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'The Problem Index' – Which Countries Have the Worst Demographics
- sdflhasjd 4y agoI know we're not supposed to complain about this, but this page is a prime example of why you shouldn't disable viewport zoom for mobile browsers. The graphs are too small to read by default.
- ge96 4y agoYeah that is odd no pinch zoom
- Flockster 4y agoWorks for me on iOS 16
- quickthrower2 4y agoMe too. Good old browser cat/mouse games!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nohuck13 4y agoOn Android, Settings > Accessibility > Force Enable Zoom overrides this (h/t someone HN when I complained about this too).
- bilekas 4y agoThis is super interesting.. it's doesn't drill into specific fields of "brain drain" although it definitely highlights some problems that need to be addressed. Big surprises from Europe though. But I think it's an easier solve than Asia given the freedom of movement between members. Really interesting read.
- nonethewiser 4y agoThe 1 child policy really does not get enough criticism. Just judging it by itself it tiptoes far too close to genocide and at the least is firmly authoritarian. What’s more, it has amplified a massive humanitarian crisis in the making. It is a slow-played massacre of the sparrows. But with people. Very sad that we all just shrug and grant that it’s some prerogative of government. Oh we can have 3 kids now? What a benevolent government.
- hunglee2 4y agothe data provided in the graph is for Hong Kong, which never had one child policy.
- twelve40 4y agoyeah it's unfortunate that in their drive to plan and centralize everything they overlooked that the reasons why people have kids are not at all economical or even rational anymore. Unlike some type of steel or concrete, you can't just build a child factory and flip a switch to catch up on the 5-year plan. Although who knows, if they really put their mind to it, maybe some kind of massive propaganda campaign like "if you're not having children you are betraying your country" may work? who knows.
- luckylion 4y agoI'm not sure I follow the argument in general. Of course, I understand the idea that, as people live longer and the median age grows, and the elderly aren't working, the younger people in a society have to work more to also care for the elderly. But that feels like it's mostly a theoretical/money-issue (at least in the industrialized nations), because as people age, their consumption also changes. I live in an area with plenty of old people who slowly die off and get replaced by young families. The old folks are low-activity, have at most one car, and even that seems mostly stationary except for the occasional grocery shopping. At the same time, productivity has risen so sharply that it's absolutely not a problem to provide the basics (food, shelter, energy) because we're far away from 20% of the population working in agriculture. Healthcare and elderly care in general becomes an issue, but that feels like it's much more manageable, e.g. we could cut cost and not give hip replacements to 80year-olds. So this feels less like a "omg this can't work, just look at the numbers"-issue and more like a renegotiation of the intergenerational contract. Granted, that's not an easy task either given that the elderly get a vote too, but it's no longer "how would we ever accomplish this" and instead becomes a political issue. Since many elderly are also at the wealthiest stage in their life, I feel like that's not an unsolvable riddle. What am I missing?
- swatcoder 4y agoYou're missing that some people are obsessed with 20th century ideas of boundless economic growth and existential anxiety over falling behind other countries, and genuinely can't fathom that down cycles are necessary and manageable part of any sustainable system.
- nonethewiser 4y agoIt’s not whether or not they can be supported. It’s the overall economic productivity. You can support an elderly population and stagnate/decline.
- junofan 4y agoHealthcare is proving hyperinflationary nearly everywhere in the long run. Revealed preference shows people love spending money on healthcare. People will allocate to healthcare over almost anything else. I don’t think a no hip replacements policy will be very popular.
- pigsty 4y ago> Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world at 0.9 births per woman on average. This data, while making Korea seem like the most rapidly growing population disaster on earth, is actually better than the latest data. Korea is now at 0.78 and falling. [1] I really have to wonder what the lower limit is and when (or if) it’ll ever trend up within our lifetimes. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-22/south-korea-fertility-rate-falls-again-adding-to-economic-risks https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-22/south-kor...
- raspberry1337 4y agoWhat does a a nation do in this situation. "I guess we will just disappear from the earth, goodbye!" Bizarre that North Korea would be the only Koreans left on the peninsula.
- the_omegist 4y ago> Bizarre that North Korea would be the only Koreans left on the peninsula. Why? Because they are the "bad" ones?
