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76–256 PDF 2012

2050: IMPLICATIONS OF DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS

IN THE OSCE REGION

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND 

COOPERATION IN EUROPE

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 20, 2011

Printed for the use of the

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe

[CSCE 112–1–5]

(

Available via http://www.csce.gov 

COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

HOUSE SENATE

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey,

Chairman 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama 

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida 

LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER,

New York 

MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland,

Co-Chairman 

SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island 

TOM UDALL, New Mexico 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut 

ROBERT F. WICKER, Mississippi 

SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire

EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

MICHAEL H. POSNER, Department of State 

MICHAEL C. CAMUN ̃ EZ, Department of Commerce 

ALEXANDER VERSHBOW, Department of Defense 

(II) 

2050: IMPLICATIONS OF DEMOGRAPHIC 

TRENDS IN THE OSCE REGION 

JUNE 20, 2011

COMMISSIONERS 

Page 

Hon. Christopher H. Smith, Chairman, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe .............................................. 1

Hon. Benjamin L. Cardin, Co-Chairman, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe .......................................... 32

WITNESSES 

Jack A. Goldstone, Virginia E. and John T. Hazel, Jr. Professor, and Director, Center for Global Policy, George 

Mason University .................................................................... 2

Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute ...................................... 8

Richard Jackson, Director and Senior Fellow, Global Aging 

Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies .. 12

Steven W. Mosher, President, Population Research Institute 16

APPENDICES 

Prepared statement of Jack A. Goldstone ................................. 33

Prepared statement of Nicholas Eberstadt ............................... 38

Prepared statement of Richard Jackson ................................... 136

Prepared statement of Steven W. Mosher ................................ 153

(III) 

(1)

2050: IMPLICATIONS OF DEMOGRAPHIC 

TRENDS IN THE OSCE REGION 

June 20, 2011

COMMISSION ON SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE

WASHINGTON, DC

The hearing was held at 2 p.m. in room 2247, Rayburn House 

Office Building, Washington, DC, Hon. Christopher H. Smith, 

Chairman, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 

presiding. 

Commissioners present: Hon. Christopher H. Smith, Chairman, 

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe; and Hon. Benjamin L. Cardin, Co-Chairman, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. 

Witnesses present: Jack A. Goldstone, Virginia E. and John T. 

Hazel, Jr. Professor, and Director, Center for Global Policy, George 

Mason University; Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy, American Enterprise Institute; Richard Jackson, 

Director and Senior Fellow, Global Aging Initiative, Center for 

Strategic and International Studies; and Steven W. Mosher, President, Population Research Institute. 

HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON 

SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

Mr. SMITH. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for being 

here, and welcome to our witnesses and everyone joining us. 

Today, we will examine demographic trends in the OSCE region, 

which is comprised of the 56 participating States of the OSCE: the 

countries of Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as the 

United States and Canada. Dramatic demographic changes are already under way in the region, and there are sure to be dramatic 

consequences for the security, economic and human dimensions of 

the OSCE. Lawmakers need to start thinking about how these and 

other changes will affect policies going forward in this expansive 

region and their respective countries. 

The fact is that most OSCE countries are in some stage of demographic decline, many of them in rapid decline. Only a handful of 

the OSCE’s 56 states are at or above replacement level. In many 

of them, military planners are asking questions as to how or even 

whether they will be able to abide for their security in just a few 

generations, given demographic forecasts. Current birth rates 

preprogram developments long into the future. 

Likewise with the economy, it is far from clear how, in many of 

the most rapidly declining countries, economic growth can be susVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:24 Dec 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\WORK\062011.TXT KATIE
2

tained by a declining population or how numerically smaller younger generations will even begin to provide for the larger, older generations, a very real and pressing issue. 

As to the human dimension of the OSCE, it is alarming and sad 

to see xenophobic and ultra-nationalistic violence fueled by one’s 

nation’s perceptions of long-term decline vis-a-vis another group. In 

countries faced with a shrinking work forces and growing dependence on foreign workers, migrants all too often find themselves discriminated against and targeted, especially in tough economic 

times. It is particularly ugly when some dominant social groups respond to their own demographic decline by proposing to engineer 

a corresponding decline in other groups, whether this is proposed 

overtly by racist demagogues or covertly by groups of international 

elites adept at hiding their real intentions behind other ideologies, 

a factor in a number of OSCE countries today. 

I do look forward to our witnesses’ testimony. This information, 

I think, will be very helpful as we approach the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Annual Session that will be held in Belgrade in 

just a couple of weeks time. And it’ll also, I think, spur a larger 

discussion that has been largely missing in many of these OSCE 

countries. Some, yes, have begun to take some actions to reverse 

this decline. But in other cases, the issue of demographic decline 

is not even on the radar screen. 

So I do thank all of you for being here, and I’d like to now introduce our witnesses. And I understand, Mr. Goldstone, you have to 

leave at 2:30 or so? 

Dr. GOLDSTONE. Around 2:30 [off mic]. 

Mr. SMITH. We will proceed first with Dr. Goldstone and then I 

will introduce each other our other witnesses immediately after 

that. 

Dr. Jack A. Goldstone is the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel, Jr. 

Professor of Public Policy and an Eminent Scholar at the George 

Mason University’s School of Public Policy. Dr. Goldstone specializes in global and comparative history, political conflict, revolutions 

and social movements, democratization, state building, demographic security and comparative economic development. He serves 

as Director of the Center for Global Policy at George Mason. Dr. 

Goldstone is a prolific researcher, author and lecturer. There will 

be a period for questions immediately following his testimony, but 

again, I—if the other distinguished panelists wouldn’t mind, Dr. 

Goldstone, if you could proceed. 

JACK A. GOLDSTONE, VIRGINIA E. AND JOHN T. HAZEL, JR. 

PROFESSOR, AND DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR GLOBAL POLICY, 

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY 

Dr. GOLDSTONE. Thank you, Chairman Smith. It’s my honor and 

pleasure to be here. I apologize that I do have to leave for another 

engagement at 2:30, but I will stay for your questions. 

There are many dimensions in which demography affects the interests of the OSCE nations. I’m going to focus in particular on migration issues and leave some of the security issues to my distinguished colleagues who are also testifying here today. Now, with 

respect to the OSCE, I’m very pleased to be here to discuss because 

I strongly believe in the values of openness, freedom and protection 

3

of human rights that the OSCE was designed to protect. And indeed, it is a bulwark against the racism, xenophobic nationalism 

and state abuses that brought us the gulags, World War II and the 

Holocaust and other horrors of the 20th century. It is unfortunate 

that at present, we see some resurgence of this xenophobic nationalism, even covert racism, brought on by changes in demography 

and in particular, issues of migration, and particularly to Western 

Europe. 

The world is changing rapidly. As you noted, Mr. Chairman, the 

demography of Europe has changed. Let me highlight that drama. 

For most of the last 500 years, European populations were booming 

and indeed were countries of outward migration, sending peoples 

to the Americas and even to colonize parts of sub-Saharan Africa, 

Asia, the Middle East. Whatever we may think of these colonial 

and imperial ventures today—and their record is certainly mixed 

at best—it’s much more difficult to conceive of a Europe that would 

have grown without this massive out migration. We might have 

seen a Europe that was overrun, impoverished and lacking all of 

the new ideas, the new products and resources that were brought 

in by greater communication with the world. 

It is now ironic but also difficult for Europeans to grasp that 

their numbers are now stagnant or in decline and other parts of 

the world are growing both in numbers and in the wealth and cosmopolitan attitudes that enable outward migration. So Europe 

finds itself now as the recipient of migrants to a greater degree 

than it has in its history. 

Now, I want to tell you in my comments that I think this is both 

necessary and beneficial for Europe, but I will point out that because Europeans have not thought of themselves as a country 

needing immigration, they have treated migrants from abroad as 

foreigners, visitors, guest workers, without dedicating themselves 

to the effort needed to integrate and assimilate foreigners. 

Now, the United States within the OSCE can, I believe, serve as 

a model of the type of benefits that accrue to a country that is open 

to migration. As we’ll see, the need for migration is strong in Europe if they reject it. And this will be strong not only in Europe 

but frankly throughout the OSCE region. Bad things will happen. 

The economies will struggle to survive. 

So the role of the United States and Canada as countries of immigration, built and strengthened by immigration, is critical in the 

OSCE. But in order to play that leadership role, I believe the 

United States still needs to overcome some of its own issues and 

confusions and its own migration policy, which, as you know, is a 

topic of debate here on the Hill as we speak. But I hope things will 

move forward there. 

Let me simply go to the arithmetic that lies behind my concerns 

of the need for migration in Europe. If we could see the first slide, 

please. Thank you. Demographic projections can often be a welter 

of confusing figures. I’ve decided to focus on one simple number, 

and that is the ratio between people in the prime working years 

from age 15 to 59 and seniors who are 60 and older. In a healthy 

society, the number of workers is, of course, much larger than the 

number of seniors. And indeed, in the United States, for example, 

4

during the 1970s, the numbers were about four to one. They’ve 

since started to decline. 

As you see here in this figure, if we look at the ratio of workers 

per senior in selected OSCE countries in 2010, there’s quite a substantial range. On the low end, Italy and Germany barely have two 

workers for every senior today. The United Kingdom, France, 

Spain, and Hungary are somewhat better, closer to three. But 

these are already dangerous levels. It’s very hard to sustain the 

health care and the pensions for an older population if there are 

only two workers per senior. 

The United States is comfortably above three today, as are Romania, Russia, Poland. Meanwhile, countries like Turkey and 

Kazakhstan, further East in the OSCE region, have quite a strong 

surplus of young workers. So it’s no surprise that today’s migration 

patterns in the OSCE are dominated by the movement of workers 

from the East, both Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Central 

Asia and Turkey to Western Europe. That’s the pattern that’s been 

prevailing for the past decade and will probably be strong for the 

next decade or two as well. 

However, in the future, even this flow will not resolve the labor 

issues, because if we jump ahead to the next slide, we look at these 

numbers for 2050. And if you’ll notice, the left-hand scale has now 

contracted. Whereas previously I could show numbers from zero to 

seven or eight, we’re now looking from zero to three, because much 

of the world is coming to look like Europe in terms of its fertility 

behavior. We’re seeing a convergence as countries grow richer and 

more prosperous and more urban, people have fewer children. 

But the trend is dramatic and strong. Italy and Germany will be 

heading toward only one worker for every senior by the middle of 

the century. Spain, Romania, and Poland, which had been sources 

of out migration, will be down below one and a half. The United 

Kingdom, France, and Hungary are doing better, but will still have 

between one and a half and two workers per senior. Those are still 

crisis levels for a government committed to taking care of its elderly population. The United States and Turkey will be at two, not 

three. And this is still a level that requires policy attention. Two 

workers per senior means some adjustments need to be made in 

taxation and benefits if a system is to remain stable, another topic 

of debate on the Hill these days. Even Kazakhstan will find only 

half as many workers per senior as it has today. 

The obvious response is going to be migration from outside the 

OSCE region. Countries of North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the 

Middle East and even East Asia will be anxious to supply immigrants to meet the labor needs of Europe. And Europe will desperately need additional workers. 

