7 ms·

Countries with Declining Population 2022

43 points by simonebrunozzi 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fasteddie31003 4y ago
They forgot China
- y04nn 4y ago
  Almost there: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/china-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/china-population
  - poutine 4y ago
    And this could possibly be overcounting, population could be 1.28B not 1.4B: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/researcher-questions-chinas-population-data-says-it-may-be-lower-2021-12-03/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/researcher-questions-chi...
algo_trader 4y ago
This is a lagging indicator. A more leading indicator is "Countries who have reached peak births". The world itself has reached, or is approaching, "peak baby" - though this will be a long plateau.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted. It's 100% true that the child and working-age population shrinks long before the absolute population starts to dip, and in many ways that's more meaningful.
  - algo_trader 4y ago
    In fact, shrinking population is further deferred by improving health and longevity. This means that many countries which seemingly stable population are in fact growing older and older, leading to an eventual cliff. Also, title should be changed. This is "Population decline projections for 2050".
  - steve76 4y ago
- ekpyrotic 4y ago
  That wouldn't capture the main driver of population decline for most these countries. Seems like the primary cause in most cases is /not/ the fact that deaths are outpacing births but, instead, that emigration is outpacing immigration. Most of these countries are low-income nations in the EU whose workforce is now leaving to flock to higher-income countries. We're basically seeing a brain drain in EU countries that need that workforce most to drive future growth. One of the unintended consequences of EU membership.
  - algo_trader 4y ago
    > are low-income nations in the EU whose workforce This is true, but it is localized and a one-time shock. Portugal, Italy, Greece have had sub replacement fertility for 40 years already. China, Japan, South Korea - urbanized, industrialized, economically growing countries. The generally accepted causes are urbanization, reduced religion, education of women, which to re-enforce each other.
- canniballectern 4y ago
  I guess the missing piece from this would be trends in immigration rates. Otherwise countries like Canada would appear to be shrinking, when in fact they're growing overall.
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  > Countries who have reached peak births: "When will the world reach ‘peak child’?" [0] Also top 10 countries with lowest birth rate [1]: - Monaco - 6.63. - South Korea - 6.89. - Andorra - 6.91. - Japan - 7.00. - Taiwan (limited recognition) - 7.43. - Greece - 7.72. - Puerto Rico - 7.90. - Portugal - 8.02. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/peak-child https://ourworldindata.org/peak-child [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/birth-rate-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/birth-rat...
  - stevenjgarner 4y ago
    Perhaps of more significance, the top 10 countries with populations over 10 million with the lowest birth rates (same sources): - South Korea - 51.78 million - 6.89. - Japan - 125.8 million - 7.00. - Taiwan - 23.57 million - 7.43. - Greece - 10.72 million - 7.72. - Portugal - 10.31 million - 8.02. - Italy - 59,037,474 - 8.5 - Germany - 83,369,843 - 8.6 - Romania - 19,659,267 - 8.7 - Spain - 47,558,630 - 9 - Czech Republic - 10,493,986 - 9.2
  - readthenotes1 4y ago
    Interesting that you put an asterisk on Taiwan, which believes it is its own country, but not Puerto Rico, which has never been its own country.
    - stevenjgarner 4y ago
      I agree - that information is all copied with fidelity from the cited sources. Not my own.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  A lagging indicator of what? The measure in question is change in population...
- patrec 4y ago
  > The world itself has reached, or is approaching, "peak baby" - though this will be a long plateau. How did you arrive at the strange idea that we are approaching "peak baby"? Barring some cataclysm, the only plausible mechanism to reach "peak baby" is hitting permanent Malthusian limits.
YesThatTom2 4y ago
I wonder did there’s an opportunity here. Like…. Hey, I’ll move to one of these countries and start a business doing _________ because in a shrinking population that’d be great!
- pastor_bob 4y ago
  bulldozing houses and buying land for cheap maybe?
  - duxup 4y ago
    But then what? Farm on it? Cost of bulldozing and making land farm-able I imagine is crazy high... let alone all you'll get is a patchwork of houses / land.
- ivandenysov 4y ago
  Something where you can exploit cheap elderly labor. Their government pensions, supported by the shrinking working population, won’t be enough to retire
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  I thought about it the other way: build an accelerator to get paid by nation states to pull young, productive workers to your declining population country (both remote workers and skilled on site workers, think healthcare). Want to start something together (I’m a highly skilled worker familiar with and working on expatriating to Western Europe)? Lots of value to generate in nation states competing for future productivity, and therefore power.
  - simonebrunozzi 4y ago
    Both are interesting business models.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - 4y ago
devmunchies 4y ago
