ending up flowing through the human body and ending up in our water courses and therefore in the sort of the the food chain on which we depend um you know and and the list goes on so I think as a species we are polluting our environment in ways that we really don't understand what the consequences are there's evidence for example that male fertility is beginning to decline sperm counts are are declining so again going back to your point if child sort of Po poal child starting a child is delayed and then you have a combination of both female biology making eggs less less potentially sort of survivable and male fertility falling off as well so sperm cancer falling then you get a you get a potential situation where people as you say want children but are not able to conceive and and I think all of these uh influences are are combining uh to the extent that essentially we are living in yet another expression of the crisis that we've generated by polluting our planet in essence so let's talk a little bit about what impact all this is is going to have I mean Stephen people make the world go around we're we're the workers we're the teachers we're the soldiers we're the caregivers so how exactly will an older and smaller population affect the workforce yes and some people I I think perhaps naturally assume that you know shrinking populations just mean there's fewer people but it's it's not like that it might be like that in a 100 200 years from now but the journey from where we are now what we're going to have to go through through this what I call inverted world where there are as we've said to so many more old people to support and that affects everybody when you go to you know a doctor looking for an appointment and there's simply so many more older people relative to the younger people to try and get an appointment it's not just older people are going to suffer here I think the other point as well is in terms of shrinkage of talent and cities um people like living on top of each other generally it seems to be that we we like urbanization everywhere and I think what will happen as a younger more affluent people will migrate to cities and towns are vibrant or indeed countries that are vibrant and what will be left behind is a patchwork quilt of decaying cities and towns and Villages where there's going to be frankly a lot of very lonely people I've seen it I've interviewed some of these people already in ryal Japan and you see it in their eyes they're just decimated by the the collapse of community we're losing Community here as well as all the financial implications of that so huge financial implications that loss of community maybe a future with low fertility population aging and eventual depopulation which going to lead to all those things um Peter how is that going to increase pressure on on already squeezed Health Systems and is anything being done anywhere to mitigate that well well I I think you know Steven has really sort of outlined the the pressure on the health systems very clearly so for example in the UK you know we already face Health System where we've had underinvestment for a couple of decades uh and now we're reaping the consequences of that and that's being combined with an aging population and of course a shrinking Workforce or a shrinking taxpayer base um and I think you know at the moment there are roughly five working people for every over 65 year old by 2100 there'll be two so your sort of working population relative to old people is is going to more than half over the course of the next 20 75 years uh and that's a dramatic shrinkage in the sort of the the population that will be able to actually do the work provide the taxes to sort of support older people so clearly one of the things that has to happen is is you know people can't can't retire at same age they have to continue working to support themselves um the other obvious fact is sort of stepen was mentioning is you know you get you get literally empty Villages you'll get empty factories we've re we've reached Peak five year olds already so the writing is on the wall for elementary schools and uh and for for elementary school teachers you there will literally be far fewer uh five to 10 year olds over the next 10 years than there have been in the past so these sort of systemic shifts are all uh observable and predictable I think right at the moment there is really essentially nothing being done about that none of the politicians want to talk about tax burden of old age care none of the politicians want to talk about the costs of of solving these problems and the societal changes that will come unfortunately we we're talking about the the overall Global Trends but um Stephen it is different from from place to place isn't it you know in some regions there is a young and growing population so where is there still a baby boom and and how do you think that might be a resource for the global economy well the reality is that boom as you call it is only happening in subsanar Africa everywhere where else now is effectively below replacement level and falling rapidly even many states within India have birth rates as low as parts of Europe um so subser Africa does have a higher birth rate it's above what we call replacement level but even there the average woman in South Saran Africa is having one f your child every 15 years so by around 2050 2060 uh Africa will be in the same position the rest of the world is in so we're all in the same path but there will be growth in Africa I mean population Trends tell you where growth is going to be if I were a younger person to be honest with you I'd be thinking spending time there because you know it's going to be booming I guess you know you there's two sides to that coin there's risks with with with growth and who knows what Africa will actually turn out to be but I I'm confident that Africa has a bright future from population Dynamics point of view and perhaps then we'll see more migration to to other countries that are have those shrinking um workforces now Peter in 2023 China um joined that that list of countries where the population is falling what message do you think that sends to the world well I think that's a really interesting uh you know statistic as as stevenh was alluding to to India so China and India have just sort of crossed paths demographically China is now on path to have a shrinking population their replacement rate is uh is lower than Japan's um and sort of just over one child per woman whereas India as Steve mentioned at the moment is still sort of growing but on a path to Plateau um Japan is obviously the sort of the poster child of an aging population and the impact that that has had china illustrates very strongly the effect that uh you know one child policy has had and the interesting thing is that started in I think it was 79 stopped in about 2015 but the effect is still continuing culturally there's been a shift away from having sort of uh lot lots of people having lots of children there are now uh many more people not having children uh in China and again I think it's just an illustration of the fact that we make decisions to do things or not to do things um often not to do things because they're easy and those decisions build up over time so the effect that we're seeing playing out in China is the effect of decisions made um you know 20 30 40 years ago that are now playing out the effects