I want to say, this doesn’t mean a tidal wave of foreign workers 

that will overwhelm the domestic populations. Right now, most European countries have a foreign-born population of under 10 percent. Were this to double in the next 20 to 30 years, it would go 

far toward meeting the needs for more young laborers. And combined with an uptick in fertility and a higher work force-participation rate by those in their working years and moving into their late 

60s and early 70s, Europe should be in good shape. However, it will 

take advances in all three areas; that is, higher fertility, greater 

5

work force participation and longer working careers and increases 

in migration to avert a demographic implosion, which is what appears to be on the books now if no action is taken. 

Now, let me also say that I know that this will not be an easy 

step for Europeans to take. There have already been frictions with 

regard to multiculturalism and immigration, as there are frictions 

in the United States. But it’s important to focus on the gains. Migrants have brought to the United States and Canada outstanding 

performers in the sciences, in the arts, in business, in politics. We 

would be a far poorer nation, less diverse, less innovative, less rich 

in ideas without our migrants. And in those countries where voices 

are being raised warning that migration means an end to domestic 

values, the United States and Canada need to gently remind our 

colleagues that it is possible to combine pluralism and a variety of 

peoples with dedication to a single set of values. Europe’s greatest 

strength in the core of the OSCE principles is a commitment to 

protection of basic human rights, openness and freedom. Those values do provide the foundation for people of different cultures and 

different faiths to work together and create stronger societies. 

Let me stop there. I’d be glad to take questions. And thank you 

again for the opportunity to testify today. 

Mr. SMITH. Dr. Goldstone, thank you very much. And I will be 

brief, I know, because you have to leave. You know, you stop at 

2050. Do your projections go beyond that, you know, especially as 

it relates—like, Turkey goes from seven [workers] to one [senior] 

to going to joining the United States at about two to one. 

Dr. GOLDSTONE. Right. 

Mr. SMITH. Does that trend continue to worsen, or is there a 

turnaround at some point? 

Dr. GOLDSTONE. The trend within all OSCE nations as far as we 

can tell is for a convergence of lower fertility rates. Now, whether 

or not nations will follow Italy and Germany down to very low subreplacement rates or whether they will end up closer to replacement is hard to tell today. My guess is that more countries will end 

up closer to replacement rate than to the population contraction 

rates that we’re seeing in some OSCE countries. 

However, the process of moving from a growing population to a 

stable population inevitably entails a period in which the number 

of seniors starts to grow more rapidly than the number of workers. 

And so that problem of making the transition and maintaining equity and government fiscal stability during that transition—that 

will probably increase for all the OSCE countries. 

After 2050, the problem will become less acute because we’ll have 

seen the worst of it coming in the next 40 years. And if we have 

made the adjustment to providing equity for seniors and balancing 

migration, then the period from 2050 to 2100 should be a matter 

of applying lessons learned and continuing to do all right. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me ask you just briefly—you point out or you’ve 

argued that demographic changes translates into global security 

concerns, undermining perhaps NATO and other important organizations and obviously what undergirds them, the countries themselves. Would you speak briefly to the security implications——

Dr. GOLDSTONE. Yes, of course. 

6

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. And then the issue of the Islamic populations, which tend not to follow, I would think, the patterns of 

those of other faiths—in the region. They’re not likely to follow the 

demographic implosion, are they? And what does that mean——

Dr. GOLDSTONE. Not——

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. Implication-wise? 

Dr. GOLDSTONE. The good news is yes, even most Muslim and 

Middle Eastern countries are moving toward lower fertility. In the 

long run, they are likely to converge with the trends that we see 

in the more advanced industrial countries. But they’re several decades behind in this regard. And it’s our lives in the next few decades that we need to be concerned about. 

With regard to security, if one looks at the population of the 

world as a whole—I’m fond of telling people the age distribution is 

about what it was in the United States in 1970, which was a 

healthy age distribution that was the foundation for decades of economic growth. The problem is, if you then separate the rich countries from the poor ones, we find the rich countries will have a preponderance of seniors, creating an obstacle to continued economic 

growth, whereas the poorer nations will have a predominance of 

very young people, creating challenges of education, productivity 

and keeping social order intact if the aspirations of those young 

people are not met. These——

Mr. SMITH. We know for a fact that the Chinese Government is 

facing a huge demographic implosion, owing to the fact that seniors 

will soon just overwhelm children and young adults based on the 

one-child-per-couple policy. 

Dr. GOLDSTONE. Yes, the good—the good news for us is that the 

concerns that China’s economy will rapidly overtake that of the 

United States are unlikely to be realized because of the demographic decline. What this means, though, is that China will start 

to stabilize. And the globe will kind of break into groups—North 

America, Europe, China—that are coping with demographic decline 

facing large regions of the world with still rapid population growth 

and large numbers of young people that frankly will be facing 

intermittent turmoil. The Arab revolts were fueled in large part by 

high rates of unemployment among the young. And we are seeing 

those high rates of unemployment among the young in many regions of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa as well as the Middle 

East. 

And as you will hear from my colleagues, the military resources 

to cope with disorder around the globe will also be strained by the 

aging and fiscal problems in Western countries. 

Mr. SMITH. Just two final very brief questions. Any thoughts on 

the future of some of the smaller OSCE countries like Georgia, Bulgaria, and Estonia? What do their future look like? Will they go 

away, you know, over time? 

And second, with regard to unfunded liability, we know for a fact 

Social Security and Medicare are in huge, huge trouble here in the 

United States. Europe obviously has very similar mechanisms for 

their older population. 

Dr. GOLDSTONE. Yes. 

Mr. SMITH. Are they facing a similar catastrophic outcome like 

we are? 

7

Dr. GOLDSTONE. Right. If you’ll forgive me for trying to be 

nuanced here on this, Europe’s problem of pensions and health care 

is complicated by the fact that they are aging faster than the 

United States. However, their health care costs are much less and 

under better control than ours. The United States, because of the 

large baby boom, is actually facing a larger percentage increase in 

the elderly. That is, Europeans’ old population may grow by 50 percent in the next few decades. Americans’ will double by 2050. We’ll 

have more young people to support them, but the sheer number of 

elderly people will overwhelm our health care system if we do not 

get costs under control. 

So I would say Europe and the United States both have their 

problems; they’re both a little different. For the smaller countries 

with very low growth rates—will they disappear? I don’t think 

that’s likely. I think it’s likely that reproduction rates will gradually return to closer to replacement. 

However, they will go through a period of decline, and they will 

lose energy and innovation unless they open themselves up to new 

influences. We’ve seen Japan in its lost decade not only lose a decade of economic growth, but young people there have lost energy, 

they’ve lost optimism, they’ve lost faith in the future. And it’s an 

example of what can happen if a country thinks it can face a demographic decline without renewing its energy from outside influences. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Dr. Goldstone, thank you so much for 

your testimony, and——

Dr. GOLDSTONE. It’s been my pleasure. 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. I appreciate it. But we’ve made your 

deadline. 

Dr. GOLDSTONE. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. I’d like to now introduce Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt, who 

is the Henry Wendt Scholar in political economy at the American 

Enterprise Institute. A political economist and a demographer by 

training, he holds numerous positions, including service as a member of the Global Leadership Council at the World Economic 

Forum. He researches and writes extensively on economic development, foreign aid, global health, demographics and poverty. Dr. 

Eberstadt is the author of numerous monographs and articles on 

North and South Korea, East Asia and countries of the former Soviet Union. A prolific author of one of the most—his most recent 

books is entitled ‘‘Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis.’’

We will then hear from Dr. Richard Jackson, who is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he 

directs the Global Aging Initiative, a research program that explores the economic, social and geopolitical implications and demographic trends in the United States and around the world. Dr. 

Jackson is involved in numerous related projects, including demographics and geopolitics in the 21st century, the future of U.S. immigration and, GAI projects, including the Global Aging Preparedness Index and the Global Aging Vulnerability Index. Among his 

many books is a recent publication, ‘‘The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century.’’

And last, we will hear from Steven Mosher, who is President of 

the Population Research Institute. He is an internationally recogVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:24 Dec 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\WORK\062011.TXT KATIE
8

nized authority on China and population issues, an acclaimed author and speaker. He has worked tirelessly since 1979 to fight coercive population control programs and helped hundreds of thousands 

of women and families worldwide over the years. Mr. Mosher has 

appeared before Congress numerous times as an expert on world 

population, China and human rights abuses. He has appeared before many TV shows, including ‘‘60 Minutes,’’ ‘‘Good Morning America,’’ ‘‘The Today Show,’’ ‘‘20/20’’; and his latest book is entitled 

‘‘Population Control: Real Costs, Illusionary Benefits.’’

Dr. Eberstadt, please proceed. 

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT, HENRY WENDT SCHOLAR IN 

POLITICAL ECONOMY, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE 

Dr. EBERSTADT. Mr. Chairman, distinguished co-panelists and 

guests, it’s a privilege and honor to be here today. Mr. Chairman, 

with your permission, I would like to submit to the recorder a 

longer version of my remarks, a study that I prepared with my AEI 

colleague, Apoorva Shah. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, so ordered. 

Dr. EBERSTADT. Thank you. I’m going to talk in the next few 

minutes about the demographic circumstances and outlook for the 

OSCE’s most populous European country, the Russian Federation. 

Demographers are often chided for seeming to be excessively 

gloomy for finding the cloud around any sort of silver lining. But 

when we look at the situation in Russia today, we have to see the 

makings and prospect for a real demographic crisis, and the most 

peculiar sort of crisis, because it is a peacetime crisis for an educated and urbanized society. It has humanitarian implications, but 

I believe it also has economic and security implications. 

And with your indulgence, I will run through some slides, which 

I hope can illustrate what I mean more vividly than my few words. 

Can we move to the first slide, please? Since the end of the Communist era, Russia has seen 13 million more deaths than births. 

There have been three deaths for every two births in Russia over 

the past roughly 20 years. If this is all one knew about that society, 

one would think this was a place in the midst of a prolonged famine or total war; yet, as I mentioned, this is a peacetime, educated, 

urbanized society. Next slide, please. 

Thanks to net in-migration, Russia’s population decline has been 

cushioned somewhat, but only somewhat. Russia’s absolute numbers have dropped by at least 6 million over the last two decades, 

probably the largest peacetime decline in any human population 

since the catastrophic consequences and aftermath of China’s Great 

Leap Forward. Next slide, please. 

So what exactly is going on? The problem—the driver of this situation in Russia is not in particular a collapse in births, although 

births have dropped in Russia. Russia’s fertility patterns look quite 

European when put in a larger context. Russia is a sub-replacement European society, but its fertility levels, absolute levels, do 

not look so different from other developed societies. Next slide, 

please. 

What we see in Russia is that births have been—childbearing—

has been at a below replacement level for a very long time, for perVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:24 Dec 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\WORK\062011.TXT KATIE
9

haps two generations at least, since—for the women born in the 

1930s and since. And next slide, please. 

And fertility levels throughout Russia’s ethnicities are perhaps 

surprisingly low. Chechens are seen in Russia as being famously 

prolific, but even in Chechnya, birth levels are apparently only at 

about three births per woman per lifetime, somewhat similar to 

perhaps less than Mexican-Americans in our own society. The dramatic finding, I think, that one sees is that almost all groups within Russia including, quote, ‘‘Muslim heritage groups,’’ have belowreplacement fertility. And Russian ethnics within Russia have one 

of the very lowest levels of fertility. Next slide, please. 

There’s a great deal of interest within Russia and outside Russia 

about the population of Islamic or Muslim heritage. These numbers 

are very difficult to specify with any precision. One study which 

has attempted to do this suggests that maybe 10 percent of Russia’s population comes from groups that have traditional Muslim 

cultural heritages, which does not necessarily mean that all the 

people are believers or practicing if they are adherents. Next slide, 

please. 

