Regular readers of these pages will know that the declining birthrate in western countries is a regular topic of conversation, and something that my colleague Niamh in particular turns to very regularly. She is, of course, right to do that, if for no other reason than that declining birth rates are undermining the very basis of the welfare state. If current population trends were to continue, then every western country – and some very big non-western ones like Japan and South Korea whose crisis is much more advanced – will see their pension system collapse under the strain of having too many old people and not enough young people to cover the costs.
That said, demographics is, I think, sort of the political right’s version of Climate Change. Our friends on the left have been dancing up and down about climate change for decades and are, in reality, no closer to the kind of transformational changes that they’ve demanded. In large part, I think, because climate change is a conceptual future problem, but driving to work tomorrow is a more immediate problem.
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