- twelve40 4y agoIt's bizarre because presumably a very rich, progressive, westernized society that enjoys a very high standard of living suddenly decided to go the way of the dodo bird, while their frequently ridiculed and otherwise shat-upon neighbors are still trying to hang in there. Although they will probably follow as well, just not there yet.
- the_omegist 4y agoFrom what i know from south korean society (just from testimonies & movies : I am aware this is limited) : people are pressured at work and consummerism and shallow "westernized" culture is the norm... Not what I would call a paradise. Living in a brand new mall is not what humans strive for : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
- rippercushions 4y agoIt's noteworthy that Russia is one of the worst in terms of demographics, yet they're busily slaughtering their youth in Ukraine and driving their remaining talent overseas.
- threeseed 4y agoPutin won't be alive to see the long-term impacts of his choices now. The more damaging to Russia is actually the reports that they may soon be mobilising university students [1]. That would wipe out an entire generation of future business leaders, entrepreneurs, professionals etc. [1] https://news.yahoo.com/russia-prepares-mass-mobilisation-full-075150092.html https://news.yahoo.com/russia-prepares-mass-mobilisation-ful...
- twelve40 4y ago> During the Vietnam War era, between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. military drafted 2.2 million American men out of an eligible pool of 27 million. ^ college students included
- TMWNN 4y agoRelevant: TIL that 30,000 American draft dodgers went to Canada during the Vietnam War, while 30,000 Canadians joined the US military to fight in the Vietnam War <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6o1b3f/til_that_30000_american_draft_dodgers_went_to/ https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6o1b3f/til_th...>
- relativ575 4y ago59,000 American died during 10 years of US's involvement. More than 100,000 Russians and counting have died since the war started exactly a year ago. 20 times the casualty rate.
- twelve40 4y agowhere did you get this number?
- b800h 4y agoThe author seems to curiously soft-pedal the situation in China. Even if we treat the state statistics at face value, they rocket up the chart over the next ten years, and it'll have major implications for world politics.
- threeseed 4y agoThey don't mention India once. A country who is rising and will inevitably be a rival of China.
- b800h 4y agoYes - lots of people teaching their children Mandarin, but Hindi will be much more useful. Funny thing is that in the UK we have far more people to learn it from, but we don't seem to use the resource. Would be good and fun for social integration too, especially given the fact that Hindi and Urdu are almost the same language.
- throwawaysleep 4y agoThe difference is that Indians speak good English.
- readthenotes1 4y agoOr some version thereof I'm not just talking about the lilt. There are also vowel shifts and word choices. English not have a common pronunciation...
- wraptile 4y agoTeaching children business languages seems rather silly at this day and age tbh.
- b800h 4y agoThe point isn't just about business language - it's about participating in a culture. From a soft power perspective, having a large proportion of your population able to interact with another culture makes a lot of sense. India will continue to become more culturally significant and having a handle on that will be valuable.
- swatcoder 4y agoFor all the words and charts, this is a very superficial analysis that (openly) glosses over cultural and regional differences for the sake of making it easy to make graphs and draw conclusions from them. > Alas, we must abstract at some point, and in our case the sensible approach suggests taking as conservative an estimate as we can (and which the data permits). We therefore consider the economically inactive population beginning at 65, and the working age population between 16 and 64. I mean, you do need to "abstract at some point" if you've committed yourself to writing this report, but your report becomes a lot less interesting once you do. And then when it comes to analyzing "solutions", it presupposes migration as if that would be the only meaningful way to weather a lopsided generation. It's a very "this is what it looks like around me, so this is how everybody must have to face it" sort of analysis.
- bilekas 4y ago> it presupposes migration as if that would be the only meaningful way to weather a lopsided generation. Given that you need to maintain and grow infrastructure and services etc while a baby-boom might be happening, also during a 'baby-boom' push demand on social services increases meaning there is a higher demand on Tax spending during that period, so there needs to still be a sufficient workforce already contributing. there doesn't seem like many other options than immigration to as the author says : "Plug the gap" What alternatives would you propose ? > It's a very "this is what it looks like around me, so this is how everybody must have to face it" sort of analysis. I'm really not getting this at all, there is data and examples given world wide. Some examples would be nice.