were always obvious but going back to the point I was making earlier uh they weren't dealt with uh at the time and now the consequences are being suffered so I think China really is going to be a poster child uh for the trends that are coming down the track for many other countries Stephen let me bring you in on this because even as the world gets older we have the same economic models we have the same same societal social safety nets what are the consequences of of failing to adapt and rethink well you're absolutely right and I will add to that you know when I did my MBA you know 30 years ago all you were Tau about was growth growth models and I believe it's the same today growth is going to become a thing of the past it's going to be about managed decline you know which companies Investments governments Nations cities these towns can best manage the decline they're going through there'll be opportunities in this for some I'm sure but the reality is the models that have worked in the past successively have all in some way directly or indirectly benefited from increasing populations whether we like increasing populations or not the world as it is today and you can go through almost every ideology across the planet it's not specific to the west or the East we've all benefited economic from growth those days are over and we need to start thinking rapidly about how to move into this new era of manag decline Peter you've already said it we're in the middle of the biggest election year in in history and I'm wondering whether a more ever green agenda is actually a vote winner or if anyone is prioritizing the longevity economy the longevity economy the sort of concept that we need to focus on sort of you know doing old age well um I think that's very important I I think for me the the green sort of agenda and a greening of the economy is actually essential for the longevity economy um you know if you think about what will happen if we don't address the climate crisis for example we'll end up with significant extreme heat days that's very bad for old people it's pretty bad for young people as well but it tends to get off older people first uh we'll face rising sea levels we'll face all sorts of food system crisis and so on and so forth so I think to really sort of Empower ourselves and equip ourselves for a world in which there are many more older people and fewer younger ones we actually need to address the climate crisis and the nature crisis now and use that as the base for really trying to design a world in which we're focused on sort of Equitable growth of well-being rather than simple growth of consumption and I think the other risk is that people often say say oh well at the moment the problem with the planet is there are too many people if we had fewer people the planet would be better off and so would the rest of humanity the ones that remain as it were um that's that's a pretty sort of superficial analysis because the challenge is not really how many people there are but how they behave and I think the the risk is that we have a shrinking population but a growing number of older people who continue consuming resources uh well beyond the planet's boundaries and actually what we really need to do is reconfigure the economy so that we are all uh increasing in well-being along the lines of a longevity economy we're growing old well but we're also doing so within planetary boundaries in a way which is ultimately sustainable Peter win Steven J Shaw thank you both very much pleasure thank you still to come here on the agenda building resilience how the world can prepare for an older smaller population [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome back to the agenda before the break we heard about the economic downsides of a falling and aging population but might there be upside especially when it comes to the Earth's natural resources with me now a Hanan Neri longevity economy lead at the world economic forum and Dr Jennifer schuber demographics expert and author of the book 8 billion in counting how sex death and migration shape our world thank you both of you um for for coming on the agenda H I'm going to start with you you know fewer babies means fuel workers and consumers driving growth where do you see the upside for for Global ecosystems um the way the way I look at this topic to be totally honest is as a way of reframing the way we've done things in the past and to rethink how things will look going forward so as we're talking about people living these longer lives these potentially 100-year lives what we like to do is to help people reframe it as something different to what we've known before which is this idea of a three-stage life which is you go to school you work and then you retire um that that kind of part of life is from a previous time zone at this point going forward we need to think about a multi-stage life and what that means is you know you go to school and then you'll go to work and perhaps you'll take some time off and perhaps it's to have a baby perhaps it's to upskill perhaps you don't mean it you've turned into a caregiver and then you go back into work um so the way that we like to think about this longer life is it necessarily is it is it um what it looks like is just this is happening people are living longer how are we going to adapt to it how are workers going to adapt to it how are individuals going to adapt to it and how can um the public sector adapt to it so you're thinking of it there really is a real shift in mindset that that that needs needs to happen I mean compl mindset exactly I mean I mean Jennifer why do you think that a future with few people is maybe an opportunity rather than a big challenge well it's a challenge if we decide to act like we're still living in another world as Hala said and it's an opportunity if we do open our minds to that as a student of population history when you look back even to very recent times you see that policy makers and and those in power worked so hard to get fertility rates down and to stop population growth um from happening so when their wishes came fulfilled now all of a sudden they are panicked about um wanting to raise that and I think there that is a mindset issue and it's also a structural issue it's a mindset issue in the sense that they're never satisfied and I always think of it like Goldilocks with her bowl of porridge you know it takes her a minute before she gets there it's too hot and then it's too cold and I think right now we've gone from too hot to too cold and not really understanding that there may not be such a thing as just right we're chasing some elusive sweet spot that you're never going to actually get cuz it's just theoretical and that sweet spot tends to be this replacement level fertility rate um it's also a structural issue because if we leave all of our structures exactly as they looked when we were in an era of what seemed to be infinite population growth then of course there will be challenges so we have to adjust what about um gender um equality um Jennifer I I'm I'm wondering if we could maybe interpret lower birth rates as as a signal of an increase in in that well it depends on what level because I for a long time thought a lot like you did and in the last two years I've I've started to change my thinking so for the most part when we think about the shift from very high fertility rates five six seven children