would be interesting to see the same map but excluding 1st generation immigrants, to infer which countries are only sustaining themselves via immigration.
- aabhay 4y ago
  This is far less neutral of a statistical inquiry than you might believe. What about natives who married foreigners? What about immigrants who are ethnically alike natives? What about second generation immigrants? One reality with data science is that it obscures a highly subjective viewpoint much of the time, leaving a seemingly clear narrative to be interpreted as ‘fact’
  - Zamicol 4y ago
    That seems pretty straight forward: >married foreigners Immigrant. > ethnically alike Immigrant. >second generation Native. The question is, "Were you born here?" If yes then not a first generation immigrant. If no, then first generation immigrant.
danans 4y ago
That's a very strong cluster of population loss in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. It's probably for multiple reasons, but ability to travel in the EU westward toward greater opportunity seems like a big one. Latvia and Lithuania surprise me though I thought these were more similar to western and northern Europe economically. Perhaps their proximity to the border of Russia influences things.
- MarcelOlsz 4y ago
  And here I am trying to immigrate to Romania.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  When they joined the EU there was a lot of closures of existing heavy industry in those countries - some say they were paid by EU members to avoid potential competition. No reason they would look like north europe economically. In the 10s they worsened their stance with their larger neighbours Russia and Belarus which diminished their value as transit countries. And now Lithuania is also quarreling with China[0]. At the same time, Finland kept it prominence as a transit country to Russia and continues to do so even today[1]. 0. http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/mdenner/Demo/texts/elephant_pug.htm http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/mdenner/Demo/texts/elephant... 1. https://www.dp.ru/a/2022/07/19/Peterburzhci_raskupili_bil https://www.dp.ru/a/2022/07/19/Peterburzhci_raskupili_bil
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Ukraine is up there though despite not being in the EU. I wonder where people were heading (pre invasion)
  - thriftwy 4y ago
    Poland, Italy, Russia, Germany, Czechia.
  - ramtatatam 4y ago
    From what I know many migrated to Poland after 2014 maidan. Simple google query yields many articles about numbers, I won't link here since I don't know about credible source I would feel comfortable to share. But from my observations during past few years I must say there must have been many, I'd risk to say buildings industry was able to grow because of inflow of Ukrainian workers. This helped post-February since many families already had somebody here so they could join. And also Polish bad historical encounters with Russians led to Polish society rising to help as many Ukrainians as possible, many school gyms and other public places were converted to host Ukrainian refugees, similar with some companies who donated their office spaces. There was a time all LinkedIn updates on my board were from such companies and from individual people who were organizing to help.
elektor 4y ago
Source for this article is United Nations 2019, which already makes it woefully out date due to COVID excess deaths and the invasion of Ukraine. For anyone interested, here is the 2022 report: https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/wpp2022_summary_of_results.pdf https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...
pjmlp 4y ago
> Portugal has made attempts to lure back those who emigrated, whether or not they are highly paid or highly skilled. Yeah, so far those attempts are a joke from professional point of view. They tend to try to talk to our hearts, handwaving what we would lose in salaries and work conditions from current European locations outside Portugal. Sentimental and family reasons tend to speak much higher than those offers have done so far.
- 3pt14159 4y ago
  I can't speak to your experience as a Portuguese person, but Porto really made a mark on me to the point where my half-Portuguese (of Azores descent) and I are considering to make Porto our second home outside of Toronto. Portugal in general feels ready for a wave of tech folk and I'm sure they could recruit back some of the talent that left, made inroads in North American tech, and are able to work remotely back in Portugal. It's cheap, has excellent architecture, above average food, and absolutely charming people and nature.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Definitely not cheap for regular Portuguese salaries. Do not take this personally, but people coming from rich countries and driving housing costs to skyrocket aren't getting much love.
    - rmbyrro 4y ago
      Probably depends if you're a Portuguese homeowner or not?
    - rzanella 4y ago
      Definitely, but the golden-visa-inflated-price is different from a working person that buys a reasonably priced house, no ? I mean, regular people are also gonna pay taxes since they actually plan to live, instead of just buying an overpriced place for the visa...
      - 4y ago
nisa 4y ago
