[cont.]

Many of the young people born between now and 2040, G2, will still have aged great-grandparents, as well as aged grandparents and working parents, to support when they hit the work-force after 2030. By then, there could even be more great-grandparents around than children, another first for China in world history. They themselves will be retiring from 2070 or so.

So let's move to the next generation, G3, born after 2040, the generation of one child per two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grand-parents: from the 2070s, each of those G3 children will be supporting up to four grand-parents and probably some great-grandparents as well, not to mention the tiny numbers of their own precious princes and princesses, G4. By this time, mortality will easily exceed births. A strictly one-child policy would produce only one-eighth as many children as the great-grandparents' generation born before 1980 - sufficient only for a nation of about two or three hundred million.

With the family and tax burdens, the temptations for G3 and G4 children to delay having children, not to ever have children and/or to work overseas will grow stronger.

What might have been the effects on demography, on numbers in age-groups, as this ghastly process unfolds ? The Chinese population will keep rising for forty or fifty years, as its population ages. But sooner or later, fewer people will reach old age because fewer will have been born in the first place. The problem will not just be population size but composition: very few young people, very many old people to support through pensions and health/housing services: a small body with a long and fat tail.

[TBC]

[contd.]

Perhaps by 2050-2060, the Chinese population will start to decline, eighty years after the drastic one-child policy was introduced. By that time, eight great-grandparents will have given rise to four grandparents, two parents and one young person. And that's how the mix will be, as long as a one-child policy is in force: the actual numbers of children being born would decline relatively more rapidly than the numbers of older people, as the population decline chases its tail down a hole.

Regardless of explicit policy, population growth may decline, as women become more educated around the world, and as governments are able to institute age-pension schemes.

There may ultimately be little that we can do about it, either way: it may well be hubris to think that we can engineer population size. But an optimal policy would be one of extremely slow decline, say 0.1-0.5 p.a, 8-40 % a century: this would put a lighter burden on each working generation. That's how it might happen in any case. We should get down to Sandra Kanck's Australian ideal in about 500 to two thousand years at that rate.

Joe

Loudmouth,

Do you really think that the Chinese leadership was too stupid to anticipate these problems? Of course it is better if population declines slowly, but these people were faced with collapse. See

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/arable-land-hectares-per-person-wb-data.html

and

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6363991.html

Estimates vary on how little land is needed per person, assuming reasonable quality, to provide a minimal, nutritionally adequate vegetarian diet. Vaclav Smil's estimate is about 0.07 hectares.

The real problem in their case was demographic momentum. When a population has been growing rapidly for a long time, it has a pyramid shaped age distribution, with most of the deaths in the relatively tiny elderly generation and most of the births in the very large young adult generation. It can take up to 70 years to stabilise, even if fertility rates stay at or below replacement level. I have seen calculations that if India's fertility rate dropped to replacement level and stayed there, that the population would double before it finally stabilised. The Chinese simply couldn't afford this. Blame Mao for encouraging large families.

Pericles,

Of course there will be children and young people with a stable age structure, they just won't be as big a proportion of the population. So what? We have a smaller proportion than they did in the 19th century. Has it been a disaster? What is wrong with longer lives, provided that those extra years are worth having? Does the economy exist for the sake of the people or the people for the sake of the economy?

Cheryl,

Trying to guess the carrying capacity or optimum population in the distant future is not useful. 7 million may be far below the optimum or Sandra Kanck may turn out to have been wildly optimistic, because the worst predictions of the climate scientists have come true. There was apparently unbroken desert from the southern tip of Africa up to Northern Europe during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. We don't have to know the optimum, however, just that growth is currently degrading the environment and quality of life.

Divergence, some very valid points!

Loudmouth, I think you are bogging yourself down with the
relatively little picture, rather then the bigger picture. The population
genie cork popped out in places like China and India, some time
ago. Once out, its not too easy to put it back.

The net result has been Chinese and Indian peasants, on ever smaller
bits of land, trying to make a living. When you get down to a bit
larger then houseplot size, the manure hits the fan, as we found out
in Rwanda.

The Chinese had a history of 5 kids and more, with a population of
a billion. If the Chinese had done nothing, what would have
happened? You only need a 2% growth in population, over 100 years
your population will triple. Even you would have to concede that a population
of 3 billion would not be sustainable in China.

I read somewhere that the population of Indonesia is destined to
increase to around 600 million, in 50 years time. Once that happens,
do you really think they won't want to head South? Don't be amazed
if they do. Even chimps fight over territory, when their's gets
crowded.

There are a number of ways to deal with retirement issues. Workers
could work an extra 5 years. Our present baby boomers when they
die, will leave the next generation wealthier then any generation
before them, through all that inheritance money. The baby boomers
can't take it with them.

Perhaps boomers can use some of that vast wealth that they have
saved, in real estate and other assets, to pay their own way, rather
then suck on the Govt teat. Some of the younger ones might not
inherit quite as much as they are rubbing their hands over, but they
will handle it.

Divergence,

"Trying to guess the carrying capacity or optimum population in the distant future is not useful"

But isn't that the central tenet of the anti-populationists? Saying how many people we should/could have? I mean we're in la la land talking about population projections because they are only projections and notoriously unreliable as we saw recently when the ABS changed the methodology.

And talking about projections in 2050 seems pretty wacky to me as there are so many variables - population being just one - as to be almost meaningless.

If we look at countries like Norway, Denmark and Finland, which have low pop growth rates, their GDP per capita and GDP per capita growth exceeds that of Aus, UK, US and Canada which all have high pop growth rates.

Furthermore, expenditure on education and health per capita in the low growth nations is higher in low pop growth nations than in high pop growth nations.

Would Cheryl et al care to offer an opinion on this observation?