So this means that Russia’s population of people with Muslim 

backgrounds would be somewhat higher than any in Western Europe, but the comparisons are somewhat difficult to make for historical reasons—the, quote, ‘‘Muslim population’’ in Russia, having 

been there for hundreds and hundreds of years; Europe’s—Western 

Europe’s, quote, ‘‘Muslim population’’ being newcomers or second-, third-generation populations. Next slide, please. 

It’s impossible to make accurate forecasts in the future for a 

country’s population. That being said, there are factors which are 

pushing fertility prospects down for Russia in the future. One of 

these is a change in martial patterns. Divorce is coming to Russia 

with a—with alacrity, let’s say. And as in Western Europe—next 

slide, please—we can see that the proportion of children born outside of marriages is increasing quite vigorously. Both of these factors tend to press down on average childbearing levels, especially 

in places where welfare states are very poorly developed for child 

support. Next slide, please. 

So in those ways, Russia looks quite European. When one looks 

at Russia’s health situation, one might say there’s a big difference. 

The outlook and prospect is—might be considered Third World. 

And in some ways, you’ll see that that sort of a comparison is unfair to Third-World countries. 

Unlike any Western European countries, Russia has had a 

health catastrophe. There’s no other word for it. Russia’s life expectancy level is a little bit lower now than it was 50 years ago. 

And if we look at the actual trends that have evolved per capita—

I mean, excuse me, age-standardized death levels are over twice as 

high as in Western Europe. They’re 50 percent higher than in the 

former Soviet bloc countries of the new E.U., which were similar 

to Russia only a generation ago. 

There are two drivers behind this health catastrophe. Next slide, 

please. 

So in those ways, Russia looks quite European. When one looks 

at Russia’s health situation, one might say there’s a big difference; 

the outlook and prospect is—might be considered Third World. And 

10

in some ways you’ll see that that sort of a comparison is unfair to 

Third World countries. 

Unlike any Western European countries, Russia has had a 

health catastrophe. There’s no other word for it. Russia’s life expectancy level is a little bit lower now than it was 50 years ago. 

And if we look at the actual trends that have evolved, per capita—

excuse me—age-standardized death levels are over twice as high as 

in Western Europe. They’re 50 percent higher than in the former 

Soviet bloc countries of the ‘‘new’’ E.U., which was similar to Russia only a generation ago. 

There are two drivers behind this health catastrophe. Next slide, 

please. One is cardiovascular deaths. And Russia’s level of death 

from heart disease is over twice as high as would be predicted by 

the country’s income level—difficult, but apparently not impossible. 

The other—next slide, please—is injury from—is deaths from injury and so-called external causes—homicide, suicide, things like 

that, poisonings. Russia’s level is five times as high as Western Europe’s in this regard. 

Next slide, please. 

And if all one knew about Russia were its level of deaths from 

injury, violence and external deaths, one would presume that Russia was a sub-Saharan conflict or post-conflict state, is a—it is a 

complete outlier from the rest of the developed world’s experience. 

Next slide, please. 

To make matters even worse, Russia’s health disaster is concentrated in its working-age population. For men between their 

late 20s and late 50s, death rates are typically 100 percent—and 

I said 100 percent—higher than they were 40 years ago. And for 

women, death rates for this age group are typically 50 percent 

higher than they were 40 years ago. 

Next slide, please. 

One sense one can get of the fragility of the Russian working—

workforce’s health status is by comparing death rates for Russian 

men at age 30 with death rates for, let’s say, Dutch men at different ages. As of more or less today, a Dutch man who is age 58 

has a lower risk of mortality in the coming year than a guy from 

Russia who is 30 years old. It is an enormously health-challenged 

population. 

Let’s look at the next slide, please. 

And this is true for older people in Russia as well. Their health 

levels are much more tenuous than those of their Western European comparators. 

Next slide, please. 

Russia has a very badly underfunded social security system, 

makes our Social Security discussions look like a bagatelle, raising 

the whole question about what is to become of a sick, frail and poor 

senior population in Russia in the decades immediately ahead. 

Next slide, please. In doing my research, I thought that Russia’s 

education would be the redeeming virtue that one would find in 

this otherwise grim human resource system. Unfortunately, that is 

not so. If one takes a look at the numbers of patents awarded for 

inventions generated in different countries, one finds that Russia 

is orders of magnitudes lower than the G–7, orders of magnitude 

11

lower than most of the BRICs [Brazil, Russia, India, China] and 

even lower than some of the tiny East Asian tigers. 

The place that most closely tracks Russia, year for year, in total 

patent awards, is the state of West Virginia. And there many redeeming things about the State of West Virginia, but it is not 

known as the knowledge center in the United States. It has a tiny 

population in relation to Russia’s huge population. 

Next slide, please. 

If one tries to do more detailed comparisons, one can see that 

Russia is punching below its weight in knowledge generation in 

any sort of—any sort of way one tends to make the comparison. 

And this is not true of all post-communist societies. China, for example, is punching well above its weight. Next slide, please. And 

we see the same thing from other metrics. 

So what does this all mean for the long run? Next slide, please. 

All of the prognoses from different demographic authorities—

from our Census Bureau, from the United Nations Population Division, even from Russia’s Goskomstat—see excess death over birth 

and population decline more or less as far as a demographer’s eye 

can go. And this is—next slide, please—and pressures for fewer 

births are going to continue to come as the cohort of women moving 

into childbearing ages collapses, in echo of previous births in the 

recent past. 

Next slide, please. 

Russia’s working-age labor force is on the way down. It is on 

track to shrink by about 20 percent over the next 20 years—next 

slide, please—and no less dramatically, Russia’s urban population 

is shrinking. Russia is the most prominent place in the world 

where the total number of people living in cities is on a downward 

spiral. Cities are the growth engines of a modern global economy. 

Next slide, please. And in Russia’s urban centers health levels are 

lower than in urban centers in China, in Brazil, in Egypt, in Indonesia, even in India. Thus we have a tremendous challenge for eliciting economic growth. 

Next slide, please. 

Russia also has immense and unavoidable demographic constraints in mustering military manpower. Russia’s manpower of 

military ages is set to shrink by about 50 percent over the period 

of 2005 to 2020. 

Next slide, please. 

And Russia has vast open spaces. Think of the Russian Far East. 

The Russian Far East has over 6 million square kilometers and 

fewer than 6 million people inhabiting the area. It is more densely 

populated than Antarctica. It is more densely populated than the 

Sahara Desert. It is not more densely populated than the Amazonia 

or Mongolia. 

Next and final slide, please. 

And to make matters even more interesting, people are moving 

out of Siberia. Russian citizens are moving out of Siberia, not in. 

How is Russia going to maintain the sovereignty and integrity of 

this area in the future? Many Russian demographers wonder 

whether this is possible. 

I’ll stop right there. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you so much, Dr. Eberstadt. 

12

Dr. Jackson. 

RICHARD JACKSON, DIRECTOR AND SENIOR FELLOW, GLOBAL 

AGING INITIATIVE, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 

Dr. JACKSON. Thank you—thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an 

honor to have the opportunity to testify on this important topic. 

I also have a longer version of my remarks, which, with your permission, I’d like included in the record. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, so ordered. It will be made part 

of the record. 

Dr. JACKSON. Thank you very much. 

The world stands on the threshold of a stunning demographic 

transformation that’s often called global aging and which promises 

to reshape the geopolitical order in dramatic and profound ways. 

By the 2020s, much of the developed world will be entering a 

new era of hyperaging and population decline—may I have the 

first—we do have the first slide; very good—hyperaging and population decline. Many countries will experience fiscal crisis, economic 

stagnation and ugly political battles over old age benefit cuts and 

immigration. 

Meanwhile, the developing world will be rocked, potentially, by 

its own demographic storms. Mr. Chairman, as you’ve mentioned, 

China is a rapidly aging society. It faces its own massive age wave, 

which it may not be able to afford. 

At the other end of the spectrum, many other developing countries, particularly in the Muslim world, will face a new resurgence 

of youth in the 2020s, whose aspirations they may not be able to 

meet. 

So we’re moving toward a future where potentially we have a 

weakening of the capacity of the United States and its traditional 

developed-world allies to maintain security, even as we have a series of new demographically driven risks and potential threats on 

the horizon. 

There is of course significant variation in the demographic outlook within the rich world. At the one extreme is the United States. 

We are the youngest of the rich countries and, despite the retirement of our baby boom, thanks to our relatively high fertility rate 

and substantial net immigration, we will be the youngest by an 

even wider margin in 2030 or 2040 or 2050. 

At the other extreme is Japan. While the elder share of our population will rise from 13 to 20 percent, Japan’s, on current trend, is 

on track to reach 39 percent. 

Europe lies somewhere in between. But within Europe itself, 

there is a very significant variation, and what I would call your attention to in particular in this slide is that the outlook in France 

and Northern Europe, including the Low Countries, Scandinavia, 

and the U.K., though challenging, is not dire. 

In the rest of Europe, fertility rates are much lower, the aging 

trend much more severe, and whereas Northern Europe is looking 

at population stagnation, the rest of Europe is looking at very steep 

population decline. 

Next slide, please, and if you would bring up all the bullets—

thank you. 

13

This demographic shift promises to impose significant constraints 

on the economic and geopolitical capacity of the rich countries, and 

there are four in particular that I’d like to focus on briefly. 

The first is the prospect of emerging manpower shortages as 

youth populations stagnate or decline. 

The second is the growing fiscal burden of rising retirement and 

health care costs. 

The third is the prospect of slower economic growth. 

And finally, the question of how the aging of populations and 

also growing diversity within populations may affect not just the 

capacity of societies to maintain security commitments but also 

their willingness to do so. 

Next slide, please. 

The manpower issue is an important issue, and it’s usually the 

first that one thinks of when one thinks of countries with aging 

and declining populations. The [military] service-age population, 

because population decline is being driven by subreplacement fertility and the hollowing out of the base of the population pyramid, 

the service-age population will be more slowly growing or more rapidly contracting than the total population. And as you can see, 

among the G–7 countries, the United States is the only country 

that will experience any significant growth in the service-age population between now and the middle of the century. 

The demographic trends themselves could be exacerbated by 

growing competition for relatively scarce youth, with tighter civilian labor markets. Some people might object that these manpower 

shortages don’t matter as much today as they did in the past, because we moved toward—further into an era of high tech military—militaries, but I think if—there are many lessons, perhaps, 

to be drawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, but one is clearly that 

boots on the ground matter—and in any case, the second challenge, 

which is the rising fiscal burden of an aging population, will limit 

the capacity of countries to respond to emerging manpower shortages by substituting military capital for military labor. 

Next slide, please. 

Here we come back to—if we can back—oh, yes, this is right. 

Thank you. 

If we come back to Professor Goldstone’s support ratio of working-age adults to elders, falling fertility and rising longevity translate directly into a falling support ratio of working-age adults to elders, and a falling support ratio translates in turn to a rising cost 

rate for pay-as-you go social insurance systems, like Social Security 

or like Medicare. 

In a series of projections we’ve done at CSIS, we calculate that 

the cost of maintaining the current deal for seniors, given the shift 

in support ratio, would increase old-age benefits spending by, on 

average, 10 percent of GDP across the rich countries between now 

and 2040, and by more—next slide, please—you can see the projected growth in this slide compared with current defense spending 

as a share of—as a share of GDP. 

