China demographics thread.

[Lethe]

Or maybe in 50 years the vast majority of the world is dead because not only has it turned into a nuclear wasteland, climate change has heated up most of the world so its impossible to thrive. I never understood how people are so confident of whats going to happen into a 100 years when they can't even properly see what happens in the next 20 alone. India now has below replacement rates. I wonder how people saw that coming 20 years ago or hell even just 5 years ago.

The first edition of the UN World Population Prospects, published in 1992, projected that India's total fertility rate would decline to replacement level during the 2015-2020 period. In the latest (2022) revision of the WPP, it is estimated that this occurred in 2020. That's a near bullseye from 30 years out. Contrary to popular scepticism, demographics can be modelled decades in advance, with useful levels of accuracy.

In 1992, UNWPP-Medium projected that India's population in 2020 would be 1329m. In 2022, UNWPP estimated that India's population in 2020 was 1390m. That's a 5% margin of error over 28 years, which is more than adequate for the purposes of these kinds of discussion.

WPP2024 will be released 11th July.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

1. Japan has failed in every emerging technology, in some of which it even had early lead. US is not the reason why Japanese firms are so conservative. US is not the reason why Japan is atrocious in even basic software.
2. Similarly US is not the reason why Japan is nowhere in AI, drones, modern robotics (not the traditional industrial robots, I mean AMRs, humanoids, smart vacuum cleaners etc.) solar panels etc.
3. Even the Japanese admit today that skewed demographics plays a role in them falling behind in emerging technologies, because the old simply don't want to change. This is the reason why floppy disks are still used in Japan today! When half of your population is above 48.5, the market dynamics favor the old and the conservative.

If you even have a modicum of understanding of Japanese corporate culture and corporate governance you would understand the failure of Japanese companies to innovate has nothing to do with demographics. Frankly it's atrocious how Japanese firms waste so much of the high quality human capital Japan had been blessed with. Despite being the first to modernize (and perhaps partially as a result of), Japan is actually the East Asian nation that truly struggles with innovation, being held back by their completely backwards and archaic corporate culture.

 

[Randomuser]

The first edition of the UN World Population Prospects, published in 1992, projected that India's total fertility rate would decline to replacement level during the 2015-2020 period. In the latest (2022) revision of the WPP, it is estimated that this occurred in 2020. That's a near bullseye from 30 years out. Contrary to popular scepticism, demographics can be modelled decades in advance, with useful levels of accuracy.

In 1992, UNWPP-Medium projected that India's population in 2020 would be 1329m. In 2022, UNWPP estimated that India's population in 2020 was 1390m. That's a 5% margin of error over 28 years, which is more than adequate for the purposes of these kinds of discussion.

WPP2024 will be released 11th July.

You referring to this? Not sure I can totally agree on the accuracy for this given how things are turning out.

This isn't even accounting for stuff like a Ukraine happening in each country.

 

[Lethe]

View attachment 131434
You referring to this? Not sure I can totally agree on the accuracy for this given how things are turning out.

I was referring to the 1992 revision which is the earliest listed on the

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page here, but the document you have linked is even better. It shows that the UN WPP demographers in 1980 correctly projected (in the Medium i.e. baseline series) that India's TFR would decline to replacement level by 2020, some 40 years in advance! They also correctly identified that China's TFR would be well below replacement level in the same timeframe.

Clearly there are significant discrepancies, and the uncertainty increases over time such that, even without "black swan" events that the models cannot possibly capture, truly long-term projections are indeed of dubious value. But what we are typically interested in are the general trends unfolding over the medium-term (i.e. the next 10-30 years), and for those purposes models like the UN WPP's are indeed quite useful, and I think the historical data from previous projections that you and I have each linked to bears that out.

P.S. One thing I want to check in WPP-2024 when it is released if they are still projecting Nigeria to overtake the USA as the world's third-most populous country by early 2060s. It's an intriguing notion that has been present in the last few releases, but being so far out it is highly sensitive to new data being incorporated between releases.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

I don't know why pro-natalism policy keeps being brought up like it will help, since it has been tried all over the world and I don't see a single example working.

WW2 and the subsequent allowance of women participation in the workforce is the core reason why birth rates have dropped. You want higher birthrates? Do as conservative countries do, restrict women education, ban abortion, limit women career choices, the state can even go further and ban social media for under 25s so they can't even get entertainment unless it's with people in person. Hard policy will do more than any propaganda campaign can much quicker. Obviously China will not implement that unless it is truly desperate.

Poland, Hungary, Iran, India and Turkey are all very conservative countries.

their TFR all fell off a cliff too. What do now?

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Yeah this. It's really hard to bribe people into having kids, because the economics of not having (more than 1 or 2) kids is so powerful, no government can afford to bribe people out of this mess.

As an example, let's take a look at what I think is close to a best-case TFR for a modern industrialized society:

Start with 100 couples

20% of them won't get married. The women might have waited too long, the men might be too financially incapable or too short/unattractive, etc. The latter is not necessarily a bad thing--you don't necessarily want the bottom of the gene pool to reproduce. I don't think any government can realistically decrease this number, especially not without affecting the quality of the population.

