A dying breed

By mid-century, the world’s population will be 50 per cent higher than it is now, says Richard Ehrman, but the boom will come from developing countries, not Europe, and that’s very bad news indeed If demography is destiny, then, on the face of it, Britain should be feeling pretty smug. In late May the number of people in the UK finally passed the 60 million mark. By 2031, according to official projections released last month, there will be 67 million of us. While populations across most of the rest of Europe are stagnating, and many will soon be shrinking, ours is booming.

So why does this bountiful prospect make so many of us uneasy? A century ago such news would have been greeted with jubilation, as another sign of national virility and self-confidence. But today people do not quite know what to think. We know that immigration is the overwhelming cause of our population growth, followed by greater longevity. This makes people nervous. We also realise that the birth rate is below replacement level, and that we have got to find workers from somewhere to support us through our old age.

Less well known is that, around the globe, most countries are facing demographic upheaval, many on a scale far greater than we are. Yet this gets far less attention than, say, climate change, even though we can be far more certain that it will transform the way we live, and in ways that are much easier to predict.

During the last 50 years populations increased pretty much across the board in developed and undeveloped countries alike, albeit at different rates. Now the demographic plates are not just shifting, but diverging. Japan, Russia and many southern and eastern European countries face a sustained, outright fall in population over the next 50 years — something that has never happened before in any advanced economy. For most of the rest of Europe, the prospect is one of ageing stagnation, even after immigration is taken into account.

In stark contrast, across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America numbers are set to rocket. Eventually, perhaps in the second half of this century, population growth in the developing world, too, will moderate. Before that happens, however, demographic divergence between today’s developed and developing worlds will revolutionise the balance of political and economic power between regions and countries. According to the United Nations, the world’s population is increasing by 72 million a year, or one and a half million people a week, and stands at 6.5 billion overall. Of these, 1.2 billion live in the developed world and 5.3 billion in the developing world. By 2050 the UN expects the world’s population to have grown to 9.1 billion people, with nearly all the increase accounted for by the developing world. Populations are also set to get a lot older; in developed countries there are already more over-60s than under14s, and by 2050 the ratio will be 2:1.

Of course, projecting current trends into the future is always hazardous. But, right now, virtually no demographer expects fertility in today’s developed world to return to the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. For all sorts of reasons — contraception, the decline of marriage, increasing economic and social equality of the sexes, expense — Western women are having fewer babies than their mothers and far fewer than their grandmothers.

Barring anything cataclysmic, it seems safe to assume that in half a century’s time the world’s population will be 50 per cent higher, and the vast majority of these extra people will be Asians, Africans, Arabs and Latin Americans. None of them will be European. This is startling enough, but to get a better feel for what it will mean one has to look at individual national projections, some of which are truly amazing.

In Europe, a golden age is drawing to a close. For 50 years we have enjoyed an economic bonanza based not just on peace and technological progress, but also on remarkably favourable demographics. Thanks to the post-second-world-war baby boom, the number of young people coming into the job market in the 1970s and 1980s comfortably outnumbered those who were then reaching pension age.

This is now going into reverse, savagely so in some countries. Poland now has a population of 38.5 million; by 2050 the UN expects that to have fallen to under 32 million. Over the same period it expects Romania, Slovenia, Croatia and the Czech Republic to lose some 20 per cent of their populations, while Bulgaria is projected to lose a third.

In what Donald Rumsfeld termed old Europe, the numbers of Germans, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese and Greeks will probably all be in decline by 2025, even after immigration is taken into account. Thereafter, the population of the EU is projected to fall in total by some 20 million by 2050. Even more alarmingly, the European statistical office, Eurostat, expects that by 2050 the number of those of working age will have declined by over 50 million, while the numbers of those of pensionable age will have more than doubled.

France, like Britain, seems set to buck the trend of falling numbers. The UN expects its population to rise to about 63 million by 2050, while the French say it will be higher. But this does not mean that either country will escape the problems that our neighbours face. In France, as in Britain, the increase in population will only partly offset the impact of ageing. But it should at least ensure that British and French dependency ratios (the number of workers per pensioner) are a lot healthier, come mid-century, than most of the rest of Europe’s.

Our situation will certainly be a lot healthier than Russia’s, where life expectancy is decreasing and the birth rate is so low that by 2050 the population is expected to have fallen by over 30 million, or more than 20 per cent of its current total. To put it even more starkly, Russia is losing 2,000 people a day, and is expected to go on doing so for the next 45 years. In the other European countries of the former Soviet Union, the outlook is, if anything, even worse: in Ukraine the decline is expected to be over 40 per cent and in Belarus nearly 30 per cent.

