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Over the next few years the working-age population will decline dramatically The demographic winter continues in East Asia. As well as Japan, the other democratic, Western-leaning allies in the region are all facing similar issues: very low fertility rates, low or negative natural population growth and rapidly ageing populations. China is also grappling with these problems, […]
Sorry to disappoint, but today will feature news not of the Wuflu variety. Instead, I wanted to bring you another update in Japan’s steady population decline. Perhaps it is no surprise, but for the ninth year running the Japanese population has declined. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, at the beginning of October last year […]
Population density and the proportion of society that is elderly quickly emerged as significant factors in the spread of COVID-19. Social distancing has been widely used as an effective way to avoid transmission, but is complex to implement in a very densely populated city without draconian government action. More than 55 percent of the world’s population is thought to […]
Spoiler: Today’s blogpost has nothing to do with the Wuhan Flu. Sorry to disappoint… Almost a year ago I wrote a piece about the demographic problems that Hungary was facing. (Doesn’t time fly! I can remember writing this piece in our lounge after the kids had gone to bed – I was probably worried about some work […]
President Putin moves to support traditional marriage by adding it to the Russian constitution and, predictably, the UK’s ‘impartial public service broadcaster’ paints it in as negative a light as possible. Apparently unable to accept that another country might hold different values from their own, the BBC insist it cannot be to do ‘with reflecting current values […]
Spain has appointed its first ever demography minister, a move which follows the appointment of the first Commissioner for Demography by the European Union. A large part of their respective roles will be to attempt to manage widespread depopulation. The European Union’s free movement policy has resulted in some member states struggling to fill their […]
This year is a big year for the USA. What happens in 2020 will shape the course of the country for years to come with far-reaching political and economic effects. Of course, I am talking about the decennial census which is being held this year. Although the official “Census Day” (I wonder if they make […]
When France won the 2018 FIFA World Cup, a running joke developed that it was the African Union that had actually won. This was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that more than half of the French team was made up of players of African heritage. “Not all of those folks look like Gauls to […]
As you may have noticed, the last three years or so has seen the UK consumed with the ins and outs, the minutiae and meanderings of some little thing called Brexit. Now, it seems as if it has really happened, and the UK has actually left the EU. Of course there is still a long […]
The world’s major economies are being hit hard by demographic change. From China to Europe, they may well grow old before they grow any richer. Over the next three decades, the global number of older persons is projected to more than double, reaching over 1.5 billion persons in 2050. Currently, Eastern and South-Eastern Asia are home to the […]
A couple of weeks ago we discussed different strategies that European countries are taking to increase their birth rates and thus their natural population growth. Most European countries have very low birth rates and are relying on migration to keep their populations from declining. Some countries have tried cash incentives or tax breaks for parents, others have […]
The demographic news from Italy remains bad. It has in fact got worse; so bad that the President, Sergio Mattarella, has recently described it as a “problem that concerns the existence of our country”. When the head of state of your country comes out and says that the lack of babies in your country is an existential […]
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