8 Billion and Counting by Jennifer D. Sciubba

Author:Jennifer D. Sciubba
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

Malthus versus Marx

We’ve encountered numerous examples of governments trying to achieve what they see as an ideal population through pro-natalist or anti-natalist initiatives, health improvements, and migration policies. Some of this is in the name of identity politics, as we just saw in Chapter 5, but many times there’s an economic motivation behind such measures. States are often chasing a demographic sweet spot known as the “window of opportunity.” If high fertility leads to a youth population that is “too big” and low fertility leads to a working-age population that is “too small,” how can states achieve population dynamics that are “just right” for conditions of economic growth and improvements in quality of life? In other words, how do demographics accelerate or hinder economic development? Age structure is one of the major factors that creates conditions for improvements in quality of life and economic growth. Population distribution between urban and rural areas is another. And these two demographic dynamics are tied, as those global regions with the youngest populations are for the most part the least urbanized.

Generally, we say that the demographic window of opportunity opens after a period of declining fertility when children under age 15 are less than 30 percent of the total population, and seniors age 65 and above are under 15 percent. During this time, median age is around 26 to 40 years. While the window is open states see a dividend in health, education, economic growth, and political stability. Commonly, scholars refer to the benefit that can result from this shift in age structure as the “demographic dividend,” defined as when the productive population grows at a faster rate than the total population and the income per capita growth rate increases. Think about it as growth in the proportion of the population that is economically productive, pays taxes, participates in politics, and serves in the military, compared to the proportion that has aged out of (or is not yet in) the workforce and is possibly dependent. But as anyone who has a bank savings account knows, you only reap a dividend if you invest. The demographic dividend is no different.

Ireland had the right policies in place to take advantage of its window of opportunity, starting with a more open economy in the 1950s, when the government encouraged foreign direct investment (FDI) and promoted exports, and free secondary education starting in the mid-1960s. During its demographic bonus years, the “Irish Tiger” had relatively high per capita increases compared to other European economies—3.5 percent a year growth from 1960 to 1990 and 5.8 percent during the 1990s. Child mortality (under age 5) plummeted from 49 per 1,000 in 1950 to 7 by the end of the century.

The so-called Asian Tigers—Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore—are also classic cases of taking advantage of the window of opportunity. During the 1960s and 1970s, they instituted family-planning programs and invested in educating their shrinking number of children. Governments in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia promoted literacy

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