In Asia the big loser will be Japan where the population has just started falling, two years ahead of expectations, and where it has been predicted that life expectancy will reach a staggering 92 years by mid-century. South Korea, too, can expect to see its population decline, though not as severely as Japan’s.

But while some countries’ populations get alarmingly older and smaller, others will be getting larger and younger. In India numbers are expected to increase by 55 per cent by 2050, taking its population to 1,600 million and overtaking China. In Brazil numbers are expected to increase by 35 per cent to over 250 million, and in Mexico by 30 per cent. In the Far East, Indonesia is predicted to see a rise of 30 per cent, and Vietnam 40 per cent.

On the southern shores of the Mediterranean, Algeria and Morocco are both expected to see population increases over the next 45 years of 50 per cent, and Egypt of 60 per cent, or 50 million extra people. Significantly, given its status as a candidate for EU membership, Turkey’s population is also projected to rise strongly over the same period — by over 30 million — or more than enough to make up the shortfall expected among the current EU 25. In fact, by the time Turkey joins the EU (if it does), it will probably be the Union’s biggest member.

In the Middle East numbers are expected not so much to increase as to rocket; in Yemen from 20 million today to a stunning 60 million in 2050. Iraq (if it still exists as a country) is expected to double from under 30 million now to over 60 million by 2050, as is Saudi Arabia, from 25 million to 50 million. Over the same period, Syria will also nearly double its population and Iran will increase by 50 per cent, to over 100 million — making it the equal of Russia.

In Africa the projected increases are even more startling. By 2020 — that is in just 15 years’ time — the UN expects the popula tion of sub-Saharan Africa to increase by nearly 300 million. By then there are projected to be 45 million more Nigerians, 30 million more Ethiopians, 22 million more Ugandans, 15 million more Kenyans and 11 million more Tanzanians. Even little-known Mali and Niger will produce eight million more citizens apiece — 50 per cent — plus increases on their current numbers.

As always, there will be exceptions on both sides of the divide. Australia and New Zealand will continue to grow and so, more surprisingly, will the US. Far from stagnating or falling, the UN projects that by 2050 the American population will increase by one third to 400 million. Some demographers think it could go even higher. The US fertility rate, at 2.07 on the latest figures, is virtually at replacement level. But the US, like Australia and New Zealand, also has the ability to absorb a far greater number of migrants than any European country.

And then there is China, now the world’s most populous nation, as well its most dynamic large economy. Chinese numbers are projected to continue to grow until the 2030s, but then begin to fall. This can be put down to its one-child policy, as can the pro jection that it is set to age far more quickly than most developing countries. By 2050 its average age is likely to be slightly higher than that of the US, though still below Europe’s. Demographers joke that China will grow old before it grows rich.

All of this is bound to have profound consequences for the world — economic, cultural and political. After 1945 traditional attitudes to population changed. If anything, having too many people came to be seen as a handicap, and not only in the Third World; the post-war baby boom led to worries about overpopulation in developed countries as well. In the 1970s official commissions concluded that a stable population offered the best prospects for growth and prosperity in both the US and the UK. A rash of alarmist books predicted that overpopulation would lead to starvation in developing countries and shortages of oil and other raw materials in the West.

Fortunately these predictions soon proved baseless. As the developed world reaped the economic benefits of the post-war baby boom and the developing world learnt to feed itself, worries about overpopulation faded. Now, with their populations stagnat ing and even shrinking, the outlook for the developed world, and especially Europe, is far less benign.

What hope is there for the federalist dream of the EU rivalling the US as a world superpower, when its population will not just age dramatically but also shrink, while America’s will continue to grow rapidly? Europe is set to become a backwater, not a powerhouse. Can Russia really hope to revive as a great power when it is losing its population at such an epic rate? How many of today’s G8 will still qualify for membership of the world’s elite economic club in 30 years’ time? (Britain certainly will not.) What will a society be like that has twice as many pensioners as children?

Further afield, what will be the impact on Asia when India overtakes China as the world’s most populous nation? Will the world’s ecosystem be able to support half as many people again, especially when so many more of them will own cars? Perhaps most crucially of all, how will the corrupt (and usually impoverished) dictatorships of the Middle East and Africa cope with such explosive increases in their populations? For those without oil the outlook, unless they can reform, is frightening. Even those blessed with oil revenues will have to liberalise their economies and regimes, or live with massive poverty, unemployment and disaffection.

For Europe and Japan, meanwhile, the biggest worry is that, as population growth goes into reverse, Malthus is about to be proved wrong again. He thought that a smaller population would be beneficial, because it should mean larger shares for fewer people. But in industrial societies, at least in peacetime, rising populations have usually been able to generate enough economic growth not just to maintain their standard of living, but to improve it.