There are very few developed countries that have much tax room 

to pay for significant—whatever one’s views on the proper size, the 

optimal size of government or the optimal tax burden, there are literally very few countries that could raise taxes enough to pay for 

14

a significant share of this extra cost growth, and that is particularly true in Europe, where many countries are already at or beyond the efficient taxation threshold, meaning that raising the tax 

rate would simply drive more workers into a growing gray economy. 

Countries will have to reduce benefits, but efforts to do that are 

likely to meet growing political resistance from aging electorates, 

who, in most European countries, are much more dependent on 

these public benefits systems than seniors are in the United States. 

So what happens when an economically—when politicians and 

policymakers face a choice between an economically ruinous tax 

hike and a politically impossible benefit? Well, all too often, one of 

other two things happens: You cannibalize the rest of the budget 

or you let deficits grow that undermine national savings. 

Next slide, please. 

It’s not just a fiscal challenge. It’s also a challenge of slower economic growth. And when I confidently state that demographic 

trends, particularly in Japan and Europe but also in the United 

States, will lead to slower GDP growth in the future, I’m sometimes accused of pessimism. But this is not pessimism; this is really simple arithmetic. GDP growth is employment growth or, more 

precisely, the growth in hours worked times the growth in output 

per hour. 

And what this table shows is that the underlying rate of growth 

in the working-age population is falling rapidly and turning negative. In Europe we are looking, at best, at stagnation in France and 

the U.K., and in the faster-aging countries, like Germany and Italy, 

a sharply contracting working-age population. So unless productivity accelerates at least as fast as the rate of growth in employment falls, we’re looking at slower economic growth, and in some 

countries, we are actually looking at the prospect of secular economic stagnation. That is no growth in aggregate GDP across the 

business cycle. 

There is some reason to fear that rather than productivity growing more rapidly, the aging of the population may actually pull productivity down, because, as more of the population enters the harvest years, rates of savings and investment are likely to decline, 

and also, though it pains me to say this personally—it’s not just 

the world that’s aging; I am also—but there is a large literature 

in the social and behavioral sciences which suggests that productivity generally declines at older ages, particularly in environments 

of rapid technological and market change. It’s simply harder for 

older workers to adjust. 

And this difficulty, the higher adjustment costs of an aging society, may also increase the risk of a protectionist backlash. It—historically, expanding populations and expanding markets have gone 

hand in hand with free trade, whereas—think of the 1930s—contracting markets have gone hand in hand with beggar-thy-neighbor 

protectionism. 

Next slide, please. 

Here we leave entirely the realm of quantifiable social science 

and become more speculative. But it’s at least worth reflecting on 

how the shift in the age structure of society may affect the overall 

mood of society. What this somewhat puzzling chart depicts is the 

15

share of the population in each of the G–7 countries with less than 

20 years of life remaining, between 1950 and 2050. So if you will, 

it’s a proxy for the share of the population that has most of its life 

in the past tense and relatively little in the future tense. 

We know that behavior changes in certain characteristic ways 

across the individual life cycle. Yes, you know, perhaps we know 

a risk-taking 85-year-old entrepreneur, and perhaps we know a 

risk-averse 25-year-old, but behavior changes in typical ways, on 

average, and for purely rational reasons. At older ages, we have 

less time left to enjoy the benefits of risky investments and less 

time left to recoup the losses. 

So the question is, does the overall behavior of societies and of 

electorates become more risk-averse, more small-c conservative, if 

you will, more prone to favor current consumption over investments in the future, more prone to make ad hoc settlements instead of face decisive confrontations? 

Next slide, please, and I will wrap up quickly. 

Although population size alone does not confer geopolitical stature, no one disputes that population and economic size together 

constitutes the powerful double engine of national power. A larger 

population allows greater numbers of young adults to serve in war 

and to occupy and pacify territory. A larger economy allows more 

spending. 

On the hard power of national defense and semihard power of 

foreign assistance, it can also enhance what political scientist Joseph Nye calls soft power, by promoting business dominance, leverage with NGOs and philanthropies, social envy and emulation, and 

cultural clout in the global media and popular culture. 

The population of the developed world club has been for decades 

now and will continue to be a steeply declining share of the global 

total. Note, however, that the United States roughly maintains its 

global population share over the next half-century. 

Next slide, please. 

The trend in the developed world’s share of global GDP—these 

are projections we made as a part of our ‘‘Graying of the Great 

Powers’’ project—the trend in global—developed world’s share of 

global GDP and particularly Europe’s and Japan’s share—the decline is even steeper. The U.S. share does decline somewhat but not 

nearly to the same extent as that of our traditional allies does. 

Next slide. 

So we come to the consequence of what my colleague Nicholas 

Eberstadt sometimes calls U.S. demographic exceptionalism. The 

corollary to the demographic—relative demographic and economic 

decline of the rest of the developed world is that the United States 

will be a sharply rising share of the overall population and GDP 

of the developed world. And in fact in our projections, by the 2030s, 

the relative dominance of the United States in the developed world 

is back to about where it was in 1950, at the beginning of the Pax 

Americana. 

Yes, the United States faces very significant fiscal and economic 

challenges. As has already been stressed, we have an extraordinarily expensive health system, which will become a growing 

handicap as the population ages. We have a very low national savings rates. We are rock bottom in the developed world and, in part 

16

as a consequence of that, a very—a high and growing level of dependence on foreign capital. We also, sadly, have a political economy which sometimes finds it difficult to make resource tradeoffs 

between competing priorities—the whole question of ruinous tax 

hikes and politically impossible benefit cuts. 

But at the end of the day, if we can overcome these obstacles, 

the United States will have the youth and the economic resources 

to play a major geopolitical role, and in fact we will be the only rich 

country that does, which suggests that far from being in relative 

decline, we’re moving into a future in which the world will need us 

more, not less. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Dr. Jackson, thank you so much for that very thorough—and you, Dr. Eberstadt as well—very thorough assessment. 

And before I turn to Steven Mosher, I’d just remind my colleagues who will read this record, we will disseminate this very, 

very widely, because I think this is one of those issues that is potentially catastrophic and especially if we pay no attention to it or 

too little attention. So again, your information, which we will share 

with our members of parliament and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly as well as with the OSCE itself, is very, very helpful. So 

I do thank you so much for it. 

Dr. JACKSON. And thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Mosher, please proceed. 

STEVEN W. MOSHER, PRESIDENT, POOPULATION RESEARCH 

INSTITUTE 

Mr. MOSHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, distinguished fellow 

panelists, guests. I have a longer version of my remarks that I 

would ask be entered into the record, with your permission. 

Mr. SMITH. I’m sorry. 

Mr. MOSHER. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Without objection, it will be made part of the record. 

Mr. MOSHER. I’m an anthropologist and a China hand by training, so I’m going to concentrate on the cultural factors at work 

here. I will not pit anthropology’s four spheres against Drs. 

Eberstadt and Jackson’s demographic statistical juggernaut. But I 

would say that this is the first time I have ever been on a panel 

discussing the issue of population when the word ‘‘overpopulation’’ 

has not once arisen, because we’re all concerned today about not 

what may have seemed to have been the case in1960 and 1970 but 

what is actually the real situation on the ground today in this decade, in this century. The real population crisis we face today is not 

a population explosion but a population implosion in country after 

country around the world. 

The old demographic transition charts that I learned back in the 

1960s, when I first went to college, showed birth rates leveling off 

precisely at the replacement rate. Everything was going to be fine. 

The mortality rate would decline first. Then the fertility rate would 

follow. Everyone would wind up with a perfect family of a boy for 

me and a girl for you, and heaven help us if we have three. 

That is obviously not the case, since the family of even two children has been scorned by many moderns on their way to extinction, 

17

and the declining number of traditional families have been unable 

to fill the fertility gap thus created. 

Recall Peter Drucker, who was a colleague of mine out at Claremont College, at the Light Management Group, wrote way back in 

1997 that, quote, ‘‘the dominant factor for business in the next two 

decades, absent war, pestilence or collision with a comet, is not 

going to be economics or technology. It will be demographics.’’

Now he was concerned with the increasing underpopulation of 

developed countries, but decades later—a decade and a half later, 

this reproductive malaise has spread to many countries in the less 

developed world and is truly a global phenomenon, affecting all 

OSCE countries and all OSCE partners. 

There is a sentiment out there which I think I saw reflected in 

the 2010 revision of the U.N. Population Division, where in their 

median variant they felt somehow that fertility rates were going to 

swing upward again, and their median variant is actually based on 

the very optimistic—in my view, rosy—projection that the people in 

countries with low fertility will suddenly raise their total fertility 

rate back up to replacement. A few years ago the median variant 

was based on this sentimental rise in fertility rates up to 1.85. Now 

it’s based on a rise in fertility rates up to about 2.1. They give no 

reason for this optimism, and I can see none. It does, however, 

make the population projections that they put out somewhat more 

robust than they would otherwise be. 

I believe the real numbers will be lower. They have been lower 

for the last few decades. The low variant seems to be the best predictor of future population. 

I went to Japan for the first time in 1972 as an officer with the 

U.S. Navy at the tail end of the Vietnam War, and of course the 

Japanese economic boom was well under way by that time. Industry was flourishing under the guidance of long-range vision plans 

issued by elite bureaucrats in the Ministry of International Trade 

and Industry. The salaried men were grinding away at their usual 

70-hour work week. Economic growth was consistently running at 

4 to 5 percent a year, and Japan’s trade surplus with the U.S. was 

surging toward a hundred billion dollar mark, which seemed a lot 

at the time. 

Later, a decade later, my colleague Ezra Vogel from Harvard 

wrote a book called Japan as Number One, telling Americans that 

we were falling behind because of our lack of Japanese-style central direction and government and business cooperation. We 

should, he said, adopt policies more suited to the post-industrial 

age. 

It wasn’t long after Japan as Number One was published—and 

of course, it wasn’t just Professor Vogel; everyone was looking to 

Japan to overtake the United States in those years—the Japanese 

economy ran into a demographic brick wall. Economic growth 

stalled, averaging an anemic 1 percent growth for most of the ’90s. 

During the Asian economic downturn of 1998, Japan’s GNP actually shrank by 2.8 percent. Never No. 1, Japan soon slipped to 

fourth behind the E.U. and China. 

What’s going on here, of course, is now, since 1964, the Japanese 

total fertility rate has been below replacement. The Japanese for 

over four decades now have been having too few children to replace 

18

the current population. During the 1990s, Japanese journalists invented a term ‘‘demographic shock.’’ In 1993, the demographic 

shock was that the birthrate was only 1.53 children per woman. It 

has fallen since then, hovering around 1.3, 1.4 now. The voluntary 

childlessness of the Japanese exceeds even the forced-pace population reduction in China’s one-child policy. Back in 1996, Yamada 

Masahiro of Gakugei University said that Japan was entering the 

world’s first low-birthrate recession. 

So here we have a depopulation crisis that has already forced 

Japan to slash pensions, to raise the retirement age from 60 to 65 

to keep pension funds afloat. We’ve also—we’ve had earlier discussion of what’s happening in demographic terms, so I won’t dwell on 

the numbers. But Japan is suffering today from the four D’s: It is 

suffering from debt, from deflation and from declining demographics. And the latter two, declining demographics, is ultimately 

responsible for the first two. It is difficult to see how Japan can pay 

off its national debt of 2,000—200,000—not 2,000—200 percent of 

GDP with a declining and aging population. 

