Monday, February 18, 2013

Demographic Cliff

The issue of World Population Bomb is gradually losing ground to other issues such as imploding national populations and aging workforce.

Of course we always find those who sounds extremely pessimistic. Jim Russell (Burgh Diaspora blog), for example, points out to several declining places (low fertility and no migration attraction). According to him, Southern New England Is Dying, Puerto Rico Is Dying, China Is DyingGermany Is DyingAmerica Is DyingSun Belt Counties DyingSilicon Valley Is DyingNew York City Is DyingLondon Is DyingSan Francisco Is Dying etc etc  ok. We understood, we're all dying anyway 

The McKinsey Global Institute has published a report on how aging populations will reduce global savings (15min audio summary). Other pessimist, Jonathan Last (author of 'What To Expect When No One's Expecting'), trumpets a coming demographic disaster:
"Forget the debt ceiling. Forget the fiscal cliff, the sequestration cliff and the entitlement cliff. Those are all just symptoms. What America really faces is a demographic cliff: The root cause of most of our problems is our declining fertility rate." 

The fact is no one is actually optimistic about current demographic trends. Nancy Folbre (MIT) has a more moderate opinion, although still far from being optimistic.

This post is getting too long for my  time constraint  standards, so I'll end it with this chart by Simon Hedlin and a coulpe of related links.