Looks like the decline in eastern europe is largely due to economic reasons and people migrate torwards the west? The economic decline in eastern europe after the end of the cold war and the neoliberal privatisation as well as corruption and mismanaged in each economy is something that's not often discussed. Beeing in eastern europe feels sometimes like being in a western colony because most corporations / supermarkets / products are just western products. Also more often than not it's not the place for innovation but rather cheap labor workbenches for western corporations. Not sure if that was a given in the 90ies or wether it was the result of the politics at this time. If anyone can recommend some literature I'd be interested. For the former GDR (also big population loss due to economic reasons) one could argue that at least some industries were killed to avoid competition from western corporations but of course it's difficult to reliable connect cause and effect. Is in the EU eastern nations also this oligarch problem that ukraine/russia inflicted on themselves?
- cycomanic 4y ago
  While your stereotypes certainly match for some Eastern European countries, they are quite mismatched for some others. I was very surprised about the Baltic countries being high up in the list. They generally have high education, low corruption and are driving innovation. Estonia for example is the country with the best digitalisation in Europe and likely amongst the highest in the world.
  - jgilias 4y ago
    They don't take local factors into account at all. The local Russian speakers have emigrated at a larger rate than say ethnic Latvians. So, if they just project past trends to the future they are bound to be wrong. Also, immigration is getting noticeably stronger. And then, the elephant in the room. They don't seem to align these projections with the climate change projections. The Baltics are going to continue to have a hospitable climate with no water availability issues. Unlike most of Southern Europe, and many other places in the world. So, I'd be willing to put my money against these projections turning out correct.
  - lnsru 4y ago
pastor_bob 4y ago
Always find Italy the interesting one. Nice place to live but they stopped having kids. Notice a lot of single middle-aged+ women when visiting too.
- epolanski 4y ago
  Italy has medium salaries combined with high taxes. That's not a good combination. Having children is way too expensive. When the average net salary is around 1400€s per month and 75% of taxpayers are below that how can you afford children? Anyway, I think that shrinking population is healthy for the planet. The problem to solve is financial: how do you sustain so many retirees with a relatively low working-age population? I think there's plenty of solutions, but none of them is capitalism-friendly.
- ginnungagap 4y ago
  I'm Italian, my PhD in Germany in pure maths is paid 40% more than friends working in Italy with engineering degrees. If I stay in Germany after finishing my degree I could easily make twice the money I could get in Italy regardless of whether I stay in academia or go to industry. Not a strong incentive to go back in the immediate future!
hatsunearu 4y ago
Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world and it's not even in the rankings, what?
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  High life expectancy, low rate of emigration. Also, this is a top 20 list, not a list of all countries that are projected to lose population.
pastor_bob 4y ago
I find it interesting that the US is expected to grow indefinitely: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-states-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-states-po... while almost all of the countries in Central and South American that support the US's growth through immigration will plateau and decline: e.g. https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/nicaragua-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/nicaragua-popula... It seems like a fairly optimistic projection for the US's continued success
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  I think I'd take that bet. China is on the verge of a big economic struggle with its real estate pyramid scheme games. All of europe is going to struggle with the energy crisis caused by russia. The US is pretty well situated for no particular reason other than other countries are doing poorly.
rufusroflpunch 4y ago
Peter Zeihan seems to think China is in the worst shape by far, and it's not even close.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Official TFR for 2021 in China was 1.15, and China data is always suspect. They didn’t mitigate economic challenges for common prosperity earlier enough, young people are bailing on family formation (for obvious reasons), and it’s likely that their TFR won’t only fall further into the future but also get “locked in.” TLDR China is Speedrunning Japan’s demographic and economic transition/decline.
ganesh7 4y ago
thank god, germany does not have this problem with all the skilled workers coming here from everywhere.
jakozaur 4y ago
Outdated prediction in case of Poland. Already more people immigrate and Russian invasion of Ukraine vastly Increase that trend.
- mekster 4y ago
  How does Poland handle a sudden inflow of 10% of their population?
bergenty 4y ago
I don’t understand this. India since 2019 has a replacement rate under 2 (1.9). Doesn’t that count as a declining population?
- philipkglass 4y ago
  People live for many years, so there's a long lag between when total fertility rate drops below replacement and when total population actually declines. For example, Japan's total fertility rate remained below replacement since 1974, but its total population has been consistently shrinking only since 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Vital_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Vital_st...
umeshunni 4y ago
I'm curious about countries that rebounded from declining population. Are there any in the last century?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fasteddie31003 4y ago

