It's a small world after all
China is not the only shrinking country. These others may surprise you.
China made news last week for its historic depopulation shift, but China is not alone. Here are five other countries already shrinking or well on their way and why this historic shift matters.
(Data are from the Population Reference Bureau unless otherwise indicated.)
1. Germany—
Record net immigration propped up Germany’s population in 2022, giving the country positive growth of 1.1 million after no growth the prior two years. Along with Japan and Italy, Germany was the vanguard of population aging as one of the first three countries to achieve a median age of 40 at the turn of this century. With robust immigration and a fertility rate that’s below replacement but not too low suggests Germany as a possible model for countries that want to maintain flat population size or slow depopulation. Of course, immigration has its own social and political consequences, which is why Japan has chosen a different route. Sweden’s more open response to the 2015-16 migrant surge was answered by a nationalist, far-right government coming to power.
Life expectancy at birth: 81 years
Rate of natural increase: -0.3%
Population 2022: 83.3 million
Population loss by 2050: 3.5 million
Total fertility rate: 1.6
2. Cuba—
Cuba is known for its health initiatives, and universal access to medical care has also meant easy access to contraception and free abortion. Combined with a socialist emphasis on women’s paid work outside the home—but low pay—housing shortages, and high costs of some basic necessities for childrearing, births in Cuba have become rarer. Cuba also sends more emigrants abroad than any other Caribbean country, but of course it also has a relatively larger population (along with Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which have similarly sized populations), and takes in displaced populations from the region.
Life expectancy at birth: 74 years
Rate of natural increase: -0.6%
Population 2022: 11.1 million
Population loss by 2050: 1.2 million
Total fertility rate: 1.5
3. Hungary—
Hungary is an example of a country that managed to raise its super low fertility to just regular ole low fertility. How? By spending over 5% of its GDP (remember, NATO has had a hard time getting member states to spend 2% on defense). When Orban came to power Hungary’s total fertility rate was just 1.2 children per woman on average, but his cabinet focused on “family friendly” policies. Any woman who gives birth before the age of 30 is exempt from paying personal income taxes FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE. To me, that shows Hungary doubling down on the model of women staying home with children while men hold the breadwinning job. The interaction between gender norms and labor market conditions is complicated (if you have my newest book, check out page 67 for more on this). Migration has been important for Hungary’s population story, too. Hungary has managed to stem its outflow of migrants seeking better economic opportunities elsewhere in Europe and was itself a major recipient of displaced Ukrainians after the 2022 Russian invasion. An estimated 2.4 million people crossed into Hungary from Ukraine between February and August 2022. Yet, they’re known for a generally anti-immigrant attitude. Hungary’s rate of natural increase is the same for Eastern Europe as a whole, a shrinking region.
Life expectancy at birth: 76 years
Rate of natural increase: -0.6%
Population 2022: 9.7 million
Population loss by 2050: 0.5 million
Total fertility rate: 1.5
4. Thailand—
Thailand’s fertility decline was one of the most rapid in history, falling from 6 to 7 children per woman on average to lower than replacement level in just one generation. The country reached below replacement fertility in the 1980s, yet I never see Thailand discussed in the roster of low-fertility, aging countries. The country is known as a model for an effective, national family planning program. Already, 22% of the population is above age 60, and in just a decade that same percentage will be over 65, according to UN data.
Life expectancy at birth: 77 years
Rate of natural increase: 0.2%
Population 2022: 66.8 million
Population loss by 2050: 3.6 million
Total fertility rate: 1.5
5. North Korea—
Information on North Korea is of course hard to come by, but demographers calculate their fertility as higher than their neighbor to the south. Given that South Korea’s fertility is one of the world’s lowest, hovering around 1 child per woman (I’ve seen even lower estimates), that’s not difficult. North Korea’s leaders are pronatalist, calling motherhood a “duty to the nation” like many other authoritarian, low-fertility countries. But, don’t assume aging populations will look the same in both North and South Korea. According to an assessment from PRB several years ago, two-thirds of households in North Korea consist of extended families, so elderly can be supported at home, alleviating the burden on the state.
Life expectancy at birth: 74 years
Rate of natural increase: +0.4%
Population 2022: 26.1 million
Population loss by 2050: 0.3 million
Total fertility rate: 1.8
So what?
Collectively, we have spent little time studying how the politics and economics of aging differs in countries outside of Japan and those in Europe. That’s been one focus of my scholarship and I’ve found that a country’s institutions determine how it will fare in the face of aging. In liberal democracies, the type of party system and the role of interest groups in policymaking create different pressures for the emergence of age-based interests by articulating these interests in different ways. For example, the ability of interest groups to influence policy in the United States may mean that policies that favor the elderly at the expense of other generations—and economic growth in general—are more likely to continue there than in states where interest groups have a more limited role. Democratic leaders must factor in the demands of various interest groups and the power of voters, whereas illiberal governments can ignore some of these demands. On the latter, one extreme example is China’s general lack of pensions and healthcare coverage for seniors—there are few formal avenues for these seniors to voice their grievances at being left out. China could follow in Singapore’s footsteps and keep the onus for elder care on the family—good for the state, but not always for individuals.
This kind of nuanced theorizing and study is important because the “second wave” of aging and shrinking states—including some of those you see above—is far less pluralistic than the first wave of aging states. Not every country with an aging and shrinking population is concerned about their shifting demography because they need youth to prop up their welfare state, because not every aging and shrinking country has a welfare state. Still, these countries worry about reduced consumer demand, labor shortages, and stagnation.
There are differences among democracies, too. Japan, under the one-party dominant rule of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) during the 1990s until the system started to break down in the mid-to-late-2000s, is a useful example of aging politics in a less inclusive democracy. Japan began instituting measures to keep its older workers from exiting the workforce at younger ages much earlier than aging European states did.Because the LDP dominated Japanese politics at that time the government faced little opposition for those measures.
By the way, it is not true that the only aging (and eventually) shrinking states thus far have been wealthy ones, as Eastern Europe’s experience this century shows. However, the pattern of the most successful emerging markets is that they have relied on an abundance of cheap labor to manufacture their way into economic growth. That’s where much of the concern comes from with this new set of aging and shrinking countries, that “second wave.” We need much more research to understand the variety of ways states adapt to their shifting demographics as the aging and shrinking trend spreads to new settings.
· Biden proposes first update to federal race and ethnicity categories in a quarter century (which is not that long) for surveys and censuses. People already self-identify, and that leads to some interesting results when it comes to enumerating differences in the US. The new proposal recommends asking a combined question about race and ethnicity instead of the current separate questions and proposes adding a category for people who identify as Middle Eastern or North African, instead of asking them to identify as White, as before.
· The EU saw 924,000 asylum applications in 2022, 50% higher than in 2021. Of those denied asylum, only about 20% are sent home.
The world is changing very rapidly!!