Demographics: More People Over 65 Than Under Five

This new demographic will change everything in the economies of the world. There are now more people over 65 than there are less the five.

When this is discussed, especially by anti abortion operatives, Japan is pointed to as an example of what might be in store for other countries like the U.S. because of its large percentage of retired citizens. That may well be.

The birthrate world wide is now low enough so that in a few decades total world population will began to drop. Until then it will continue to grow. To me, the world's population is now so high it is difficult to imagine an additional few percentages of growth. Any rational assessment of the effect of humans on the earths health can see we now have too many humans.

There are various effects of lower numbers of births that are easy to predict. Everyone can see that more people drawing social security and fewer people paying in will either raise the Social Security tax or reduce the Social Security paid out or some combination of the two. Medicare will see the same thing.

There are other things to speculate about. Older people do not change their tastes and preferences as rapidly. That might mean a slowing of new products and new kinds of technology because the market volume needed may not be there.

All of these issues have come to the fore in Japan. It is not experiencing economic growth as measured by Net National Product. It is not cranking out new products and technology as it once did.

There is no reason to believe per capita economic growth is the most important goal for a society. To most of us the goal is to be as happy as our lives allow us to be. For nearly all of human history, until quite recently, there was little or no per captia income growth.

It seems to me the problems of no population growth are smaller than those of growth.