They forgot China

y04nn 4y ago
Almost there: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/china-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/china-population
- poutine 4y ago
  And this could possibly be overcounting, population could be 1.28B not 1.4B: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/researcher-questions-chinas-population-data-says-it-may-be-lower-2021-12-03/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/researcher-questions-chi...

algo_trader 4y ago

This is a lagging indicator. A more leading indicator is "Countries who have reached peak births". The world itself has reached, or is approaching, "peak baby" - though this will be a long plateau.

bpodgursky 4y ago
Not sure why this is downvoted. It's 100% true that the child and working-age population shrinks long before the absolute population starts to dip, and in many ways that's more meaningful.
- algo_trader 4y ago
  In fact, shrinking population is further deferred by improving health and longevity. This means that many countries which seemingly stable population are in fact growing older and older, leading to an eventual cliff. Also, title should be changed. This is "Population decline projections for 2050".
- steve76 4y ago
ekpyrotic 4y ago
That wouldn't capture the main driver of population decline for most these countries. Seems like the primary cause in most cases is /not/ the fact that deaths are outpacing births but, instead, that emigration is outpacing immigration. Most of these countries are low-income nations in the EU whose workforce is now leaving to flock to higher-income countries. We're basically seeing a brain drain in EU countries that need that workforce most to drive future growth. One of the unintended consequences of EU membership.
- algo_trader 4y ago
  > are low-income nations in the EU whose workforce This is true, but it is localized and a one-time shock. Portugal, Italy, Greece have had sub replacement fertility for 40 years already. China, Japan, South Korea - urbanized, industrialized, economically growing countries. The generally accepted causes are urbanization, reduced religion, education of women, which to re-enforce each other.
canniballectern 4y ago
I guess the missing piece from this would be trends in immigration rates. Otherwise countries like Canada would appear to be shrinking, when in fact they're growing overall.
stevenjgarner 4y ago
> Countries who have reached peak births: "When will the world reach ‘peak child’?" [0] Also top 10 countries with lowest birth rate [1]: - Monaco - 6.63. - South Korea - 6.89. - Andorra - 6.91. - Japan - 7.00. - Taiwan (limited recognition) - 7.43. - Greece - 7.72. - Puerto Rico - 7.90. - Portugal - 8.02. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/peak-child https://ourworldindata.org/peak-child [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/birth-rate-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/birth-rat...
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  Perhaps of more significance, the top 10 countries with populations over 10 million with the lowest birth rates (same sources): - South Korea - 51.78 million - 6.89. - Japan - 125.8 million - 7.00. - Taiwan - 23.57 million - 7.43. - Greece - 10.72 million - 7.72. - Portugal - 10.31 million - 8.02. - Italy - 59,037,474 - 8.5 - Germany - 83,369,843 - 8.6 - Romania - 19,659,267 - 8.7 - Spain - 47,558,630 - 9 - Czech Republic - 10,493,986 - 9.2
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  Interesting that you put an asterisk on Taiwan, which believes it is its own country, but not Puerto Rico, which has never been its own country.
  - stevenjgarner 4y ago
    I agree - that information is all copied with fidelity from the cited sources. Not my own.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
A lagging indicator of what? The measure in question is change in population...
patrec 4y ago
> The world itself has reached, or is approaching, "peak baby" - though this will be a long plateau. How did you arrive at the strange idea that we are approaching "peak baby"? Barring some cataclysm, the only plausible mechanism to reach "peak baby" is hitting permanent Malthusian limits.

YesThatTom2 4y ago

I wonder did there’s an opportunity here. Like…. Hey, I’ll move to one of these countries and start a business doing _________ because in a shrinking population that’d be great!

pastor_bob 4y ago
bulldozing houses and buying land for cheap maybe?
- duxup 4y ago
  But then what? Farm on it? Cost of bulldozing and making land farm-able I imagine is crazy high... let alone all you'll get is a patchwork of houses / land.
ivandenysov 4y ago
Something where you can exploit cheap elderly labor. Their government pensions, supported by the shrinking working population, won’t be enough to retire
toomuchtodo 4y ago
I thought about it the other way: build an accelerator to get paid by nation states to pull young, productive workers to your declining population country (both remote workers and skilled on site workers, think healthcare). Want to start something together (I’m a highly skilled worker familiar with and working on expatriating to Western Europe)? Lots of value to generate in nation states competing for future productivity, and therefore power.
- simonebrunozzi 4y ago
  Both are interesting business models.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- 4y ago

devmunchies 4y ago

would be interesting to see the same map but excluding 1st generation immigrants, to infer which countries are only sustaining themselves via immigration.

