Population Pyramids, Examples of Demographic Collapse, Continued:
The idea of the math in the second half of the previous post was merely an attempt to show how quickly your population will drop with a totally typical birthrate in an industrialised nation. In this post, we are going to discuss actual examples, in many cases said examples are worse than our hypothetical. Several nations have already gone through multiple generations of sub 1.5 birthrates and their G0 generations are getting ready to age out, Japan being the prime example, meaning that each generation from this point forward, the population will shrink by 25%.
For now, we discuss examples and leave what I think the causes are for later.
A few countries have tried policy measures to address it and none have succeeded in a really meaningful sense, there was some degree of hype around a Danish ad campaign encouraging children, people exclaiming all the government had to do was ask! The ad encouraged procreation to relieve the strain on the social welfare system and to turn mom into a happy grandma but it has not had any tangible effect.
Russia
Russia has had more aggressive policies, between 2007 and 2021 the Russian Government was offering those who had their 2nd, 3rd or further child, 466,617 Rubles, which going to pre-War volatility exchange rates is worth approximately $7,500, a payment which can be spent for renovations, the purchase of a home, the education of the child or a pension for the mother, this is very considerable since the median wage in Russia is approx $5,000, to put that into perspective the median income in the United States is roughly $30,000, so this would be akin, if we take a very rough first order approximation, to the US Government granting $45,000 for housing, education or pension of the mother for the birth of second or further children, that is not meant to be an apples to apples comparison, it is just meant to illustrate 466,617 Rubles is a lot of money in Russia and a large incentive. Birth rates did go up during the policy for a while but they were already on an upward trend after sustaining a heavy hit in the post-Soviet period, reaching a low just above 1 births per woman in the late 90s. The Russian birth rate then recovered and peaked in 2015 at 1.78 and has since been heading down, in 2019 it was 1.5 births per woman.
I am not one to say for certain that demographics is destiny but given everything else going on in the region at this time and how dire Russia’s population pyramid is, well, it’s impossible to say things are not going to become dire there in the coming decades. The largest hump is in the middle of crossing the line into infertility. Within a couple of years, the situation will be totally irreversible and it is almost certain that nothing can be done to remedy this short of putting people into some form of an anti-extermination breeding gulag, the breeding archipelago, I would not put it past the irony of our age but it seems unlikely. Given this it is quite possible Russia will be a failed state within a few decades, though they may be able to survive if they can acquire the skilled workers necessary to run their oil and natural gas operations.
China
The Chinese government has too belatedly recognised the problem, ending the one-child policy in 2016 and instating a two-child policy, before last year in August creating a three-child policy, recognising the country’s demographic conundrum. The CCP is now actively encouraging people, with tax and other incentives, to have more kids but the population is not responding how the government would like. Right now China only sits at a birthrate of just 1.15,
Quote: “China’s total fertility rate (births per woman) was 2.6 in the late 1980s – well above the 2.1 needed to replace deaths. It has been between 1.6 and 1.7 since 1994, and slipped to 1.3 in 2020 and just 1.15 in 2021.” Unquote.
— World Economic Forum ARTICLE by Xiujian Peng
Remember this is coming from the WEF, who in general, if we were to generalise their views, think the world is overpopulated.
If we look at sources less committed to this view, it is becoming clear that the Chinese government overcounted the last census by 100 million people and that 100 million was overcounted in their younger demographic and so the population of China, which even the official numbers say has almost stagnated, likely peaked sometime in the last 10 years. This comes from a pessimistic Reuters article, but also from Peter Zeihan, whose whole analysis revolves around a contrarian view of China, agrees and recently said the following on the Modern Wisdom podcast,
Quote: “Best guess, is that China only has 1.3 Billion people now, the population probably peaked more than 10 years ago, and by 2030 there will be more retirees than workers and by 2050 the entire population of China will have dropped below 650 million.” Unquote,
—Peter Zeihan, Modern Wisdom Podcast
Because Zeihan’s analysis and mystique have a lot to do with him saying things in China are much worse than you think, it is possible that this is somewhat of an exaggeration but my guess is that it is not a major one. Because of the number fudging the population pyramid for China below is likely much worse,
With the demographic situation as it currently stands in China, combined with China’s economic interdependence with the world economy it is hard to imagine a bright future for the Chinese. A turnaround here is practically impossible as well, the next 30 years for China will be bad, they are going to lose their advantage in terms of cheap labour and have extraordinary headwinds from their demographics. How, precisely it is, that the overpopulation people think we are going to address this situation, is well, it’s a mystery because they pretend like the situation does not exist. If you are thinking well we can just import some Africans to top up the Chinese population, then, you don’t know much about Chinese racism, now do you?
I think the Chinese, like the Japanese, are going to be fairly opposed to the idea of diluting their homeland with foreigners, especially poorly educated ones they despise. I think that overall the quality of the Chinese population is much higher than the quality of the Western population, I think that China actually does make stuff, that is much more than can be said for the West, but if its demographics take a turn this bad and it becomes uncompetitive and the world deglobalises, China thus no longer has access to the raw materials it needs for its industry from other parts of the globe, how then is it going to function?