- komali2 4y ago> Enter the Old Age Dependency Ratio: the ratio of economically inactive elderly people to the working age population. Calling this a loaded proxy understates things – at what point do we define an elderly population to be inactive, and how do we think about the working age population? This would probably not matter as much if we leveraged improved technology and productivity to reduce the need for human labor. Rather it seems industrial (technological) revolutions have increased the number of hours people need to work to survive: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_... This has been coming back down in places like the USA since the late 1800s, but still, why do we all have to work so much to the point that we're starting to worry about "supporting an ageing, nonworking population?"
- idontwantthis 4y agoI don't think it has anything to do with cost or hopelessness. Throughout history people have kept having kids in the worst of situations. Today, people in wealthy secure nations, choose not to have kids (I think) because they just don't want them, and because its easy to not have them. Is there any reason people would start choosing to have more kids once they have the option not to?
- kkoncevicius 4y agoChildren are an asset on a farm and a liability in a city. This alone might be enough to explain these trends.
- swatcoder 4y agoI think the often unstated issue is that westernizing societies have been in a subtle, implicit race to extend childhood and adolescence. An educational arms race demands that young "adults" stay non-productive and dependent for longer and longer, home affordability stretches further out from early career professionals, and parent-child relationships have become increasingly about the parent generously supporting the child as long as they can rather than just seeing them out of the nest safely. These are all cultural shifts that mimic aristocratic lifestyles, but ultimately engender inadequacy and helplessness in young adults who aspire to middle class life and make it a very reasonable choice for them to narrow the window in which they start building a secure family.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bluetomcat 4y agoThis ultimately leads to an increase in the pregnancy age in women, and that unlocks additional second-order effects. Having a first baby at 35 makes it more unlikely that the woman will want and be able to bear a second one. Attention to aging parents may also compete with the possibility for more children. The single child will be given more attention and will grow in a “dust-free” environment. This completes the whole cycle of the cultural shift towards egocentrism.
- glass3 4y agoWith genetic engineering and AI, what's the perspective for regular humans anyway?
- p1esk 4y agoThe problem with the Old Age Dependency Ratio - it doesn’t take into account life expectancy. It can make things look good simply because people die before they reach “retirement age”. For example, in Russia, male life expectancy is 66 years. The ratio in the article starts the old age at 65.
- throwawaysleep 4y agoEconomically, isn’t that desirable, cruel as it is? Like it or not, people who don’t work are a burden on those who do. I’m not saying kill them as I love my grandparents, but having everyone die soon after retiring would fix a lot of the challenges.
- raspberry1337 4y agoThere's a middle between the two. Boomers that live lavishly and consume high amount of resources in retirement, going on global golf trips every other week, compared to a retiree who mostly stays in his house and takes forest walks and reading books have very different economic marks. Also most healthcare is spent in the last 1-2 years in the life of the individual. I saw the system spend so much resources to keep my miserable demented grandma alive for 2 cruel years after she lost her mind. What was the point? She was just in constant pain, emotional and physical. As a culture it should be honorable to chose when we die, go off on our own accord instead of grudgingly push it to the very end. Its unbecoming. Now the system expects my generation, millennials, to bear the boomer retirement economics on our working backs while we cant even afford our own houses. In Sweden, not only retirees but also the 7% (700 000) refugee immigrants that dont work nor contribute. Yea, that's gonna be a no from me pal.
- smolder 4y agoA workforce that dies younger presumably is a less healthy workforce with fewer useful years of work per person. So, it's not necessarily economically desirable.
- hef19898 4y ago
- rgj 4y ago“Taiwan, province of China” ???
- hef19898 4y agoYou don't want to get censored by the human Winnie-Pooh with authoritarian tendencies, do you?
- bilekas 4y agoSorry but where did it say that in the article ? I couldn't find it..
- est 4y agoThe Chinese put that in the ISO-3166 standard. Many statistics tools aggregte data by the ISO two-letter short country code, and automatically shown the full name in output. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes So yeah there's that. Unless the author somehow add an extra "political correctness" step in country name processing
- hunglee2 4y agoit is exactly what it is, even in according to the government on the island of Taiwan, the Republic of China.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- blackoil 4y agoIs there any discussion of impact of savings rate? I am saving with the assumption of having 0 social security. If all stays well, I'll maintain my lifestyle of upper middle class post retirement. My parents did the same, because we actually had 0 social security at their time. We are continuously increasing the efficiency, with improvements in AI/Robotics ... we should be able to reduce the inflation in cost of living.
