The board meeting I attended yesterday was long but it started with an utterly fascinating lecture by the well-known demographer, Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. I heard him present something in the 1990s on China’s population but it did not register with me as yesterday’s presentation. I cannot share Dr. Eberstadt’s slides but I want to focus on a few nuggets.
Remember, I am not arguing in support of or opposition to anyone’s politics, social policies, or anything else. I am merely registering one of the starkest indications I have ever heard of actions creating consequences, even if it’s decades in the making. One of the more understated reminders he noted was that, unlike prior periods, this ‘depopulation’ process is voluntary; it occurred because of policies and human preferences rather than warfare or a plague.
Dr. Eberstadt began by reminding all of us that Eastern (Taiwan, PRC, Japan, Republic of Korea and DPRK) Asia’s current population is well over 1.6 billion (the PRC alone claims the number is 1.4 billion) folks while ours is a nudge under 400 million: a huge difference as of 2024, of course. Three quarters of a century from now, Asia’s population statistic will be 45% lower while ours 17% greater, due to immigration rather than babymaking as such. That is a startling statistic which will drive so many others.
The initial cause of the decline is that this generation is falling substantially below the number of births necessary for replacing population as it is. In particular, the South Koreans (who knows what is going on north of the DMZ?) are 58% below replacement level, according to Dr. Eberstadt. That is eye-watering. China is hardly better at 48% with Taiwan nearly identical (46%). Japan is actually a little better at nearing the replacement levels than others but at 37%, those in Japan are hardly racing to the delivery room. Russia, which Dr. Eberstadt did discuss often in his presentation, is 28% below replacement level while the good old USA is 20% below. We are only able to expand our population, virtually a novelty in so much of the world, through immigration.
At this juncture I asked him whether India falls in a different position, confident he would tell me that huge South Asian democracy was still facing a huge population bulge. And I was wrong: neither India nor Bangladesh are still growing but falling behind in replacement levels. Hmmm.
Depopulation, a term he actually used, began for the Ruskias fully 30 years ago with births outstripped by deaths as early as 1992. Many of us heard in 1994 that Japan’s working age population, defined as those between 15 and 64, peaked but who would have expected Russia (2010), China (2015), Taiwan (2016) and South Korea (2017) to peak?
Think about those dates. Vlad the Impaler’s initial foray into eastern Ukraine was four years later. I have no evidence but wonder if a man obsessed with Russian cultural greatness realised that time was definitely not on his side to recreate a Czarist or Soviet empire, leading him to react?
Xi took power in 2012 but I first heard from at a 2007 conference in Tokyo that China’s population was slowing substantially, soon to reach a crisis. Is Xi Jinping’s concern about China’s peak power not as directly related to U.S. actions as to his own capacity to raise a work force and a PLA?
The outlier, of course, is Taiwan which suffers precisely the same declines coincident with those of Beijing yet it does not seem to galvanise behaviour—either to increase the population (Taiwan most definitely is a society where many women work successfully with high expectations) or to prepare for an anxious PRC. It may be that Taiwan is finally taking steps to address the PLA threat but, as you well know, I am still not convinced. Population numbers definitely do not favour the island for a greater military.
Eastern Asian will have far fewer sons and daughters for their wars in the future—period. In societies with a distinct preference for continuing the family line through the sons, how will this affect any family’s preference that the son in a one child family actually fight for his country? How about the daughter fighting for the country if it further decreases national capacity to bear children? These are not some futuristic novel plot but a challenge each of the regimes faces today. Will this accelerate conflict or give pause to anyone further eroding population through the death of war? Remember, whatever Vlad the Impaler’s kooky fusion of Russian Orthodox religious fervour and hatred for Ukrainians, he is currently further decimating Russia’s ability to produce future generations with the callous Russian deaths by hundreds of thousands on the front in Ukraine. Then again, to be blunt, the future is not an appealing for one those who live in Russia under a mediocre economy dependent on selling carbon products undermining the globe in other ways and a megalomaniac. But, one has to wonder whether Putin’s determination to pursue the Ukraine war isn’t partially based on demographic realities he knows. His ‘have babies’ campaign, like Xi’s in China, has failed for two decades.
Dr. Eberstadt’s statistics had other nuggets but they also included painful personal realities for Eastern Asia. One particularly poignant slide noted the ‘epidemic of childlessness’ for the region. For women born between 1935 and 1990, fully half of women in Japan will never have a grandchild and more than one out of every three will remain childless throughout her life. Coupled with the skyrocketing relative phenomenon of seniors in that country (and Eastern Asia), one could see a fundamental societal challenge of loneliness and caretaking issues. If projections are correct that Alzheimer’s emerges to some degree from social isolation, these statistics on women and their links in society are devastating.
Why is the United States so different? Our population, as noted, is still growing. We do not confront the declining number of workers between 15 and 64. Our social isolation issues result from personal choices as much as other circumstances. The key remains that immigrants come into this country, addressing the deficits growing elsewhere.
Let me be clear: Dr. Eberstadt (and I in this column) did not mention the adjective legal or illegal in discussing immigration. His was a population brief based on the field of demography while I am recounting it, highlighting some implications. I am not supporting the immigration patterns we have nor am I condemning them; I am noting them as facts.
Earlier this afternoon perhaps one of our most loyal readers sent me a response about one of the Ukraine columns recently, opining the border security question was the heart of Republican concerns about Ukraine aid. If you recall, about two months ago, Republicans refused to consider the Ukraine question because they said it wasn’t as high a priority as fixing the border disarray we have discussed several times. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, a conservative’s conservative Republican, negotiated with Democrats to build a new border bill. I fully understand that many, including our noted reader, found the bill insufficient. Former president Trump made clear he wanted to run on the immigration issue in his quest to return to the White House. Republicans abandoned the Lankford bill as insufficient but ultimately the Ukraine question passed the Senate’s scrutiny this week.
When I see the statistics about immigration fueling our economic growth and providing demographic stability for the United States into the century, I have to wonder if those genuinely, seriously fearful of illegals bringing disease, violence, and ‘not waiting their turn’ are being played by other folks using immigration purely for partisan arguments. If the border issues are that dangerous, then any improvement—acknowledged to be slight, at best—is an improvement yet the front pages of the four newspapers I read daily (three national and one local) are no longer talking about immigration. Former president Trump is otherwise engaged, Speaker Johnson has moved on, and Senator Lankford appears burned by his entire experience. What happened to the urgency for them?
I am not minimising safety. I am not ignoring concerns but I do know that immigrants are fueling our continued economic growth. I also know that we are currently in a stronger position than many of our friends—and foes. Far from perfect but stronger.
Thoughts? Rebuttals? Suggested steps on demographics? I genuinely want to hear from you. I read your comments carefully, often incorporating them into my thinking. (No, Susan, I don’t know how people will make it without chocolate….) and I certainly am not always correct by any stretch.
Thank you for reading this column. My entire goal is to expand measured, civil discussion, with a wee bit of whimsy sprinkled in for a break occasionally. Thank you for those who are subscribers, my heroes and heroines.
It was cloudy this morning but we have a new sailboat neighbour and some sun this afternoon. Yea!
Be well and be safe. FIN
Nicholas Eberstadt, ‘Demographics in Eastern Asia’, presentation, 23 April 2024
Jack Kelly, ‘How Immigrants are Boosting Economic and Job Growth’, Forbes.com, 20 Match 2024, retrieved at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2024/03/20/how-immigrants-are-boosting-us-economic-and-job-growth/?sh=4e851ca17aaa