Japan
Japan is the case everybody points to when they think of bad demographics. As you can see from looking at the pyramid above Japan’s situation is totally bonkers, its population is already decreasing and is set to begin decreasing much more rapidly in the coming years. Japan has had complete economic stagnation for the last 25 years, their GDP has been bobbing up and down around 5 Trillion US, they are known for their negative interest rates. Things would be much worse if the Japanese people did not work like maniacs. In top companies, many work 60, 70 or 80 hours a week, and much of this goes unreported and unpaid, this is the future that awaits other countries that head toward such demography.
Japan’s birthrate has been just below replacement since about 1960, it bottomed out in 2005 at 1.26, recovered up to 1.45 by 2015 and has since declined to 1.30. Some have inverted the causality and said that economic stagnation is what has led to decreasing birthrates but birthrates in Japan began declining long before the economic stagnation, in fact, it is in Japan’s poorer regions that people have more kids and in Tokyo where they have the least. This is indeed also what we see in other countries too.
In The West
Italy
Italy, okay well, what do you want from me, just look at this, the population is completely cooked. The GDP per capita is lower there today than it was in 2005 and it is going to continue trending downward. Italy’s birthrate has been around 1.3 for the past 35 years. We can see the widest/fattest section of Italy’s population is going into retirement in the next 10-20 years, meaning the country has only just started feeling the pain.
Germany
How about the powerhouse of Europe’s economy, Germany? Germany is doing better but still bad. Their birth rate has varied from 1.5 to 1.3 over the last 50 years, currently sitting at 1.54. However, again, most of the population is about to retire.
The Greying or Browning of Europe and the EU
The EU as a whole currently has a birthrate of 1.5, and much of Europe is about to start declining in population, in other words, many of the countries in the EU have been below replacement for several generations. Combining this extreme economic headwind with other rash decisions regarding electricity generation as well as general regional instability the future of the EU is uncertain and peace in Europe in the coming decades is equally suspect.
As parts of the developing world destabilise rapidly, due to political breakdown from deglobalisation and an inability to acquire their energy and food needs on international markets, we can expect a new, far greater, wave of migrants coming from the Middle East and Africa, with less competent and less capable nations, receiving them. No doubt such migration will cause much more serious political tensions this time around, especially between East and West.
This is likely the best time in the history of Europe from an economic point of view, it is not going to recover from this high for many decades. The nations of Western Europe, are going to be hit even harder because of their higher life expectancy, the percentage of the population that is unproductive is far greater, adding further headwinds.
The Anglosphere
The Anglosphere generally has better demography due to an increased willingness to accept immigrants to supplement its population and in the historically European-descended populations slightly higher birth rates.
The United Kingdom
The United Kingdom while dipping under replacement some time ago has tended to have higher birth rates than the continent. It has also had relatively high immigration and the 1st and 2nd generation tend to have higher birth rates than native brits.
The United States
As can be seen, the population pyramid of the United States is much less concerning and indeed I believe it is for these demographic reasons, as well as innovation in technology that is the cause of the United States continuing to experience growth over the last decade when compared with Europe, which has largely stagnated. The demography of the United States is changing, the historically European populations in the United States have a similar birth rate to their European counterparts, although perhaps slightly higher, it is really the Hispanics and Blacks that are driving the birthrate in the United States, however.
Immigrants both legal and illegal, of which both amount to around 47 million according to Wikipedia, this almost certainly undercounts illegal immigrants and so is quite possible this number is much higher. In any case, the 47 million foreign-born account for around 15% of the US population. According to United Nations, this is around 19% of the world's total 244 million international migrants. If we, quite reasonably, increased the estimated number of illegal immigrants this could be as high as 20% of the US population.
It does appear like the birth rate problem is starting to affect the US near the bottom, however.
Australia, New Zealand and Canada
What is true of The United States and Britain in terms of immigration is even more true of Canada, New Zealand and Australia who respectively have foreign-born populations of 21%, 28.6% and 30%.
The three of them actually have fairly low birthrates in terms of local non-foreign born populations but this is set off by extreme immigration. This can be seen from the bulge in their population as you head into the 20-30 age bracket
The Anglosphere is certainly going to fare much better than Europe in the coming decades, however for cultural reasons and because plummeting birthrates are becoming a Universal phenomenon it is simply completely unfeasible to claim the world can solve this problem the way the Anglosphere currently is. I mean the Anglosphere is currently committing cultural genocide against itself, there are many places and people who would rather die than do that, but even setting that to one side, where is one going to find the half a billion people China needs in order to stabilise its population? The Anglosphere currently gets to import the most talented people, or at least people without criminal records and people with University degrees, even if they are shitty ones, there just are not enough people for China to do that, especially when the birth rates everywhere are going down.
Population Collapse, Civilisational Consequences
Population decrease is a slippery slope, and at this point in time half the world is about to start flying down the mountain, we can all expect the economic situation of Japan to become our own. In far shorter order than you might expect, but we can expect more societal breakdown, much more rapidly because none of the nations in the Western World has anything comparable to the discipline and social cohesion of Japan.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cauchy.substack.com
