Good Luck With Changing Demography!!

Regarding some demographic items of interest this week.

Photo by Ryan Franco on Unsplash

Sometimes I wonder if demographers feel superior to other social scientists. Unlike economists or political scientists or sociologists, demographers can make predictions about what the world will look like over the next generation or so and feel pretty confident about their predictions. Those of us interested in political economy have no such luck.

Demographers have been talking about the graying of the great powers as an ongoing phenomenon for at least the last fifteen years. And a few stories from this past week highlight how very difficult it is to alter this kind of macrotrend.

The New York Times’ Alexandra Stevenson and Zixu Wang report that China’s birth rate has plummeted so far that China’s population shrunk for the second straight year:

Chinese women have been shunning marriage and babies at such a rapid pace that China’s population in 2023 shrank for the second straight year, accelerating the government’s sense of crisis over the country’s rapidly aging population and its economic future….

The shrinking and aging population worries Beijing because it is draining China of the working-age people it needs to power the economy. The demographic crisis, which arrived sooner than nearly anyone expected, is already straining weak and underfunded health care and pension systems.

China hastened the problem with its one-child policy, which helped to push the birthrate down over several decades. The rule also created generations of young only-child girls who were given an education and employment opportunities — a cohort that turned into empowered women who now view Beijing’s efforts as pushing them back into the home.

What is interesting about Stevenson and Wang’s story is where their reportage goes from there: why China’s birth rate has plummeted. One gets the sense that China is suffering from the worst of all possible worlds. China echoes the structural problems that South Korea and Japan have had with their plummeting birth rates: “one reality that shaped women’s views about parenting: deep-seated gender inequality. The laws that are meant to protect women and their property, and to ensure they are treated equally, have failed them.” The section of Stevenson and Wang’s story about China’s divorce laws is scary.

There is an additional problem, however Japan and the ROK are liberal democracies; China’s authoritarian regime exacerbates the gendered problem even more. Imagine how Chinese women would feel reading and hearing this:

Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has long talked about the need for women to return to more traditional roles in the home. He recently urged government officials to promote a “marriage and childbearing culture,” and to influence what young people think about “love and marriage, fertility and family.”….

Propaganda campaigns and state-sponsored dating events goad young people to get married and have babies. In China, it is uncommon for unmarried couples or a single person to have children. State media is filled with calls for China’s youths to play a role in “rejuvenating the nation.”

The whole story is worth reading as an example of how economic modernization and gender inequality are a great recipe for causing a population to decline.

That said, there are limits to how much public policy can spur demographic growth. Consider France, which for the longest time stood as Europe’s demographic outlier. When live births in most European countries plummeted decades ago, France’s birth rate remained relatively high. But as Reuters reports, that demographic profile is changing:

French President Emmanuel Macron promised on Tuesday to overhaul parental leave so it pays better after France saw the lowest number of births since World War Two last year, in a blow to its traditionally strong demographic profile.

France registered 678,000 births last year, representing a decrease of 7% from 2022 and down 20% since peaking in 2020, INSEE said in its annual census report….

"France will only be stronger if it revives the birth rate," Macron said during a wide-ranging news conference.

What is particularly interesting is why France’s fertility rate is declining. Macron is promising greater parental leave benefits but France’s benefits in this area were already generous by European standards. The Reuters story closes by suggesting deeper forces at work:

In an Opinionway poll of 11,000 people… two-thirds who did not have children said that they wanted to while one out of five parents said they would have liked more children.

The most common reasons people gave for not having more children were concerns about the economic, social and climatic outlook, cited by 30% of those polled. Some 28% said raising children cost too much.

The successive crises over the COVID-19 outbreak, surging energy prices and record inflation have taken a heavy toll on household confidence, which has struggled to recover from record lows reached in mid 2022, according to INSEE's monthly survey.

The French government has very limited control over inflation, pandemics, and energy prices. Bolstering household confidence will be a challenge.

The United States is hardly immune to these demographic challenges, although those challenges have been somewhat less acute in the U.S.. America has always had an ace up its sleeve when it comes to demographic vitality, however, and that is immigration. It’s not just that so many people want to come to the United States. It’s that America’s greatest comparative advantage is attracting people from elsewhere in the globe and converting them and their children into proud Americans.

This is why I find politicians who claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” to have little comprehension about the sources of demographic power. What the stories this week about France and China tell us is that changing demography is difficult. Restricting immigration into the U.S. even further would be a surefire way for the U.S. to create a demography problem where none previously existed. It’s an unserious approach to international relations and international political economy.