80 couples left

10% of the couples won't have kids. Mostly due to health reasons/waited too long before trying. A minority probably bought into the DINK propaganda. Again, I don't think any government can realistically decrease this number, since it's honestly pretty low.

72 couples left

30% of the couples who have kids stop after having 1 kid. Either 1 is too much to handle, or health reasons. This is where government assistance might make a small difference.

50% of the couples who have kids stop after having 2 kids. This is the realistic maximum for most couples because it becomes exponentially more difficult to raise children when you don't have at least 1 parent per child.

10% of the couples who have kids have 3 kids.

10% of the couples who have kids have 4 kids. This is probably a bit high. It's probably more like 5% of families have 4 or more.

Total TFR for the above example would be (0.3*72+0.5*2*72+0.1*3*72+0.1*4*72)/100 = 1.44. Well below replacement, yet it's hard to see how this can be increased to replacement.

Even something really drastic, like somehow getting half of 1-child families to have a second kid, and half of 2-child families to have a 3rd kid, still isn't enough for replacement: (0.15*72+0.4*2*72+0.35*3*72+0.1*4*72)/100 = 1.73

Like you'll have to coerce 90% of the population into getting married, get all married couples to have kids, and have everyone have at least 2 kids and a significant portion to have 3 kids to get to 2.1:

Like this gets to 2.1:
100 couples
only 10% don't get married
95% of married couples have kids (86 couples with kids)
10% of the married couples with kids have 1 kid
50% of the married couples with kids have 2 kids
25% of the married couples with kids have 3 kids
15% of the married couples with kids have 4 kids

(0.1*86+0.5*2*86+0.25*3*86+0.15*4*86)/100=2.11

I don't see how in hell that is possible with any amount of government support that can be realistically provided


Perhaps the best solution would be to increase lifespans dramatically instead of trying to get people to have more children when modern parents are heavily disincentivized from having more than 2

We have data for this.

92% of Chinese men are currently married at age 40-44 as recently as 2010.

85% of Chinese men are currently married at age 30-34 that year.

The number for ever married is similar but higher (divorces etc).

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The question is whether the young get married and have children. In China almost everyone gets married at some point in their life.

 

[tankphobia]

Poland, Hungary, Iran, India and Turkey are all very conservative countries.

their TFR all fell off a cliff too. What do now?

They're all countries that allow women to work. As previously posted by another poster, TFR is closely related to education level, if you leave the women uneducated and with no career prospects, then suddenly marrying and having kids are an appealing prospect. Saying that due to how globalised the entire world is, they can simply emigrate so you'll also need strong border and capital countrols such that people cannot simply flee the country. It quickly becomes a very dystopian society due to relegating women into baby machines, while also crippling half the workforce before population stabilises. Basically shooting your foot to save your arm.

I do not believe that this is necessary a possible choice for China, since communism has strong focus on egalitarianism principles. To enact such policy would go against the founding values of modern China.

 

[tokenanalyst]

Japan is totally reliant on its traditional industries. It has been losing market share in everything, and its share of global production is also coming down every year. Japanese themselves today recognize that their skewed demographics disincentivizes innovation.

As much I dislike Japan for being an US lapdog you have to given to them when its come to technology, for example ASML may have the EUV lithography but the rest of the EUV supply chain is in Japan now. Outside from China who is going to develop their own EUV supply chain due US export controls, Japan is pushing for developing a monopoly in that area.

I am just saying it is essential for China to have a much larger population for this competition. This provides a huge domestic market, workforce, skilled labor etc.

Huawei was only able to survive because it has the huge Chinese domestic market to rely on.

Having a lot a people doesn't mean you have a huge market or will ever do. Not even an skilled workforce. Rising the quality of life of the citizens of a country is a better guarantee of a huge market and a skilled workforce than dividing the little wealth, resources and jobs of a country among more and more people each year.

A country with 50 million people who can afford to buy stuff is a bigger market than a country with 500 million who can barely afford to eat with no money to spare.




But you got me wrong, I am not saying that China shouldn't care about their population, they should stabilize their population by any means necessary BUT what I am saying the governments around the world should be careful of pushing for larger families in a future were AI could make finding jobs really difficult.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

They're all countries that allow women to work. As previously posted by another poster, TFR is closely related to education level, if you leave the women uneducated and with no career prospects, then suddenly marrying and having kids are an appealing prospect. Saying that due to how globalised the entire world is, they can simply emigrate so you'll also need strong border and capital countrols such that people cannot simply flee the country. It quickly becomes a very dystopian society due to relegating women into baby machines, while also crippling half the workforce before population stabilises. Basically shooting your foot to save your arm.

I do not believe that this is necessary a possible choice for China, since communism has strong focus on egalitarianism principles. To enact such policy would go against the founding values of modern China.

Female labor force participation cannot explain it.

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Some of the African countries with highest fertility also have highest female labor participation rates.

 

[tokenanalyst]

Female labor force participation cannot explain it.

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Some of the African countries with highest fertility also have highest female labor participation rates.

In Africa women usually take their children with them to work, especially in rural areas, is common sight. In more advance economies and in cities women have to leave their children in daycare which is more expensive.