In reaction to this, the government has been encouraging older 

people to rejoin the work force and more women to take jobs. They 

have been focused on the development of industrial robots and, to 

some extent, encouraging immigration to keep the economy growing. Each of these proposed measures, however, is either a temporary stopgap measure or in some sense self-defeating. The newly 

rehabilitated elderly, of course, will soon be re-forced to retire 

again, this time for good. And as for women joining the work force 

in greater numbers, of course, everyone is in favor of giving women 

every opportunity, but this will surely drive the birthrate down 

even more and exacerbate the labor shortage over time even further. It would take an estimated 600,000 immigrants a year to offset the impending decline and labor force, and an influx of such 

magnitude would shake Japan’s homogenous and insular 

monoculture to the core. 

What can a country like Japan do to reverse the declining birthrate? The Japanese government has been studying this question 

now for 5 years and has—continues to repeatedly revisit the 

same—the same old solutions, which I do not believe will at all 

turn around this demographic collapse that we see. 

The crises of the empty cradle has crept upon us quietly. We 

have not reached a stable equilibrium of a lowered mortality rates 

and low birth rates. Instead, once people are educated, urbanized 

and begin to enjoy a certain level of wealth, birth rates plummet. 

More and more couples live in urban conditions where children provide no economic benefits, but rather are, as the Chinese say, goods 

on which one loses. 

I studied—my dissertation research back in the 1970s was a 

comparative analysis of a fishing and farming community in Taiwan and a close look at the economic value of children who, because they were not allowed on fishing boats, were of less economic 

value to the fisherman than to the farmers, who could put them 

to work in the fields at a relatively early age. And of course, the 

birth rate in the fishing village was lower. 

Education delays marriage even further. For materially minded 

couples in countries where the state provides old age benefits, the 

19

way to get ahead is to remain perpetually childless. Why give up 

a second income to bring a child into the world who will never, at 

least in material terms, repay your investment? Why provide for 

your future in the most fundamental way by providing the next 

generation if the government has pledged to keep you out of the 

poor house in your old age anyway? 

So the modern nanny state has created a strange new world in 

which the most successful individuals in material terms are the 

most unfit in biological terms. Wealth and children no longer go together. Wealth used to make it possible to marry earlier, to bring 

more children into the world, and ensure that more of these children survived. But no longer. Cradle-to-grave welfare systems 

found in developed countries along with a heavy tax burden leaves 

Japan—have made the care and feeding of children superfluous to 

wealth. In fact, they have made children wealth’s enemy. 

I have the example of Korea before me. In Korea, of course, back 

in 1961, Korea became one of the guinea pigs in the earliest population control campaigns carried out by our government. Along with 

Taiwan, South Korea was encouraged to embark upon a population 

stabilization program. The program quickly evolved into a de facto 

two-child-per-family policy, complete with strong punitive measures 

against those who dared violate this limit. Civil and military officials with more than two children were denied promotions and 

even demoted. Third and higher order children were declared ineligible for medical insurance coverage, educational opportunities and 

other government benefits. Couples who agreed to sterilization 

were given priority access to scarce public housing. 

There did matters stand for three long decades. By the time the 

government of South Korea began to rethink this policy in the mid 

’90s, the fertility rate had dropped to an anemic 1.7 children. The 

population was aging rapidly and a full-blown labor shortage had 

developed. You also had an epidemic of sex-selective abortions 

where Confucian-minded parents, anxious for sons, were ending 

the lives of girl fetuses because of their gender. 

In 1996 the South Korean government finally got out of the population control business, announcing on June 4th that all restrictions on childbearing would be lifted. No new pre-—no new pronatal measures were enacted, however, until many years later. The 

Japanese—the South Korean population is now—now has a TFR of 

1.2 or thereabouts, and the South Korean population is beginning 

to shrink in absolute numbers. 

Would that we had left well enough alone in South Korea and 

in Taiwan, which also has a labor shortage, and would that we 

would now leave the Philippines alone. We are continuing to press 

through our embassy there for the Philippines to adopt a two-child 

policy with some of the same measures that we saw earlier enacted 

in Taiwan and specifically in Korea. This because the Philippine 

people have the temerity to be averaging almost three children 

still, and a robust birthrate which provides immigrants to countries 

like Japan and South Korea and Taiwan to make up for the demographic shortfall there. 

The hundreds of millions of dollars that foreign agencies like 

USAID have poured into Korea’s two-child policy, of course, is but 

a tiny fraction of the $100 billion or so that has been spent on ferVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:24 Dec 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\WORK\062011.TXT KATIE
20

tility reduction programs in the world at large. Imagine putting billions of dollars into programs to undo the Industrial Revolution or 

the Information Revolution, and you will understand how our current approach makes no sense. We’re making an old-age tsunami 

even worse, and causing a flood of human misery and global economic malaise at the same time. 

So I believe, Mr. Chairman, the sooner that we end population 

stabilization programs, fertility reduction programs—whatever you 

want to call them—family planning programs, the better. 

What should countries that are experiencing demographic decline 

do? Well, the European countries, which are in dire straits, all 

have child allowances in place. In the Germanic countries it’s called 

Kindergeld. But this relatively small amount of money that’s given 

to parents of one or two or three children every month does not 

begin to compensate for the exactions of the state. I believe that 

one of the principal anti-natal factors in the world today, and especially in countries that provide cradle-to-grave welfare systems, are 

tax rates of—that take over 50, even over 60 percent of a young 

couple’s income. 

Now, if you reduce a young couple’s income by nearly 60 percent, 

you leave them with so little disposable income that they postpone 

marriage, they postpone childbearing, and you ultimately reduce 

completed family size. So one thing that these countries, I believe, 

should do is when young couples have children, they should abandon the program of subsidies and instead move to a program where 

they protect young couples from all taxation. 

With one child, perhaps, you would not pay—your taxes would be 

reduced by 1⁄3, with two children, reduced by 2⁄3, with three children you would pay no taxes to the state, because you would be in 

the business of paying the cost of raising future taxpayers, which 

are vital to the continued existence of retirement and pension programs, vital to the continued existence of the people itself. 

Governments can do many things, some well, many poorly. But 

governments cannot reproduce; only people can do that. And young 

couples who are willing to provide for the future of countries in the 

most fundamental way by providing the future generation should 

be cherished and treasured. That is the message that I will be taking to Moscow next week when I go with Professor Eberstadt for 

the demographic summit there. 

It is a drastic measure, to be sure. It is not revenue neutral. It 

will pit tax breaks for the young against the increasing demands 

of the increasingly numerous elderly, for the intergenerational compact to be—that the pledges they were given to be kept. But if 

these countries are to survive, I believe that such measures are certainly called for. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Mosher, thank you very much for your testimony. 

And I would note for the record that it was back in the early 1980s 

that Steven Mosher broke the story, literally broke the story, about 

the horrific human rights abuse inherent in the one-child-per-couple policy in China. In 1984, I actually offered an amendment to 

our foreign aid authorization bill, which passed, that conditioned 

our aid on whether or not the U.N. Population Fund and other—

any other non-governmental organization or multilateral organizaVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:24 Dec 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\WORK\062011.TXT KATIE
21

tion was involved in supporting the forced abortion policy in—the 

coercive population control policy of China. 

That led directly to the Kemp-Kasten language, which passed 

that same year. After we passed it on the authorizing bill, it then 

passed on the appropriations bill. Where we lost in conference on 

my amendment, Jack Kemp and Senator Kasten prevailed, and 

that language has been the law of the land ever since, although it 

has not been implemented faithfully during this administration. 

But I would say to Steven Mosher that it was his breakthrough 

research, which cost him a doctorate at Stanford, the U.S.—The 

Wall Street Journal even did a scathing editorial that called it 

Stanford morality, where they literally took away his ability to get 

his doctorate there because it may have put at risk the collaborative agreements between Stanford and the PRC even though he 

broke a human rights story that nobody else was focusing upon. So 

I thank him for that past and good work he does present. 

Let me ask just a few questions. And I’ll ask Mark Milosch, Chief 

of Staff if he has any questions either that he would like to pose. 

Let me just ask, first of all, in terms of—Dr. Jackson, you brought 

up the fact that, relatively speaking, the United States is probably 

at least a bit better off than our European friends when it comes 

to this demographic winter. We know that many of our—much of 

our economy is based on exports. What’s it, 1 out of every 8 jobs 

are contingent on exporting? But as those markets dry up because 

of lack of people, and consuming people, at that, what would be—

I mean, has that been adequately factored into our government’s 

projections? 

I know that, for example, the Congressional Budget Office has 

said that by 2021 our publicly owned debt will rise to $25.1 trillion—with a T—and their estimates of our unfunded liability over 

the next 75 years going upwards of $76 trillion. I mean, these are 

numbers that are just beyond, I think, anyone’s grasp. But if our 

ability to manufacture and export continues to dwindle, has that 

been adequately taken into the scenarios, sometimes more rosy 

than they should be, that OMB and others put out about our future? 

Dr. JACKSON. Let me perhaps clarify and add just a little nuance 

to my rather optimistic take on the long-term economic future of 

the United States. We do face a very significant challenge, as was 

pointed out by my colleagues on the panel. We never become as old 

as Europe. But we will age very rapidly. And this is a result of our 

unusually large post-war baby boom. So all of the aging in the 

United States occurs between 2010 and 2030, and there is a big associated—a big fiscal shock associated with that very steep rampup in the elder share of the population. 

So when the last of the boomers have passed on to that great 

Woodstock in the sky, we will be about as old as Italy and Japan 

are today; nonetheless, we’re going to grow old very rapidly over 

the next 20 years. And as I said, there’s a big fiscal shock, and 

there’s a big labor market shock. We are a country that is accustomed to having a young and growing population and work force. 

And we are also a country that is accustomed to limited government and a relatively small public sector. 

22

And the aging trend, particularly exacerbated by the rate of 

growth—rapid rate of growth in health care spending, calls all of 

that into question. So if unaddressed, we may at the end of the day 

end up not much better off than some of our faster aging allies in 

Europe or Japan; some of which, by the way, are moving more aggressively to reform pension systems and to address the challenge 

than we are. I think—so yes, if one projects out current fiscal policy, this is a train wreck and a disaster. And that is probably not 

fully and adequately factored into the projections. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Would anyone else like to answer that? 

Dr. Eberstadt, let me ask you—or maybe all three of our panelists: Recently Ted Turner, when he was at a global climate change 

summit in Cancun, Mexico, suggested that we need a world of onechild-per-couple policies that would parallel what the Chinese has 

done to its own women and children and men. 

I would note for the record that I’ve chaired 29 hearings on 

human rights abuses in China, in whole or in part focused on the 

issue of the one-child-per-couple policy and the fact that they are 

experiencing now gendercide, and have been for years. The missing 

girls—some put it as high as 100 million missing girls, nobody 

knows for sure. And as Dr. Eberstadt pointed out recently at a 

press conference, and another academic leader in population issues, 

the impact on men looking for wives—they’re just not there. 

They’ve been systematically eliminated pursuant to the one-childper-couple policy. 

But my question is really focused—and however you want to answer it, of course—Lester Brown from Worldwatch has said that we 

need a world of one-child-per-couple policies. And I find in talking 

to people at the United Nations—and I do it all the time, last week 

had several meetings with U.N. bureaucrats and leaders—you hear 

constantly this mantra that Steven Mosher mentioned a moment 

ago. This is the first hearing where he hasn’t heard an emphasis 

on overpopulation. The zeitgeist in the policy world seems to be 

overpopulation is still a serious problem. The sooner we get down 

to a two child, one child to two child, or as we say in—as was 

brought out in the Philippines—a two-child-per-couple policy, the 

better. And it seems like they’re missing all of—or most of these 

implications to the family, the impact on war and peace—I don’t 

know how many of you have read the Bare Branches book, the thesis of which is that, you know, there could a war in China, simply 

because they have a restless male population. 

