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Subject: Global Demographic Surprises by Nicholas Eberstadt
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 22:19:19 -0400
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FOUR SURPRISES IN GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY
By Nicholas Eberstadt
Volume 5, Number 5
July 2004
Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Chair in Political
Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in
Washington. This piece is based on an article that will
appear in the Fall 2004 issue of Orbis (due out in
September) and on a presentation to FPRI's Study Group on
America and the West.
FOUR SURPRISES IN GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY
By Nicholas Eberstadt
Contemporary world population patterns are shaped by the
"demographic transition" concept introduced to the field by
the great demographer Frank Notestein several generations
ago. That schema offers a stylized description of the great
shifts in modern population patterns. Death and birth rates
start out high, but more or less in equilibrium. Then,
advances in knowledge and improvements in income result in
broad declines in mortality, precipitating rapid population
increase. Finally, socioeconomic development brings about
sustained fertility reductions via voluntary, deliberate
changes in childbearing patterns, at which point births and
deaths once more come into balance.
While Notestein's schematic may still describe the human
condition in broad stroke, today we can observe some
important and surprising exceptions to these
generalizations. Four of these unanticipated trends are (1)
the rapid spread of sub-replacement fertility, (2) the
emergence of unnatural gender imbalances among the very
young, (3) sustained increases in death rates, and (4)
American "demographic exceptionalism."
THE RAPID SPREAD OF "SUB-REPLACEMENT FERTILITY"
Sustained reductions in family size in the context of peace
and social progress-were first witnessed in late eighteenth-
century Europe. In the first half of the twentieth century,
European countries unveiled another demographic first: non-
catastrophic sub-replacement fertility. During the interwar
period, a number of European states reported fertility
patterns that, if continued, would lead to an eventual
stabilization and indefinite population decline thereafter,
absent offsetting immigration. These low fertility regimens
were entirely voluntary: heretofore, such low birth Rates
had virtually always been attended by war, pestilence,
famine, or disaster. Europe experienced a baby boom after
World War II, but sub-replacement fertility has now returned
with a vengeance.
To maintain long-term population stability, a society's
women must bear an average of about 2.1 children per
lifetime. According to projections of the U.S. Census
Bureau, Europe's total fertility rate (or TFR--births per
woman per lifetime) is about 1.4. Indeed, nearly all the
world's developed regions--Australia and New Zealand, North
America, Japan, and the highly industrialized East Asian
outposts of Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea--
are reporting sub-replacement fertility. (Israel remains an
exception.) But sub-replacement fertility is clearly no
longer mainly a developed-nation phenomenon. If the Census
Bureau's projections are roughly accurate, just about half
the world's population lives in sub-replacement countries or
territories.
Apart from Mongolia, according to the Census Bureau, all of
East Asia is sub-replacement, as are Thailand and Burma in
Southeast Asia, Kazakstan and Sri Lanka in South-Central
Asia, many Caribbean societies, and most South American
countries.
Perhaps the biggest surprise, given received notions about
the Arab/Muslim expanse, is the recent spread of sub-
replacement fertility to parts of the Arab and the Muslim
world. Algeria, Tunisia, and Lebanon are now sub-replacement
countries, as is Turkey. And there is the remarkable case of
Iran, with a current TFR of under 1.9, which is lower than
the United States'. Between 1986 and 2000, the country's TFR
plummeted from well over 6 to just over 2. If modernization
and Westernization are the handmaidens of sustained
fertility decline, as is often supposed by students of
demography, both terms are apparently being given a rather
new meaning.
There are no reliable methods for anticipating just how low
fertility levels may sink, or how long sub-replacement
fertility may persist in various locales. One consequence,
however, is already clear: it will force a great aging of
the populations affected.
All of the developed countries are already "graying." This
is most pronounced in Japan, where, by the year 2025, it is
expected that one out of nine people will be 80 or older.
Japan's prospective aging is unprecedented, and the scale of
the transformation suggests the enormousness of the
challenges that will accompany it. Japan, Europe, and North
America are places where people traditionally got rich
before they got old. In the decades ahead, many national
populations are going to get old before they get rich.
China promises to be the most important case in point.
Thanks to low levels of mortality, its population control
program, and its now-low fertility, China is aging at a
breathtaking velocity. Between 1975 and 2000, China's median
age jumped from just over 20 to about 30; by 2025, it is
projected to rise by nearly another decade. By then, it is
quite possible that China's median age will be higher than
America's. But China is much poorer than Japan or the U.S.
were at every comparable stage of their aging processes.
China's rapidly aging population faces a looming triple
bind. Apart from the family, China lacks any functional
nationwide arrangements for pensioning its elders. Thus, a
great many Chinese will have to continue to work into old
age. But working life in China typically entails more
physical labor, which does not favor the frail, than work in
Japan or the United States. China's aging problem has the
makings of a slow-motion humanitarian tragedy.