aabhay 4y ago
This is far less neutral of a statistical inquiry than you might believe. What about natives who married foreigners? What about immigrants who are ethnically alike natives? What about second generation immigrants? One reality with data science is that it obscures a highly subjective viewpoint much of the time, leaving a seemingly clear narrative to be interpreted as ‘fact’
- Zamicol 4y ago
  That seems pretty straight forward: >married foreigners Immigrant. > ethnically alike Immigrant. >second generation Native. The question is, "Were you born here?" If yes then not a first generation immigrant. If no, then first generation immigrant.

danans 4y ago

That's a very strong cluster of population loss in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. It's probably for multiple reasons, but ability to travel in the EU westward toward greater opportunity seems like a big one. Latvia and Lithuania surprise me though I thought these were more similar to western and northern Europe economically. Perhaps their proximity to the border of Russia influences things.

MarcelOlsz 4y ago
And here I am trying to immigrate to Romania.
thriftwy 4y ago
When they joined the EU there was a lot of closures of existing heavy industry in those countries - some say they were paid by EU members to avoid potential competition. No reason they would look like north europe economically. In the 10s they worsened their stance with their larger neighbours Russia and Belarus which diminished their value as transit countries. And now Lithuania is also quarreling with China[0]. At the same time, Finland kept it prominence as a transit country to Russia and continues to do so even today[1]. 0. http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/mdenner/Demo/texts/elephant_pug.htm http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/mdenner/Demo/texts/elephant... 1. https://www.dp.ru/a/2022/07/19/Peterburzhci_raskupili_bil https://www.dp.ru/a/2022/07/19/Peterburzhci_raskupili_bil
spywaregorilla 4y ago
Ukraine is up there though despite not being in the EU. I wonder where people were heading (pre invasion)
- thriftwy 4y ago
  Poland, Italy, Russia, Germany, Czechia.
- ramtatatam 4y ago
  From what I know many migrated to Poland after 2014 maidan. Simple google query yields many articles about numbers, I won't link here since I don't know about credible source I would feel comfortable to share. But from my observations during past few years I must say there must have been many, I'd risk to say buildings industry was able to grow because of inflow of Ukrainian workers. This helped post-February since many families already had somebody here so they could join. And also Polish bad historical encounters with Russians led to Polish society rising to help as many Ukrainians as possible, many school gyms and other public places were converted to host Ukrainian refugees, similar with some companies who donated their office spaces. There was a time all LinkedIn updates on my board were from such companies and from individual people who were organizing to help.

elektor 4y ago

Source for this article is United Nations 2019, which already makes it woefully out date due to COVID excess deaths and the invasion of Ukraine. For anyone interested, here is the 2022 report: https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/wpp2022_summary_of_results.pdf https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...

pjmlp 4y ago

> Portugal has made attempts to lure back those who emigrated, whether or not they are highly paid or highly skilled. Yeah, so far those attempts are a joke from professional point of view. They tend to try to talk to our hearts, handwaving what we would lose in salaries and work conditions from current European locations outside Portugal. Sentimental and family reasons tend to speak much higher than those offers have done so far.

3pt14159 4y ago
I can't speak to your experience as a Portuguese person, but Porto really made a mark on me to the point where my half-Portuguese (of Azores descent) and I are considering to make Porto our second home outside of Toronto. Portugal in general feels ready for a wave of tech folk and I'm sure they could recruit back some of the talent that left, made inroads in North American tech, and are able to work remotely back in Portugal. It's cheap, has excellent architecture, above average food, and absolutely charming people and nature.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Definitely not cheap for regular Portuguese salaries. Do not take this personally, but people coming from rich countries and driving housing costs to skyrocket aren't getting much love.
  - rmbyrro 4y ago
    Probably depends if you're a Portuguese homeowner or not?
  - rzanella 4y ago
    Definitely, but the golden-visa-inflated-price is different from a working person that buys a reasonably priced house, no ? I mean, regular people are also gonna pay taxes since they actually plan to live, instead of just buying an overpriced place for the visa...
    - 4y ago