per woman to low replacement level or just under replacement level we know that that's because women have increasing opportunities to get work outside the home that they are better educated and that they have more rights and and freely available Family Planning and so on but when we're starting to see these shifts to very low fertility rates and and this we're thinking about one child per woman on average or in South Korea you know 6 or 7 in Soul it's 0.55 children born per woman I actually wonder if that is not an indicator of a lack of progress in gender equality and in fact South Korean feminists will tell you that they are increasingly opting out of this system of marriage and the Norms that are reflected all throughout society that do not favor women and allow them um flexibility allow them that kind of equality so it's an answer that is both yes and no um there are three main factors that we look at which we call the three kind of strikes against women one women live longer than men we live on average five years longer so we have to save over a longer period of time but uh we're the main caregivers it's approximately 70% caregivers are women around the world and that requires us to leave the workforce not make and also not have that retirement money and the third big thing is um we make less money than men the world economic Forum put out its Global Gender Gap report yesterday which is a big favorite of mine and once again we have about 134 years to reach parity that's three years longer than last year that's five generations away um so these are the issues I think about when I think about gender equity and people living a longer time and what we need to do to ensure that women have equal access as to what they need for a longer life as well I think it's a critical issue for everyone to consider going forward so considering concerns around climate change and depleting resources around the world increasing food insecurity I I wonder if population decline might actually make it easier to address environmental issues I don't think we should assume that that's what will happen I think that um when we look at what is causing climate change we look at the tremendous use that we have of Natural Resources Rising standards of living are in there and that is a global goal so financially we want the world to have Rising standards of living and if we accomplish that goal for those six billion people that right now are not in the poorest and not in the richest countries then we're actually going to see a much bigger footprint on the planet in the future and it'll be those countries that are the richest that are shrinking but that aren't changing any of their consumption habits of course as we know and I'm one of them and so it won't this automatic process I think it's really dangerous for us to assume that it will be um instead we need to think about how do we simultaneously meet our goal of raising up those that are in the middle and at the bottom and who've barely seen any budging there um and those at the bottom in fact um economically also have the fastest growing populations and they will throughout the rest of this Century so the same challenges of the past will continue um in the near future so Hala in terms of raising people up like that um if the population is going to be older and smaller how how do we may maybe need to rethink economic models sure that's a great question um I think we need to look at it from each kind of stakeholder to be honest I think we think about what the private sector has to do with this and what the public sector has to do with this um for the public sector I think they need to take a really long hard look at the way we've kind of structured things in the past both from well in certain countries from A healthare standpoint what that looks like and how to keep that solvent and also from a pension retirement standpoint um for private sector I think we need to expand what we think of as um what a worker looks like going forward um I think many older people are going to continue wanting to work either because they will need to work for more money or because they want the community aspect of it they enjoy being engaged and some people can't imagine having 25 years of retirement and would like to still be engaged so I'm I think it's back to that mindset shift again of what we need to think about regarding this issue going forward and I think the mindset shift crosses every single line and what I would love to happen is if this topic became as important or as critical as climate change which also affects everyone demography affects everyone climate change affects everyone but we don't seem to be as prepared for it as we could be um so that would be my my big ask is if this was elevated to the topics that's on Election debates and uh the front page of the paper to be honest so that mindset shift so that mindset shift is really important but that's that's that's going to cost money so so Jennifer I'm I'm thinking what we're talking about here is that a real need to invest more in a resilient future world in which case what would you like to see governments doing I would first like to see them stop just trying to raise fertility rates right now that has been basically the only approach that low fertility quick rapidly aging countries around the world have had they just say oh no how can we stop this from happening well demography is really just math it's already happening and even if those rates go up now this is the issue that we will face for the rest of my life certainly so they need to stop focusing on that and instead they need to start thinking about um reforms like more flexibility in the workplace I think this has come out with what Hala has said as a thread throughout everything she said flexibility in our own mindsets of course which the government cannot change our own mindsets but they can enable those mindsets still in a lot of countries there's mandatory retirement there's tremendous age discrimination so older workers even if they want to work they cannot come on board we also even have um it doesn't sound like a very sexy topic but like housing reforms matter so I I travel all around the US and try to think about resilience for aging and zoning laws will come up some townships uh will not allow multigenerational housing well it's hard to have resilience it's hard to have a solid care structure in place if you don't have those types of um zoning laws so we can think all the way down to the local level about resilience and it's not all done at the national level Jennifer schuba haneri thank you both so very much thank you thank you you can watch every episode of the agenda in full on cgtn Europe's YouTube channel and for exclusive extra content from me my guests and the rest of the team don't forget to check out at the agenda show on Tik Tok coming up on a future agenda shooting for the moon as chang6 returns to earth we'll examine the future of Luna exploration but for now for me Juliet man and from all the agenda team here in London goodbye [Music]

Channel: CGTN Europe

Views: 6,376

Keywords: cgtn europe, population, aging, gender equality, birth rate, birth gap, natural resources., fertility rate, Childless, Jennifer Sciubba, world economic forum, Longevity Economy, demographics

Id: K7MYKZsUe1s

Length: 29min 40sec (1780 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 22 2024