UNNATURAL GENDER IMBALANCES
China is also witnessing a strange, unnatural, and growing
disproportion between its numbers of baby boys and baby
girls, and it is not the only country in which this is
happening. In ordinary human populations, around 104-105
boys are typically born for every 100 girls. However, since
the advent of its coercive one-child policy, China has
broken this natural biological rhythm. Its 1982 census
counted almost 109 baby boys for every 100 baby girls; by
1995, the reported ratio was up to almost 116 boys for every
100 girls, and by 2000, it was approaching 120:100.
This astonishing ratio could be a consequence of massive
statistical falsification as parents bend the rules of the
population program by concealing baby girls. If so, one
would expect to see more normal sex ratios at slightly older
ages: say, the years 1-4. But even here, China's registered
ratio of boys to girls was about 121:100, and the ratio
exceeded 130:100 in several provinces.
And China's mounting gender imbalance cannot be explained by
poverty or lack of education. It has emerged in a period of
extremely rapid development and pronounced economic
progress. Moreover, higher female illiteracy rates
correspond with lower imbalances: Better education for women
is a predictor for greater gender imbalances.
China's population control program stands as an obvious
suspect, since the imbalances did not emerge until after the
plan was promulgated in the late 1970s, and the imbalances
have grown progressively worse during the years of its
implementation. Yet this policy cannot be the sole culprit.
In other parts of East Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan,
Hong Kong, and Singapore -- none of which forcibly control
population growth -- unnatural gender imbalances at birth
have also been recorded in recent years. It may be that
throughout East Asia we are witnessing a collision between
an immensely strong cultural preference for sons, new
regimens of sub-replacement fertility, and a diffusion of
ultrasound and other technologies that permit prenatal
gender determination. Skewed sex ratios at birth would be
the inexorable consequence of this collision.
And the collision is not only happening in East Asia. Gender
determination technology is now nearly universally
available; sub-replacement fertility is fast becoming the
planetary norm; and a strong son-preference has been
expressed in a number of cultures worldwide. One of these is
Punjab, India. In a major survey undertaken there a decade
ago, when fertility levels were still well above
replacement, women expressed a preference for a boy over a
girl 10:1. And according to India's latest census, in that
state's youngest age groups, there were 126 young boys for
every 100 young girls.
That figure cannot be taken as an exact indication of gender
imbalance at birth: differential mortality and/or migration,
for instance, may have affected this reported outcome. Yet
the true sex ratio at birth in Punjab may not be far
different from the extraordinary disparities reported for
the very young. Contrary to expectation, with increased
affluence, education, and contact with the outside world in
China, the gender imbalance has increased, and it is
starting to do the same in the Caucasus; parts of Latin
America and Eastern Europe; even subpopulations within the
U.S.
The consequences of this growing gender imbalance will be
felt when these children grow to be prospective husbands and
wives. The "marriage market" will be unable to clear in
locales where matrimony is the expectation, sub-replacement
fertility the reality, and extreme gender imbalances the
norm.
SUSTAINED INCREASES IN MORTALITY
It has generally been assumed that with improved income,
increased globalization, and the attendant spread of ideas,
knowledge, and technology, mortality would gradually decline
worldwide, and countries' mortality levels would gradually
converge. Most of the twentieth century seemed to confirm
such expectations. Between 1900 and 2000, global life
expectancy at birth probably doubled, soaring from about 30
to well over 60 years. And from 1950 to 1980, there was a
marked convergence of life expectancy between the more and
less developed nations.
In the twenty-first century, it appears that major and
pervasive health setbacks will be a characteristic feature
of the global population profile. These steep increases in
mortality do not seem to be transitory, but will probably
continue for decades. By U.S. Census Bureau projections,
over 40 countries are anticipated to have a lower life
expectancy in 2010 than they did in 1990. The Bureau
envisions a 20-year-long decline in life expectancy for
those countries. Clearly these are no trivial interruptions.
Most of the health setbacks relate to HIV/AIDS, which is the
proximate factor in virtually all of these reversals in sub-
Saharan Africa. But it is not the only, or even the major,
factor elsewhere. Most of the former Soviet countries, for
example, are projected to suffer long-term declines in life
expectancy.
The Russian Federation is perhaps the most striking and
anomalous of the states suffering from long-term health
retrogression. Russia's life expectancy at birth today is
about four years lower than it was forty years ago. Its
health reversal is concentrated in the working age groups.
This peacetime death explosion has been triggered not by
tuberculosis or HIV/AIDS, but by cardiovascular disease and
injuries. Alcohol, of course, has played its part: indeed,
one Russian study determined that almost half of the young
and middle aged men who died of injury or cardiovascular
disease were drunk at the time of death. Russians now in
their 30s, 40s, or 50s have already accumulated a lifetime
of insults to their health.
In Japan, each new generation enjoys better survival chances
at any given age. The situation is totally different in
Russia, where the worst death rates at any given age are
found among the youngest men. To judge by mortality,
Russians are now less healthy than their parents were at the
same age. Under such circumstances, it will be
extraordinarily difficult to improve the health of the
society as a whole.
AMERICAN "DEMOGRAPHIC EXCEPTIONALISM"
A final surprise involves what we might call America's
"demographic exceptionalism." The U.S. is the singular and
major exception to the demographic rhythms characterizing
virtually all other affluent Western states.
