Death-Spiral Demographics?

 

Yesterday evening I took some time to pore over the National Statistics Office's Demographic Review for 2005, dated 17th January 2007. Most of this blog's readers would have already read the Times' report on the subject two days ago, which highlighted some facts from the document but provided little by way of analysis.

The Review is, of course, a goldmine of information and it certainly deserves a great deal more attention than it has received. For example, few have pointed out that the number of births we had in 2005, even if it were to remain stable in future (as a result of us somehow raising our total fertility rate to the replacement level, which is 2.1 per woman), would by itself still reduce the population by almost a quarter over the course of a single lifetime. If, however, the number of births were to continue declining by just under 1% per annum (which is fairly consistent with the present 1.37 total fertility rate and which is less than the 2% per annum decline experienced since the early 1990s) the population might be halved over the same period. The NSO's projections are consistent with this, although they stop at 2050, by which time the population of under 40s would have already fallen by around 41%. Were the fertility rate itself to decline any further, then even this figure could be optimistic. An extension of our life-expectancy beyond the present levels, and even the application of the existing life-expectancy to our present population, would on the other hand hide a big part of this decline for a while in terms of total population figures but would not change the basic underlying reality. In fact, in terms of the total population, the NSO's projected decline by 2050 is of 'only' 19% - or around 76,000 people.

Of course, demography is not destiny. The decline in the fertility rate may be reversed if the Government makes that a specific goal. This has happened already in Scandinavia, for example, where there has been a modest recovery and in France, where policies aimed at sustaining the birth rate have been in place for decades and have borne fruit. The US has sustained its birth rate mostly thanks to its growing Hispanic minority and to its higher level of prosperity rather than through any specific government programmes. I am, indeed, quite confident that our indigenous population will not, in fact, collapse during my lifetime or that of the next generation for the simple reason that at some point we'll probably wake up and develop a more family-friendly society. As with most problems, however, the later we leave it the harder it will be to solve.