So I just—you know, how do we shatter this myth, if it is a myth, 

of Brown, Ted Turner and others that, you know, children are bad, 

they need to be gotten rid of, prevented or destroyed? 

Dr. EBERSTADT. Well, Mr. Chairman, the—whatever you’d call 

it—the secular religion, the non-religious deterministic faith and 

anti-natal population policy is very strongly rooted now in a lot of 

institutions. It’s made a march through the institutions over the 

past generation or so into a lot of places in the United Nations, into 

a lot of other international institutions, and its taken root. And if 

we believe people like Thomas Kuhn, who wrote about the structure of scientific revolutions, people how have that sort of dogmatic 

faith are very seldom convinced. The big ideas change by having 

23

the people who hold those ideas—what would you say—demographically replaced by time. 

The notion that—the notion that a coercive anti-natal population 

policy can bring great benefit to a country or a society I think is 

demonstrably incorrect on its face. And there’s been an enormous 

amount of empirical evidence that has gathered about the awful 

unintended consequences of China’s particular program. All of the 

demographers that I talk to, who are Chinese demographers, all of 

them are unhappy with the program. And depending upon how outspoken they are they will say either that they believe the program 

should be reconsidered, which is code language for scrapped, or 

that it should be scrapped outright. So within the Chinese demographic community at this point there’s not much disagreement 

about this. 

I suppose the question which arises is what happens if the 

ideologues actually achieve the world of their dreams, through policies or through voluntary means? One of the most remarkable phenomena in the modern world has been the plunge, the voluntary 

plunge, of fertility in East Asia and in parts of Europe to levels 

that nobody would have thought could be seen apart from times or 

war and catastrophe—peacetime, prosperous, voluntary, extreme 

sub-replacement fertility. 

In Hong Kong today birthrates, voluntarily, are hovering around 

one birth per woman per lifetime. They’re lower than that in Taiwan today. They’re lower than that in northern Italy today. And 

along with this extraordinary plunge in fertility, one’s seeing another phenomenon—the rise of voluntary childlessness. In Germany today, and in German speaking Europe, almost a third of 

women are heading toward the end of their reproductive lives 

childless, voluntarily childless. 

In Hong Kong almost 1⁄3 of the women in their early 40s are 

childless. And this portends a world in the future which is going 

to be very different from the one that we know. It’s hard to see this 

as a sort of a ‘‘New Jerusalem’’ of prosperity and robustness for the 

future. My guess is that as the tidings come in on the consequences 

of extreme sub-replacement fertility, it’ll be impossible even for the 

most committed ideologues to see that this is a sort of a panacea 

for the world. 

Dr. JACKSON. I agree with Dr. Eberstadt. The notion of a—setting a global one-child policy as a goal is not just disturbing, for 

a variety of reasons, but I think even in terms of the arithmetic, 

if one’s concern is stabilizing global population, fundamentally misplaced. The fact is that fertility rates decline along with rising affluence, female educational attainment, and the availability of effective contraception—though I think the biggest driver is probably 

female educational attainment. 

The global population will stabilize around—by mid-century and 

then plateau or gradually begin to decline. The problem is—for particularly for the rich world, is not bringing birthrates down, it’s 

how to bring them back up again in some countries. And I think 

we need to think long and hard, not about why birthrates have fallen from seven to five to three to two; but why in some countries 

they’ve stabilized at two and at others they’ve fallen all the way 

to one, because in my view a fertility rate around two, 2.0, particuVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:24 Dec 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\WORK\062011.TXT KATIE
24

larly if supplemented by net immigration that’s well assimilated, is 

just—is just fine. But extreme sub-replacement fertility leads to 

dramatic population aging and population implosion. And that creates big economic and social problems. 

Mr. SMITH. Dr. Jackson, you mentioned birthrates—the difference between birthrates and pregnancy rates? 

Dr. JACKSON. I’m sorry, sir? 

Mr. SMITH. There is a difference between pregnancy rates——

Dr. JACKSON. Yes. 

Mr. SMITH [continuing]. And birthrates, because birthrates obviously—I mean, it is still an issue of great contention here in the 

United States and elsewhere, but I take the view that there is a 

child in the womb. But it would seem that there’s a huge number 

of women who are pregnant who—54 million in the United States 

alone since ’73—who have had abortions. 

Dr. JACKSON. Yes. And that makes a very—that has a very significant impact on the population trend. 

But one of the big and most important factors that does account 

for the variation in fertility across the rich world is the extent to 

which different societies do a good job at allowing women to have 

both jobs and families. 

In fact, the fertility rate and the female labor force participation 

rate have a relationship in the rich world today which is probably 

the opposite of what most people think. Fertility is positively correlated with female labor force participation. It’s the countries with 

the most working women who have by and large the most babies 

and the countries with the fewest working women who have the 

fewest babies. 

And this, I believe, is because the aspirations of women have 

changed everywhere. But some countries have adapted the family 

culture and the workplace culture in a way that facilitates women 

to do both. And other countries haven’t. So if a country doesn’t it 

lends—ends up with both of less inputs, which is the case in Italy, 

Spain, the case in East Asia, in Korea, Taiwan and the other—and 

the other Tigers. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. 

Dr. JACKSON. Thank you. 

Mr. MOSHER. Mr. Chairman, coming back to China briefly, it 

wasn’t so long ago that the head of the U.N. Population Fund was 

talking openly about exporting China’s one-child policy to the rest 

of the world. And indeed, one can see shadows of China’s one-child 

policy in neighboring countries, like Vietnam. So that was an organized institutional effort to promote the one-child model to other 

countries, not in a democratic fashion. Not as a result of individual 

volition, but as a result of foreign funded and imposed efforts. 

It is curious to me that the Chinese Government seems so resistant to the notion that its one-child policy needs to be abandoned 

or at least seriously revised. And I can only attribute it to several 

factors, one of which is, I think the one-child policy has, in a time 

of economic reform, been one way the state in China uses to maintain the muscular rigor—the muscular tone of the system, to maintain control in one area while relaxing it in the economic arena, 

while loosening controls on production and tightening controls on 

reproduction. 

25

I think they would also be loath to abandon the policy because 

it would undermine the legitimacy of the regime to admit, even implicitly, that this policy, which has impacted negatively every Chinese person throughout the last few decades, was, in some measure, a mistake or a miscalculation. And so if we do see the policy 

abandoned, I think it will be gradually eroded away, rather than 

suddenly announced to have been a failure, a mistake or bad timing. 

Of course, it is also difficult to abandon a policy that generates 

such enormous revenue for local and mid-level and even provincial 

officials, with the heavy fines that are now posed on people—imposed on people who violate the policy, which are reportedly shared 

by officials at different levels of government. Those fines, which are 

equivalent to 3 to 5 years of families’ income—the equivalent fine 

in the United States would be a quarter of a million dollars, 

$350,000—provide a generous—generous bonuses, albeit illegal, to 

Chinese officials who collect them. So that’s another reason why 

the existing bureaucracy would not want to move significantly 

away from the policy. 

The other thing, I think, that we need to address in order to return birth rates to replacement is the idea that people are somehow the enemy of the environment. There is an ideology out there 

that pits people against the environment, that measures environmental impact in terms of the human footprint, which, in turn, is 

a simple calculus, in their view, of how many human feet there are 

walking around on the planet. 

We need educational materials in schools that emphasize the 

value of the human resource. The environment is most under 

threat from poverty: It is poverty that causes the poor to cut down 

the last tree for fuel and to pollute the very water they need to 

drink because they have no resources to build a sewage-treatment 

plant. The environment is most protected under an open society 

with a robust economy. It is most under threat from poverty and 

excessive state planning. 

So I do hope that we can—we can change the view of people from 

consumers and parasites on the planet to producers who, in general, leave the world a better place than they found it. If you do 

the calculations of present future value of a baby at conception, you 

find out that in an open society with a growing economy, that that 

value is always positive. And so every abortion is the death of a 

small fortune in these countries. Certainly is in China today. 

So we need to emphasize that—the value of each human being. 

I think that Hungary has taken a step in the right direction with 

its new constitution that defines life as beginning at conception and 

deserving of protection from that point. One may object that that 

sounds like a theological statement. It’s simply substituting value 

for the sanctity of life—the value of human life. And you’ll see that 

it’s an economic statement, rather than necessarily a theological 

one. It’s also true, of course, in biological terms that human life begins at conception. And when something is true at several different 

levels, it probably is true in the broadest sense. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Milosch. 

Mr. MILOSCH [Chief of Staff, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe]. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to ask a 

26

question about the OSCE states and Africa. I’m particularly thinking of Dr. Jackson, but also the other panelists. What is the effect 

of this graying of the OSCE population on the other countries of 

the world, on the poorest countries? 

I’m getting from your testimony a vision of the OSCE in the future: graying population; drawing workers from other countries, 

presumably—I got the implication that a lot of these people would 

come from Africa. So we’d be in a situation where we’d be drawing, 

probably, Africa’s best workers out of Africa. And, you know, what 

happens then to a place like Africa, South Asia? 

We can talk about the damage that Western immigration does to 

those countries right now—not to any intention, of course, but the 

best and brightest of those countries tend to come—of those countries tend to come to, very often, OSCE countries. 

And I’m wondering, will this be greatly magnified? And then 

what happens to Africa? I hope I’m wrong, but one could draw out 

of your testimony a kind of disaster vision for the rest of the world. 

Dr. JACKSON. Right. Let me try to answer what are very good 

questions. 

I don’t often disagree with Jack Goldstone. But maybe—perhaps 

this isn’t a disagreement, but just a clarification. In the migration 

literature, a rising age dependency ratio or a falling worker support 

ratio would not draw in migrants from younger developing countries. It’s not—it’s not—it doesn’t pull in migrants, and the reason 

is because a rising old age dependency burden is associated with 

a rising tax rate. 

So yes, in terms of emerging labor shortages, aging developed 

countries—OECD countries—need younger migrants. But they may 

not necessarily be, in the future, attractive places for migrants to 

move to. Now, Canada, the United States, and Australia are big exceptions. I’m thinking more of the rapidly aging countries of continental Europe, with their very expansive and expensive welfare 

states. 

So I’m not sure—I’m not sure that that remains a sort of winwin dynamic in the future. I do think that immigration can be a 

win-win solution, or part of the solution to the aging challenge. But 

there is an issue there that is often not taken into account by people who look at the issue. 

The other point I would make is that as domestic markets—to 

the extent that the—to the extent that the rich countries are export 

markets or emerging markets, the contraction of these economies 

and, as I suggested in my testimony, the risk—the growing risk of 

protectionist measures does pose a real threat to growth in emerging markets. I sometimes say that, you know, global aging is a 

global problem and so it requires global solutions. 

And I think that the heart of the solution has to be maintaining—renewing and reaffirming a commitment to open markets, 

both capital markets and labor markets because in a world of diverging demographic trends, where some countries are aging and 

contracting and others are still young and growing. It’s open labor 

markets that allow us to match jobs and workers and it’s open capital markets that allow us to match savers and investment opportunities. So I think that’s absolutely fundamental to a—to a happy 

ending to the story. 