In Western Europe, total populations are anticipated to
decline between 2000 and 2025, with a substantial shrinkage
in the under-55 population and pronounced population aging.
In the U.S., overall population aging is much more moderate;
the overall population is projected to increase, and a
higher number of young people are expected in 2025 than
today.
Part of this difference is attributable to a significant
divergence in fertility patterns. As already noted, Europe's
overall TFR stands in the 1.4 to 1.5 range, with Italy and
Spain on the low end, at about 1.2, and France and Ireland
on the high end, at about 1.8. The U.S. fertility rate has
been over 2.0 since 1990 and is just under replacement
today--somewhere between 2.0 and the 2.1 replacement level,
making it about 40 percent higher than Europe's.
America's fertility levels have diverged not just from
Europe's but from those of the rest of the developed world.
The U.S. TFR is much higher than Japan's 1.3-1.4, and the
gap is even greater with some of the other high-income East
Asian countries. Even much of North America doesn't look so
"American" these days: whereas the U.S. and Canada had
nearly identical fertility levels back in the mid-1970s,
Canada looks pretty European today, and the U.S. looks--
well, pretty American. While the States is reporting a TFR
of over 2, Canada's is around 1.5.
Much of the developed world is caught up in what Ron
Lesthaege and Dirk van de Kaa have dubbed "the second
demographic transition" -- a shift to smaller desired family
sizes and less stable family unions. If this is the new
demographic revolution, Americans look to be the developed
world's most prominent counterrevolutionaries.
America's relatively high TFR does not seem to be explained
by any particular region or ethnicity. There are big
fertility differences between some states, but 42 states
reported TFRs above 1.9 that year and 33 reported TFRs of
2.0 or higher. In all of Europe, by contrast, the only
country with an estimated TFR above 2.0 is Albania.
America's ethnic fertility differentials do not account for
its demographic divergence from Europe. Hispanic Americans
maintain relatively large family sizes in the U.S., with a
TFR of around 2.7, but excluding them by no means eliminates
the gap between the U.S. and the rest of the developed
world. Nor can the differential be explained by factoring
out African-American fertility (which is higher than the
"Anglo" rate, but much closer to the Anglo rate than to the
Latinos'). In 2000, America's Anglo TFR was 1.84 -- about 10
percent less than the U.S. national average, but still more
than 30 percent above Europe's.
No obvious materialist explanation for America's demographic
exceptionalism seems to exist. U.S.-Western Europe income
differences are not tremendous. One might think that
fertility would be higher in societies that devote more
public resources to child support, but social welfare
programs are far more generous in most of Western Europe
than in the U.S.
So how can we explain this fertility discrepancy? Possibly
it is a matter of attitudes and outlook. There are big
revealed differences between Americans and Europeans
regarding a number of important life values. Survey results
highlighted in the Economist (Nov. 2003) point to some of
these. Americans tend to identify the role of government as
"providing freedom," while Europeans are inclined to think
of government in terms of "guaranteeing one's needs."
Attitudes about individualism, patriotism, and religiosity
seem to separate Americans from much of the rest of the
developed world. Is it entirely coincidental that these
divergences seem to track with the big cleavages between
fertility levels in the U.S. and so much of the rest of the
developed world?
The difference between a TFR of 2.0 and one of 1.5 or 1.4,
other things being equal, is the difference between virtual
long-term population stability and a population that shrinks
by almost a third with each passing generation. A UN
Population Division study of what levels of net immigration
flows would be necessary for developed countries to maintain
both their overall population and their working-age
population (15-64 years of age) over a 55-year time horizon.
For the pre-enlargement EU, a net inflow of about 2.5
million people a year would be needed to stabilize the
population, and about 4.3 million to stabilize the
workforce. But net immigration into the EU in the late 1990s
averaged just 700,000 a year. For Japan, 300,000 net
newcomers a year would be needed for population stability,
and 600,000 for workforce stability. But Japan's net
immigration rate today is approximately zero. The U.S. could
maintain its population with just 116,000 net immigrants a
year, but net annual immigration has averaged nearly 1
million. If these exceptionalist trends continue, America
will age much more slowly than Europe or Japan. And the U.S.
share of world population will not diminish steadily and
dramatically in the decades ahead, as Europe's and Japan's
seem set to do.
Western European countries accounted for about 12 percent of
global population in 1950; this was down to about 6 percent
by 2000, and in the admittedly tentative Census Bureau
projections for 2050, it is placed at barely 4 percent. Over
this same span, Russia's projected share of world population
falls from over 4 percent to barely 1 percent; Japan's from
3 percent to 1 percent. The U.S., on the other hand, only
drops from about 6 percent in 1950 to about 4.5 percent in
2000 and then is projected at an almost constant 4.5 percent
for the following half century.
While the rest of the developed areas gradually drop off the
roster of the world's major population centers, the U.S.
actually rises, from fourth largest in 1950 to third largest
in 2000, which it is projected to remain in 2050 as well.
Drawing international implications from such crude
comparisons is hazardous. But from a purely demographic
standpoint, the U.S., virtually alone among developed
nations, does not look set to be going off gently into the
night.
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