Tag Archives: demographic change

A Face That Launched A Thousand Ships

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An unlikely Helen, Spain’s deputy prime minister, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, that’s for sure. Yet outside a few thousand years difference in timing the two seem to have been cut out for one and the same the same historical role: urging the boats to go back. Indeed the only thing which really separates them might be the magnitude of the problem to hand, since Coalición Canaria president Paulino Rivero suggested this weekend that what might be involved were not a mere 1,000 ships, but anything between 10,000 and 15,000 currently being built along the Mauritanian and Senegalese coastlines.

Joking aside this post is about tragedy, a human tragedy. According to the NGOs who are involved some 3,000 people have already died in attempting to make the hazardous crossing, a crossing which was actually completed over this weekend by a record 1,200 people in 36 hours.

As well as tragedy the post is also about folly, the folly of those economists who think low fertility isn’t an important economic issue. This opinion was recently expressed by respected US economist Greg Mankiw, (on his blog) who described the very idea that it might be as ‘wrong headed’ and, to boot, suggested that a poll of the world’s top ten economists would draw a blank on names who thought that low fertility was among Europe’s major economic problems. I am sure Mankiw is right about the poll, and this is why I use the expression ‘folly’. So what do I mean?
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Demography Matters

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Well as everyone who reads Afoe assiduously already knows this is my opininion: demography does matter. And now this is doubly official as some of us demography enthusiasts have just set up the demography matters weblog. This does not mean that you, gentle readers, will now be completely spared, but it does probably mean that my Afoe posting may become a little less ‘monothematic’ given that I now have another outlet from which to vent my obsessions.

All Gas Or Just Hot Air?

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This is a kind of bits-and-bobs post without a lot of coherence, as I am trying to make sense of something which is hard to make sense of, so anyone with more specialist knowledge, please chip-in.

Now I think what we have here is a highly complex situation, and if individual actors behave strangely in a complex situation, this should not in fact surprise us. The big picture scenario is the economic take-off of what are going to be two enormous energy consumers – India and China – and a growing per-capita consumption of energy in the rest of the OECD towards the previous US ‘highs’. This has lead to a large and significant increase in oil prices, and the rest of what is happening can be seen as the scrum which has assembled in the wake.

Now what else do we know?
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Bo Malmberg and Evo Morales

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Bo Malmberg is a demographer and he works at the Stockholm-based Institute For Future Studies. Evo Morales is the ‘flamante’ President of Bolivia. OK, this much is clear, now where’s the connection?

Well, Brad Delong says of Morales’ election, citing Pyrrhus of Epirus, Another Such Victory and We Are Lost, while the Financial Times informs us that the result of the election is likely to cause consternation in the United States.

However, rather than allowing ourselves to fall victim to too much schadenfreude, maybe we would better employ our energies trying to understand why Morales is happening, and why right now. This is where Bo Malmberg comes in handy.
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Wolfgang Lutz and the Low Fertility Trap

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Back in July I published a post about Austrian demographer Wolfgang Lutz’s hypothesis that those countries which sustain total fertility rates below 1.5 for any length of time may have fallen into a self-reinforcing low-fertility trap. Old Rottenhat (Ray to his friends) argued in comments that I had explained the reasons for the existence of low fertility but that I had not justified the idea that this was a ‘trap’. Old Rottenhat was right, and taking advantage of the fact that Lutz himself has now given a fuller outline of the hypothesis at the recent Postponement of Childbearing in Europe Conference (see presentation) I will now try and remedy this lacuna.

So here finally Ray, is your reply: I hope it is something which indeed goes beyond the obvious.
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Getting Old Before Getting Rich

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This is definitely about to become the new ‘meme’ about China. Actually it is reasonably valid. China’s ‘demographic shocks’ which come principally from the great famine produced at the time of the cultural revolution, and then from the subsequent one-child policy, are undoubtedly going to have significant consequences. Today UK Tory front bench spokesman on Trade and Industry David Willetts has a piece on the topic in the FT (subscription only unfortunately):

One reason for China’s stellar growth is that it is at a demographic sweet-spot. The massive reduction in infant mortality achieved by China’s barefoot doctors in the 1960s and 1970s is now yielding a surge of young workers – an extra 10m working-age adults per year. China’s challenge now is just to absorb them into the labour force. Add to that the massive population flow from the countryside and you can see why wages are low and growth is so fast. There are few pensioners and there are not many children either. The rabbit is indeed in the middle of the python.