27

Mr. MILOSCH. Thank you. Dr. Eberstadt? 

Dr. EBERSTADT. I’d make a distinction between the economic implications of global migration flows and some of the social and political possibilities there. Although I wouldn’t want to put an undue 

gloss on America’s problems with integrating immigrants into our 

society as loyal and productive newcomers, we look pretty good 

over time, compared to a lot of other places, as is also true of Canada and Australia, some of the overseas offshoots of the Englishspeaking world. 

Other places have more mixed records in integrating newcomers 

into their societies. And to the extent that receiving societies have 

problems in integrating and fully including newcomers in their societies, that creates a political and possibly a social problem for the 

future. And it can be an economic problem as well. 

I’m thinking most specifically about Japan, which seems almost 

to have an allergy against immigration from abroad—counts people 

who’ve been living in Japan for four generations as foreigners, in 

some cases. And in Europe, there is a—I’d say a mixed story. It’s 

probably more successful than one often hears. But I don’t think 

that all of the European states are as effective in integrating newcomers as the United States. And that may pose long-term questions, in some cases. 

From an economic standpoint, the economics of immigration, I 

think, looks pretty positive in a lot of cases because when one has 

what some would call a brain drain underway to rich countries, 

those brains who are drained are sending back remittances home. 

And their remittances home are a tremendously important source 

of income, poverty alleviation, capital funds for investment and the 

like. 

In the contemporary world, the estimates that I’ve seen suggest that about $300 billion a year are being sent by immigrants in 

countries with—countries that—where they were not born back to 

their home countries, which is over twice as large a volume as all 

of the overseas development assistance in the world. 

And I’d venture to guess that it’s money that’s being spent an 

awful lot more wisely and a lot more effectively than international 

transfers of aid. To the extent that international remittances are 

a consequence of this international migration flow, I’d see that as 

a very positive thing for an open world economy of the sort you describe. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask a few final questions. Dr. Eberstadt, 

let me ask you, with regards to the U.N. estimates, how reliable 

are they? Certainly, there’s a surface appeal argument one could 

make when you say, oh, we’re en route to 10 billion people. And 

yet if you don’t know the stratification of age groups and, in the 

case of missing girls in places like China, the raw number really 

does not tell you all that much. How much weight can we give to 

the credibility of those numbers? 

And, second, like Mr. Mosher mentioned earlier, I’ve heard, for 

my entire career in Congress—that’s three decades; 31 years—this 

mantra of overpopulation, overpopulation. I heard it before I got 

here. I hear it at every U.N. conference I ever go to and I’ve been 

to many. I was at Cairo, the population conference; I was at the 

Beijing women’s conference, PrepComs, Summit on Children. 

28

There’s this thread that nobody seems to challenge or this 

unexamined truism that we are just exploding with people and—

Dr. Jackson, you talked about, after 2050, that we are likely to go 

into some decline. Maybe you could elaborate on to what that decline actually looks like because I think most Americans and most 

people around the world would be shocked to contemplate what 

this means to them in terms of their—of their quality of life, their 

standard of living. Some people have gotten used to a certain 

standard—well, that could erode very quickly. 

And, second, Dr. Eberstadt, if you could speak to the ‘‘white 

death’’ in Russia. You mentioned 3 million deaths for every 2 million births. You said there was a 50 percent decline in military 

manpower by 2050. Surely, Beijing is watching that very closely as 

well. And with such a large shared border, it would seem to me 

that the Russians ought to be very concerned about illegal and migration across those borders in huge numbers. Who’s going to stop 

it, particularly in 2025 to 2030 and beyond, when that military capability on the Russians’ part has been so degraded? 

Dr. EBERSTADT. Yes, sir. Very briefly, I can attest that the technical people who work at the U.N. Population Division are very, 

very good. They have been trained very well; they do their work 

very carefully. 

The great unanswerable question for the United Nations or the 

Census Bureau or anyone else is how fertility and childbearing patterns will progress in the generations ahead because, simply put, 

there’s no robust science that allows anybody to accurately forecast 

future patterns of childbearing. And this means that the figure one 

puts into the black box or into the computer will generate whatever 

results you implicitly command it to give you, so that the current—

the current projections coming out from the U.N. Population Division and the U.S. Census Bureau and anywhere else is, in effect, 

a sort of a Rorschach test. 

You ask demographers what sounds reasonable to you as a future trajectory, and you put that in and then you get out total 

numbers. The fact of the matter is that after you look more than 

30 years in the future, you’re making guesses about how many babies the currently unborn are going to have. And there just isn’t 

any scientific way of doing that reliably. 

And so the United Nations Population Division tries to cover a 

number of different possibilities. Its low variants suggest that the 

world’s population total will start declining around 2050. Its high 

shows things going up forever. But there’s no way that anyone can 

possibly know. And there is a big uncertainty there that is just 

worth emphasizing. Unfortunately, it isn’t always emphasized. 

As to this notion of overpopulation, the real problem with the 

concept, I think, is that it’s impossible to describe, quote, ‘‘overpopulated,’’ unquote country with any consistency or without ambiguity, using demographic variables. I mean, is—what is the—

what’s the measure of overpopulation? Is it population density? In 

that case, Monaco looks awfully overpopulated. That doesn’t stop 

people from wanting to go there. If it’s rapid population growth, the 

United States around Ben Franklin’s time would have been awfully 

overpopulated. 

29

You can just go through the list and none of these criteria give 

you the vision that people seem to have when they start talking 

about overpopulation because what they really mean is poverty. 

They’re talking about poor places. And this is a fallacy of composition. Yes, you see poverty in populations because you have to have 

people to have poverty. But you also have to have people to have 

wealth. So I think the concept of overpopulation is a pretty useless 

one and economists who deal with population never use it. They 

really never use it. 

As for what’s going on with Russia and its security questions, the 

demographic vacuum that’s, if you will, emerging in the Russian 

Far East, the drop in its military and other young manpower ages 

and the problems of its shrinking but still very debilitated, sick 

labor force—the Kremlin does—the Kremlin has some programs for 

trying to deal with these. I don’t think they’ve been terribly effective so far. 

There’s a—there’s a pro-natalist policy that seems, according to 

some lights, to have slightly increased Russia’s fertility. We’ll see 

if fertility continues to increase. Health has come up slightly but 

is—but maybe it is still below the levels for adult people in the 

country of India and I think in Pakistan. Russia is on an almostirremediable trajectory for decreased relative economic influence in 

the world, over the next two decades. 

And the Kremlin has responded to this prospect with a new security concept, as they call it. And to oversimplify, but I think only 

a bit, the new security concept talks about lowering the threshold 

at which the Kremlin would consider use of nuclear weapons. And 

this is the essence of the new Russian security concept. 

It takes into account the likelihood that Russia will be economically weaker in comparison to its competitors, rather than stronger, 

in the years ahead and tries to deal with this not through outward 

integration or through economic reforms at home but through the 

use of Russia’s comparative advantage in nuclear weaponry. 

Mr. SMITH. Just to—if you’d elaborate on that a little bit further——

Dr. EBERSTADT. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SMITH. Are you suggesting that, should the Chinese move—

should the Chinese move, that the threshold ends or is going to be 

lowered, at which time they might use nuclear weapons to prevent 

such a move militarily by China? 

Dr. EBERSTADT. Over the last—over the last almost 20 years, 

there’s been a really dramatic movement of Russian citizens out of 

the Russian Far East and into warmer, more hospitable areas of 

the country. The Russian Far East has seen about one in six people 

leave voluntarily. So many of the people who were there before 

were there involuntarily, as a result of police force, the gulag and 

all of the rest. 

But Russian Far East population continues to decline and it 

could be that the economically rational thing would be to see it decline yet further. How many people does one need to man and operate a number of wellheads and energy centers, mines? I don’t 

know. 

What is—what’s striking to me in looking at the China—at the 

China-Russia border is how little interaction there is between the 

30

two sides. There are some guesses, no real hard figures, about how 

many people from China are coming into the Russian Far East. 

But the number probably is not higher than in the low hundreds 

of thousands, and most of those are sort of temporary traders, peddlers and the like. 

I’m not sure that the Russian Far East is any more attractive as 

a long-term retirement area or residence area to people from warmer China than it is to people from frozen Russia. It’s not clear that 

people from China wish to live there voluntarily any more than 

people from Russia do. 

The area has very little trade, surprisingly little trade over a 

very long border, very little integration between the two sides. As 

I said, my Russian demographer counterparts believe that it is not 

viable over the long term for this area to be an integral part of a 

Russian Federation, but they don’t have any particular scenarios 

that I’ve heard about how a big change like this would come about. 

And obviously, that’s on their part quite speculative. They’re not 

talking about anything that’s a forecast in the next number of decades. It’s more like science fiction. 

Mr. SMITH. Just two final questions, if I could. First, do any of 

these projections take into—obviously, one couldn’t predict a catastrophic event like we had with HIV/AIDS, the pandemic or perhaps SARS or what we saw happen in Japan or the rise of the 

super bugs. Is there any wiggle room in demographic projections 

that say, you know, should an event happen, this could add or decrease our projections? 

And second, on Thursday, another hat that I wear is that I’m 

Chairman on the Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights Subcommittee. And I’m going to be chairing the first-ever hearing on 

the global problems that are presented by Alzheimer’s disease globally. Europe, the EU has about 9 million currently acknowledged 

cases, and that’s rising. We’re at a level of 5 million, and that’s expected to triple by 2050 unless there’s some cure found or delay of 

onset which would put the number out a little bit. 

But I’m wondering if—what your thoughts are on Alzheimer’s. 

You know, I looked at the projections that you had on—I take it 

was Dr. Jackson—on expected—life expectancy, and obviously Europe and the United States it’s very high, 80, 79. And we know 

that in America, one out of every two people, once they’re at the 

age of 85, are in some degree of Alzheimer’s disease. 

So if you could maybe speak to that issue as well, because it 

seems to be, from a cost point of view, and we’ll have better information on Thursday when our witnesses provide that for us, this 

carries huge implications to Medicare, the European equivalent, 

and of course to all the caregivers who spend huge amounts of 

time, family members especially, caring for an Alzheimer’s patient. 

Dr. JACKSON. Right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The need to care 

for a much larger number of frail and a much larger number of elders with dementia is probably the most explosive dimension of old 

age dependency. First of all, it’s not just that the elderly population 

as a whole is growing; it’s the oldest elderly age brackets that are 

the fastest growing age brackets, a phenomenon sometimes called 

the aging of the aged. 

31

There is also, and I think Nicholas Eberstadt may be able to 

speak more authoritatively to this—but I have seen little evidence 

to suggest that rates of chronic morbidity, of incidence of chronic 

conditions among the elderly, including Alzheimer’s, are falling. Indeed, they seem to be stable or rising. And so this poses an enormous challenge in the future which will be compounded by the fact 

that the size and shape of the family is changing, because even in 

the—even in countries which do have some government-funded 

support for long-term care, a vast amount of care occurs informally 

within families. 

Yet in a country like Italy, by the time you get out to the 2030s, 

the extended family is essentially extinct. Half of young adults 

don’t have any brothers or sisters or uncles or aunts or cousins. So 

this is a huge problem. 

Just very briefly on the issue of wild cards, though the projections by the United Nations and others make some attempt to factor in, obviously, existing pandemics, but they don’t include or reflect the possibility of unforeseen catastrophes which are not in the 

pipeline. But I might just conclude by saying that absent a true catastrophe, a global pandemic, you know, or some Hollywood event 

like an alien invasion or a colliding comet, global aging is going to 

happen. That is in—that is baked into the cake at this point. 

