China's depopulation

Is it really a big deal?

As is not the norm, I’m gonna mostly leave this NOTW right here with little comment. All I’ll say for now is that US demographic exceptionalism isn’t really a thing any more and before US political elites start dogging on China or Russia for their population aging, they might want to take a closer look at home. More on this to come…

The Times of London reported that China’s population was set to decline this year, a decade earlier than previously forecast. I realize this is the type of headline we’re supposed to ring the alarm bells about, but as always, my political science training wags a finger to say HOLD ON. Let’s put this depopulation in context and maybe even flip the common script... Are congratulations in order? After all, China is joining an elite club of some of the world’s most powerful and highest-income states—across Europe and East Asia, about 2 dozen countries will have shrinking populations over the next few years.* The thing to remember is that depopulation and aging won’t have the same effects across that set.

Headlines about depopulation or aging are giving us a snapshot and as a political scientist, I know that a snapshot of population doesn’t tell us anything about the context. I’ve been sharing this slide on my book tour lately (with all of the data from the UN 2019 WPP):

Here’s what you should notice: The US, Russia, and China have a lot in common when it comes to age structure (squint your eyes and you can see the same general shape to the populations). The biggest differences are actually what we don’t see, the institutions, and if I’m comparing the three I’m bearish on the US—not China—for several reasons. Here are just two. First, the Chinese government has very few entitlements obligations for its aging population. The private sector has been kicking in somewhat but there’s lots of informal employment so coverage is low. Population aging in China isn’t going to look like population aging in the US where the state has extensive obligations. And second, the rules of the game mean the US government will be more responsive to the demands of the population (i.e., keeping those entitlement promises) than the Chinese government (which won’t bend to drastically expand entitlements). A paper I coauthored with my Rhodes colleague Kai Chen looks at the importance of institutions in aging states and I think is instructive here.

Depopulation is interesting in part because as a widespread phenomenon it’s new. But, we have to remember that no demographic trend is inherently good or bad and context—institutions—matters.

* If you like to be exact, and I do, that’s 25 countries across these two regions with a projected population loss between 2020 and 2024 using UN data. The actual numbers will probably be higher because of COVID (from lower fertility, mortality, and migration), which wasn’t factored into those projections, but the list may be different (with some gains from an influx of Ukrainians…Poland was set to lose but of course has gained millions of Ukrainians here in the short term).

Fellow political demographer Monica Duffy Toft, of the Tufts Fletcher School, observed that most of the recent civil wars had a religious component, Islam in particular, prompting her to ask whether Muslim/Arab Muslim societies might be more prone to religious strife. More generally, she investigates whether the causes and consequences of religious civil wars different from non-religious civil wars. Publishing in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Toft finds that yes, religion matters for civil war, particularly Islam. She says, “In MENA, religious civil wars now outnumber non-religious civil war by a ratio of four-to-one. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the ratio is five-to-zero; in East Asia, three-to-one.” One takeaway is that the devil is in the details (no pun intended), meaning how we classify the role of religion in these conflicts matters for what we ultimately find. And if you need a quick reference to the literature on religion and civil conflict you’ll find Toft’s compilation useful. These findings are sure to add fuel to fiery debates over religion and war!

This week’s follow is environmental reporter Adam Vaughan. If you love data (and all of my subscribers do or else you wouldn’t be here) plus context you’ll appreciate his Twitter feed and articles as much as I do. This newsletter on how deforestation has improved in Indonesia (yay!) and what lessons that offers for Brazil may make it onto my Environment and Society course syllabus.