If you are frustrated by your inability to read more, and are willing to hack it through a more academic paper on the same theme, then can I recommend “Demographic Dividend and prospects for economic development in China” by Wang Feng, of the University of California Irvine and Andrew Mason, of the University of Hawaii. The paper was presented at the recent (August 2005) UN experts meeting on ageing.

Update: New Economist has a fuller version of the Willets piece online.

A Certain Irony

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In a post back in May about the bloody repression in Uzbekistan I noted that Crooked Timber’s John Quiggin was suggesting that US troops should be withdrawn immediately (I didn’t agree if you read the post). Well he seems to have got his way, and the reasoning behind the Uzbekistan parliament decision is of course interesting. The parliament has backed a government order which gives the United States six months to vacate the Karshi-Khanabad airbase. The suggestion is that this order is not entirely unconnected with the U.S. decision to join international demands for an independent investigation into May’s bloody crackdown.

While I’m up posting on Uzbekistan,
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Confronting Demographic Change

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Confronting Demographic Change is the title of a two day conference currently being organised by Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Commissioner Vladimir Spidla. The emphasis of the conference is on gender and family impact issues.

You can find a background briefing paper here.

This is also an interesting presentation.

Here’s a summary of the objectives. It’s very ‘commission speak’ of course, but at least it marks a growing recognition of the problems we are all going to face. I’m also intrigued by something: “Demographic changes, globalisation and rapid technological change are the three major challenges facing Europe today”. I’m intrigued to know when the hell they figured this out, especially since (if for globalisation you read China) it is something I have been arguing for over five years now, in this precise combination.
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Unified Growth Theory

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According to Oded Galor it has become evident that in the absence of a unified growth theory that is consistent with the entire process of development, the understanding of the contemporary growth process would be limited and distorted. He quote Copernicus to the effect that:

?It is as though an artist were to gather the hands, feet, head and other members for his images from diverse models, each part perfectly drawn, but not related to a single body, and since they in no way match each other, the result would be monster rather than man.?
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Something Worries Me About Peter Bofinger

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Really I realise I have been remiss in another important sense. I have long assumed that in fact the decision to reduce deficits was taken due to the coming fiscal pressure from ageing. This certainly was the background to the discussion. However now I look at the details of the SPG this area is not mentioned (as far as I can see) and the other – the free rider and associated – is the principal consideration.

So those who criticize the bureaucratic and infexible nature of the ECB are in the right to this extent. Of course the underlying demographics *should* be part of the pact, but that is another story.

I find myself in a tricky situation, since I am deeply sceptical that the euro can work, and now after the French vote even more so, but since it has been set in motion, the best thing is obviously to try and make it work (even while doubting). So I am thinking about all this. Obviously I should try and write a longer post making this clearer.

The SGP was adopted at the Amsterdam Council 1997. A history of the implementation of the pact, and a summary of the debate over the new pact can be found here. The Stability and Growth Pact was designed as a framework to prevent inflationary processes at the national level. For this purpose it obliges national governments to follow the simple rule of a balanced budget or a slight surplus.

Now if we go back to the origins of the pact, to the communication of the European Commission on 3 September 2004, you will find the following:

“As regards the debt criterion, the revised Stability and Growth Pact could clarify the basis for assessing the “satisfactory pace” of debt reduction provided for in Article 104(2)(b) of the Treaty. In defining this “satisfactory pace”, account should be taken of the need to bring debt levels back down to prudent levels before demographic ageing has an impact on economic and social developments in Member States. Member States’ initial debt levels and their potential growth levels should also be considered. Annual assessments could be made relative to this reference pace of reduction, taking into account country-specific growth conditions.”

Now curiously I have found nothing in Bofingers argument which seems even to vaguely recognise this background.

A good starting point for this topic would be the conference “Economic and Budgetary Implications of Global Ageing held by the Commission in March 2003.

The European Council in Stockholm of March 2001
agreed that ?the Council should regularly review the
long-term sustainability of public finances, including the
expected strains caused by the demographic changes
ahead. This should be done both under the guidelines
(BEPGs) and in the context of the stability and
convergence programmes.?

This document on the history of EU thinking on ageing and sustainability is incredible.
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