nisa 4y ago

Looks like the decline in eastern europe is largely due to economic reasons and people migrate torwards the west? The economic decline in eastern europe after the end of the cold war and the neoliberal privatisation as well as corruption and mismanaged in each economy is something that's not often discussed. Beeing in eastern europe feels sometimes like being in a western colony because most corporations / supermarkets / products are just western products. Also more often than not it's not the place for innovation but rather cheap labor workbenches for western corporations. Not sure if that was a given in the 90ies or wether it was the result of the politics at this time. If anyone can recommend some literature I'd be interested. For the former GDR (also big population loss due to economic reasons) one could argue that at least some industries were killed to avoid competition from western corporations but of course it's difficult to reliable connect cause and effect. Is in the EU eastern nations also this oligarch problem that ukraine/russia inflicted on themselves?

cycomanic 4y ago
While your stereotypes certainly match for some Eastern European countries, they are quite mismatched for some others. I was very surprised about the Baltic countries being high up in the list. They generally have high education, low corruption and are driving innovation. Estonia for example is the country with the best digitalisation in Europe and likely amongst the highest in the world.
- jgilias 4y ago
  They don't take local factors into account at all. The local Russian speakers have emigrated at a larger rate than say ethnic Latvians. So, if they just project past trends to the future they are bound to be wrong. Also, immigration is getting noticeably stronger. And then, the elephant in the room. They don't seem to align these projections with the climate change projections. The Baltics are going to continue to have a hospitable climate with no water availability issues. Unlike most of Southern Europe, and many other places in the world. So, I'd be willing to put my money against these projections turning out correct.
- lnsru 4y ago

pastor_bob 4y ago

Always find Italy the interesting one. Nice place to live but they stopped having kids. Notice a lot of single middle-aged+ women when visiting too.

epolanski 4y ago
Italy has medium salaries combined with high taxes. That's not a good combination. Having children is way too expensive. When the average net salary is around 1400€s per month and 75% of taxpayers are below that how can you afford children? Anyway, I think that shrinking population is healthy for the planet. The problem to solve is financial: how do you sustain so many retirees with a relatively low working-age population? I think there's plenty of solutions, but none of them is capitalism-friendly.
ginnungagap 4y ago
I'm Italian, my PhD in Germany in pure maths is paid 40% more than friends working in Italy with engineering degrees. If I stay in Germany after finishing my degree I could easily make twice the money I could get in Italy regardless of whether I stay in academia or go to industry. Not a strong incentive to go back in the immediate future!

hatsunearu 4y ago

Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world and it's not even in the rankings, what?

Kon-Peki 4y ago
High life expectancy, low rate of emigration. Also, this is a top 20 list, not a list of all countries that are projected to lose population.

pastor_bob 4y ago

I find it interesting that the US is expected to grow indefinitely: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-states-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-states-po... while almost all of the countries in Central and South American that support the US's growth through immigration will plateau and decline: e.g. https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/nicaragua-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/nicaragua-popula... It seems like a fairly optimistic projection for the US's continued success

spywaregorilla 4y ago
I think I'd take that bet. China is on the verge of a big economic struggle with its real estate pyramid scheme games. All of europe is going to struggle with the energy crisis caused by russia. The US is pretty well situated for no particular reason other than other countries are doing poorly.

rufusroflpunch 4y ago

Peter Zeihan seems to think China is in the worst shape by far, and it's not even close.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Official TFR for 2021 in China was 1.15, and China data is always suspect. They didn’t mitigate economic challenges for common prosperity earlier enough, young people are bailing on family formation (for obvious reasons), and it’s likely that their TFR won’t only fall further into the future but also get “locked in.” TLDR China is Speedrunning Japan’s demographic and economic transition/decline.

ganesh7 4y ago

thank god, germany does not have this problem with all the skilled workers coming here from everywhere.

jakozaur 4y ago

Outdated prediction in case of Poland. Already more people immigrate and Russian invasion of Ukraine vastly Increase that trend.

mekster 4y ago
How does Poland handle a sudden inflow of 10% of their population?

bergenty 4y ago

I don’t understand this. India since 2019 has a replacement rate under 2 (1.9). Doesn’t that count as a declining population?

philipkglass 4y ago
People live for many years, so there's a long lag between when total fertility rate drops below replacement and when total population actually declines. For example, Japan's total fertility rate remained below replacement since 1974, but its total population has been consistently shrinking only since 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Vital_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Vital_st...

umeshunni 4y ago

I'm curious about countries that rebounded from declining population. Are there any in the last century?