- the_omegist 4y agoNothing new, here... As we're on a tech oriented website, I am surprised at the purely "sociological/political" perspectives in the comments. If no significant upheaval in westernized societies (à la "mad max"), the cultural norms won't be changed, so the decline in population won't be fought through social/societal means. That's why I am rather intrigued by the future technological consequences of all this : - accelerated automation : some countries might embrace their demographic declien and go all-in (Japan was the model but seems they are stagnating, now...) - new (technical) challenges about how to deal with more and more old people and less youth to do so ("Roujin Z" is a take on this) - where are artificial wombs? Seems sooner or later it might become the de facto standard way of having children, in a (not so?) far enough future...
- cat_plus_plus 4y agoWhy is immigration the only proposed solution and raising birth rate is not considered? Part of it are pragmatic obstacles, such as lack of stable middle class jobs in areas with affordable cost of living. But most of it is bad values among people who can afford to raise 2-3 kids with good living standards already. Current assumptions are that a. 40 is the new 20, meaning that adults continue to party like college kids rather than deriving life meaning from more mature pursuits, b. career success is the only measure of a person's success, c. A child would rather not be born than live a life where not everything is provided on a silver plate. Humanity is not going to die out, but future will belong to cultures that are passed on to another generation. How would folks not willing to budge on these ideals feel if they time traveled to year 2100 and the world was dominated by theocracies that managed to keep their birth rates up?
- timbit42 4y agoMy country is essentially paying all the expenses of parents who have children and we're still not having enough children to keep our population stable. When people were living on farms, more children were an asset. Most people live in cities now, so children are a liability. What do you suggest would encourage people to have more children?
- glass3 4y agoBuild cities where children are safe to roam.
- cat_plus_plus 4y agoIf living in cities is so horrible for human reproductive health that city dwellers are dying out, we should rethink living in cities. Imagine the reaction if pollutant in drinking water did that.
- bee_rider 4y agoWe could think about ways to make it easier to have kids. But it will likely be costly and difficult — having kid means you sign up for at 18 years of drastically altered lifestyle at least! So if we are to try and incentivize people to have kids, we’ll have to convince that there’ll be some stability in the incentives there. It seems much easier to have a kid if one parent is able to stay at home. But that’ll require restructuring the economy for lower labor participation rates. And I guess we’re not going to accept a massive gender imbalance in who stays home nowadays. So as a first step I guess we’ll have to massively rethink men’s role in society, so that we can get up from the paltry 16% of stay at home parents being fathers to more like 50%. All possible but it requires sustained effort. Accepting more immigrants is quite a bit more flexible. And they even show up as adults mostly, so we don’t have to raise them! It is sort of mooching off the rest of the world, but if people want to join, I say let ‘em.
- mikkelrosenvold 4y agoHi guys Author of the article here - really nice thread and we are taking your inputs in! We will do the next installment in our Demographics series next week - any wishes/issues you would like us to take a look at? Best, Mikkel Rosenvold
- mikkelrosenvold 4y agoHi guys Author of the article here - great to see your inputs and discussions. We are doing the next installment in our demographics series next week - any wishes/requests for us to look at? Best, Mikkel Rosenvold
- Wildgoose 4y agoWe need governments to have pro-natal policies and to stop attacking those who do have pro-natal policies, (Hungary comes to mind). The ridiculous (and often artificial) rise in house prices is another problem with real solutions like an end to restrictive zoning laws and the banning of foreign speculators buying accommodation just as a store of funds - some areas of London have huge numbers of empty flats caused by this while at the same time ordinary people are desperate to find somewhere decent to live. People forced into couch-surfing and tiny bedsits aren't going to start families any time soon.
- 6510 4y agoWhat a fantastic article, it perfectly hints but doesn't go deep into each sub topic. To state the perfectly obvious but carefully avoided in the media: If you want to have a great healthcare system you'd better have a lot of babies and/or a lot of immigrants. If you didn't have the required amount of babies you are going to have to have migrants. The quite popular right wing anti-imigration position is actually horrific.