Now, with life expectancy increasing dramatically, many countries find themselves facing the demographic double whammy of both an ageing and a falling population. The European Commission reckons that the decline in the EU workforce could reduce its growth rate from an already niggardly 2 per cent today to just over 1 per cent by 2050. In Japan, which is even further down the ageing spiral than Europe, the economy has been mired in deflation for over a decade.

Worst off of all will be ageing/shrinking countries which start out with a high tax burden and high level of public spending. As their tax bases contract and the demands on their public services increase, the fiscal policies and pension systems of many European countries will become unsustainable.

The view of Europe’s sclerotic leaders seems to be that population change is already ‘baked in the cake’ and that even talking about it is risky — especially with women voters, who do not want to be told to swap their briefcases for baking trays. Instead, politicians have tried to manage the problem, mainly by tinkering with pensions and easing immigration.

Later retirement, they say, is inevitable, and this is true. But when the number of workers is falling, pension reform can only postpone the problem, not solve it. Immigration, too, has its drawbacks as a solution to population change. On a large scale it is unpopular and hard to absorb; and not only do immigrants themselves grow old, but their birth rate tends rapidly to fall to that of their host country, necessitating ever more arrivals just to keep the situation steady. According to the think-tank Migrationwatch, Britain, which has a birth rate above the European norm, would need a million immigrants a year up to 2050 just to maintain our dependency ratio between workers and pensioners. This would mean doubling the population to 120 million!

Which brings us to the root cause of the problem and the issue politicians dare not discuss — our reluctance to have enough children to stabilise the population naturally. In the rich countries of the world people have never had it so good, and they have never had so few babies This is the paradox behind population decline. As we in the West become more comfortable, the basic human urge to reproduce, which has survived famine, pestilence and war, is faltering in the face of peace and prosperity.

Governments, it has to be said, have a poor track record when it comes to encouraging their citizens to have more children. Demographers call it pro-natalism, and it was first given a bad name by Mussolini and Hitler. After the war, Ceausescu, in a vain attempt to raise the Romanian population, forced all women under 40 to undergo monthly gynaecological examinations to check that they were not using contraception, and introduced a special tax on the childless.

But these unfortunate examples should not mean we have to abandon all hope of boosting Europe’s low birth rates. Even a slight increase could make a significant difference to the prospects of individual countries. Take Italy: at present there are 58 million Italians, and if they continue to reproduce at their current low rate there will be 20 per cent fewer of them — just 46 million — by 2050, even allowing for immigration. But the possible outcomes postulated by the UN’s demographers range from as low as 44 million to as high as 58 million, depending on just what birth rate Italy does manage over the next half century. Over two or three decades, small incremental changes in fertility rates could have a big impact.

Counterintuitively, countries with traditional, extended family structures, such as Italy and Spain, have among Europe’s lowest birth rates. In fact it is difficult to say just what would increase fertility across Europe, because circumstances vary so much between countries. The country that has done best recently is France. The French provide generous financial incentives for third and subsequent children. A gendarme inspector, who recently published a book on the Beatles, revealed that he had spent 12 of the last 18 years on paternity leave, thanks to his famille nombreuse. Many French people also put their recent increases in fertility down to their 35-hour working week, which has given both sexes more time for child-rearing, although their birth rate actually rose faster in the 1990s, before the law was introduced.

Sweden, which has the highest proportion of people in their twenties living independently, also enjoys comparatively high fertility. Overall, it seems that for young people to embark on parenthood they need to be financially independent, have a place of their own and, for mothers, the chance to work flexibly. It is a lesson that European governments forget at their peril.

How about Britain? The flexible labour market remains a plus, but for all Gordon Brown’s claims to be helping ‘hard-working’ families it has become much more difficult for young people to set up on their own. Not just house prices, but student debt, stamp duty and council tax have all risen sharply. Even the planning system has been changed to discourage the building of family houses, and the average age of first-time buyers has now risen to over 30. Little wonder that parenthood is not as popular as it once was.

Given all the variables, demographers are wary of projecting their figures beyond the next 50 years. But it has been calculated that if Europeans go on breeding at their present rate, by the next millennium there would be 50,000 of us left across the entire continent. More seriously, if the Italians and Germans continue to reproduce at their present rate, by the end of this century they could be just half their present number.

Before we all get too gloomy, though, we should not forget that, for most of the world, population change will have many good as well as bad effects. Around the globe people are living longer, more healthily and more happily. They are seeing fewer of their children die. In many places, particularly in Asia and Latin America, population growth is spurring economic development. But for Europe the options really are pretty stark. Either we rediscover the urge to reproduce, or reconcile ourselves to becoming poorer, weaker and less numerous while the rest of the world multiplies.

Richard Ehrman is a former chief leader writer of the Daily Telegraph and is working on a book about population change.