Dr. EBERSTADT. One of the happy facts that has transformed the 

world over the last generation and more has been the explosion of 

health that almost all of the human population has enjoyed—Russia, parts of Africa being the sad exceptions. 

And this explosion of health has continued not just from infancy 

through working age but into older ages so that life expectancy has 

been increasing, as Dr. Jackson indicated, for people in their 70s, 

their 80s, even into their 90s in the developed world and rates of 

physical disability have been more or less steadily declining for 

people in the developed world in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. 

The terrible footnote and exception to this is dementia. And as 

Dr. Jackson indicated, there are no data to suggest that the prevalence or incidence of dementia has been declining over time. We 

don’t have any indication that it’s been increasing, but our medical 

efforts to combat dementia have been, until now, essentially completely unsuccessful. And as far as I can tell, there is nothing in 

the pipeline that—in the research pipeline that offers any real 

promise of progress in this area. 

Places like Japan are facing a terrible problem in the future. If 

projections turn out to describe a future reality, which they may or 

may not, we see a situation only a little more than a generation 

away in which one out of every 25 Japanese is afflicted with Alzheimer’s—one out of 25—and at the same time, in a world in 

which, as Dr. Jackson indicated, something like 40 percent of all 

Japanese end up childless. How does a society like that function? 

The situation is a little bit less acute for some of the European 

countries and distinctly less acute for the United States, but the 

trends don’t look very inviting for us either. 

Mr. SMITH. Senator Cardin? Co-Chairman Cardin? 

32

HON. BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, CO-CHAIRMAN, COMMISSION ON 

SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE 

Mr. CARDIN. Well, I hope the hearing was a more positive than 

that last response. If it wasn’t, then I’m sorry—then I’m not sorry 

I missed it. If it was, then I look forward to reading the material, 

as I will. And thank you all for your being here and thank the 

Chairman for holding this hearing. 

Mr. SMITH. Is there anything else any of our distinguished witnesses would like to add before we close? 

I do want to thank you. I think this is an issue, especially as it 

relates to Congress and other parliaments, that has been totally—

maybe not totally, but largely, almost totally ignored for far too 

long. As again, Mr. Mosher mentioned early before, when everyone 

talked about population, it would be the uninformed view that we 

are overpopulated and not what portends. 

And it’s right around the corner with regards to huge economic 

dislocations, potentials of war attributable to a very, very worsening situation that comes to a disproportionally older versus a 

younger population. Your information that you provided and the 

scholarship you’ve provided to this Commission is brilliant. And I 

look forward; we look forward to sharing it with our colleagues, because the analysis needs to be gotten out into the public domain 

and into the policymaking domain much more robustly than it has 

been. 

So thank you so much for your testimony. Your written and your 

oral statements were, like I said, brilliant and your answers to the 

questions very incisive. So I do thank you so much. So I thank you 

and the hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

33

APPENDICES

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JACK A. GOLDSTONE, VIRGINIA E. 

AND JOHN T. HAZEL, JR. PROFESSOR, AND DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR GLOBAL POLICY, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY 

A CHANGING WORLD MAP 

The OSCE nations came together to realize the principles of 

openness, cooperation, and mutual security, grounded in the protection of basic human rights for all of its member nations and their 

citizens. At the closing of the cold war, it was clear that these principles were necessary to overcome the legacies of racism, nationalism, and abuses of state power that had caused so many deaths 

and so much suffering over much of the twentieth century. 

Unfortunately, the specters of racism, nationalism, and state 

power trumping human rights are again being raised in regard to 

immigration issues in the OSCE region. While most countries in 

the region have been open to immigration to varying degrees, and 

many have generous asylum policies for refugees from violence 

elsewhere, we are seeing calls by some politicians that say ‘enough.’ 

A new wave of demographic changes, with birth rates plummeting 

while immigration rises, has raised fears that some European nations are committing slow suicide, or that foreign cultures and legal 

practices will somehow displace core European legal and cultural 

values. 

It is difficult to overstate the degree to which such fears, while 

understandable—especially in times of economic crisis—are misplaced. Indeed, they are not only based on misunderstandings, they 

are positively destructive for the future prosperity of Europe as 

well as for the OSCE region and even the Old World as a whole. 

Simple arithmetic, applied to current demographic trends, shows 

unambiguously that the OSCE nations will need more immigration 

in the future. While many of the labor needs in the OSCE region 

are currently being satisfied by migration within and among OSCE 

countries, mainly from the eastern portion of the region to the 

west, this will not suffice in the future. Rather, the OSCE region 

will need immigrants from outside, including not only the adjacent 

regions of northern Africa, but also parts of Asia and sub-Saharan 

Africa. 

This statement of course raises fears of an imminent ‘‘Eurabia’’ 

or ‘‘Londinistan’’ that will be foreign to its own historic inhabitants. 

But these fears should be recognized to be similar to those fears 

of the ‘‘yellow peril’’ and other xenophobic creeds. These fears are 

based on racism and the worst form of hostile nationalism, and 

imply nothing less than the belief that non-European peoples are 

unable to appreciate and acquire the benefits of freedom, equality, 

and liberty under the law. 

Let us grant two truths that make the absorption of immigrants 

difficult in Europe. First, for most of the last five hundred years, 

Europe has been a country that sent immigrants OUT, to the rest 

of the world. From the 1500s up through the 20th century, Spanish 

and Portuguese, English, Irish and Scots, Germans and Swedes, 

34

Italians and Poles, even Dutch and French colonists, spread out 

and established communities in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. 

However, we may feel today about the mixed results of these imperialist and colonial efforts, it is difficult to imagine what Europe 

would have looked like—overrun, impoverished, deprived of skills 

and products gained abroad—if the rest of the world had been able 

to close its doors and prevent Europeans from leaving their own 

countries. It has thus been difficult for Europeans to readjust their 

mental map and realize the world has changed, so that their numbers are stagnating rather than expanding, while the rest of the 

world has become more numerous, richer, and better able itself to 

undertake large-scale migration. Some Europeans react to this 

change, as many people react to any change from past patterns, as 

a threat, as if reversing the past patterns of global population 

movement will inevitably bring them harm. 

Second, precisely because they have not been able to conceive of 

foreign immigration as a permanent, long-term shift in their very 

circumstances, European countries have treated foreign immigrants as temporary guests, often relegated to roles in unskilled 

labor and housed in neighborhoods separate and often poorly 

served in regard to social services. Rather than aggressively working to seek integration and assimilation of their migrants, many 

countries have left them to fend for themselves, so of course they 

turn inward to their own communities, reinforcing impressions of 

being closed-off and separate. It is often the very resistance to immigration that breeds the segregation, mutual hostility, and behavioral problems that are blamed on immigration itself. 

The best way to overcome the hostility toward migrants within 

the OSCE region is two-fold. First, the U.S. should lead the way 

as a country where welcoming and absorption of migrants has been 

a way of life, and where every economic study shows the benefits 

of immigration outweighing its costs. Of course, the U.S. still must 

work on its own misconceptions—for example, the false belief that 

illegal immigrants ‘pay no taxes.’ This is simply untrue, as anyone 

in the U.S who pays rent is indirectly paying property taxes, anyone who purchases products pays sales taxes, and anyone on a 

legal payroll is paying social security taxes. However, the U.S. can 

show the way forward as a country where immigrants from every 

region of the world have made crucial contributions to science, 

sport, business, the arts, and politics. 

Second, the OSCE should strive for standards for the active integration of legal migrants into societies. This includes provisions 

that make it easier to acquire language training, formal education, 

job training, health care, and quality housing. These investments, 

as I shall show in a moment, are simply vital to the self-interest 

of OSCE countries to sustain their own economies and finances. 

These must also include legal protections against discrimination 

and defamation of migrants and their cultures. 

At the same time, the OSCE countries must make it clear that 

immigration is not intended to create enclaves of foreign culture 

and distinct legal practice—rather all immigrants are expected to 

follow the existing laws and respect the public practices of the 

countries to which they have come. Where issues of minority rights 

and religious practice are concerned, boards of minority and reliVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:24 Dec 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\WORK\062011.TXT KATIE
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gious leaders must work with local governments to arrive at clear 

understandings of the limits of separate and distinct immigrant 

practices. Just as Mormons cannot claim polygamy as a right in the 

United States, certain religious practices from abroad that contravene prevailing laws and practices in destination countries will 

also be denied by host countries. However, the presumption in the 

OSCE countries should always be that the values of equality, freedom, liberty, and protection of basic human rights will prevail, and 

forms a foundation that immigrants themselves are eager to accept 

as a reasonable price for the privilege of immigration. 

THE ARITHMETIC OF DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE 

Demographic projections can often seem to produce a wall of 

numbers, and be subject to a wide range of uncertainty and dispute. But this need not be the case. The number of people who will 

be over 60 years old in forty years is pretty clear, because all of 

them are already alive today. The number of people who will be 

born in the next twenty years is more subject to dispute; but patterns of births have been fairly stable for the last few decades, and 

so reasonable projections based on recent patterns can be made. 

To show why immigration patterns are changing, and will 

change in the future, let us focus on one simple number—how 

many people in a country are of prime working age, from 15 to 59, 

compared to how many who are 60 years and older. In the United 

States today, that number is just over 3. That is, there are just 

over 3 people of prime working age for every person 60 and older. 

That is a reasonable ratio to sustain pension and health care costs 

for the seniors, by taxing the work of those who are still in the 

prime working years. 

However, the U.S. today faces a fiscal crisis in the future because 

that number is set to decline to about 2 over the next forty years. 

At a level of only two workers for every older person who still 

needs income and health care support, taxation and state debt become a problem. Rising health care costs, and shifts in the population toward a larger number of elderly persons, threaten to overwhelm and bankrupt state pension and health care systems. This 

is why reforms of the US system are needed to avert problems in 

the future. 

But things can get worse. At levels below 2, as one approaches 

a situation where there is almost one person over 60 for every person aged 15-59, the relationship indicates a crisis in the shortage 

of prime workers. And that is precisely where many OSCE countries are headed. 

Let me ask you to examine Figure 1. This shows that even today, 

a few countries in Europe have already dipped well below the US 

level of 3 workers for every senior—some countries such as Germany and Italy are already approaching the problematic level of 

only 2 workers per senior. By contrast, countries such as Romania, 

Russia, Poland, and the US are still at a reasonable 3 workers per 

senior, and countries further East, such as Turkey and 

Kazakhstan, have plentiful workers. Their ratio of workers to seniors is 6 to 7 or higher! Thus, it is not surprising that at the 

present, the major trend of migration within the OSCE nations is 

from the eastern part of the OSCE region to the west. 

36

However, by 2050, things will change dramatically. Over the 

next four decades, almost all the countries of Europe will see their 

senior populations soar while their working age populations remain 

stable or decline. As a result, their numbers will drop. Italy, Germany, Spain, Romania, and Poland will ALL be coming close to a 

level of only 1 working age person per senior; even the U.K., 

France, Hungary, and Russia will drop well below 2. Thus there 

will be a widespread shortage of workers needed to support the 

senior population and contribute to keeping economies growing. 

Even Turkey, alongside the U.S., will drop to around 2 workers per 

senior, and even Kazakhstan, where birth rates are converging toward those in Europe, will have dropped from labor-rich condition 

to a reasonable level of 3 workers per senior. Thus by 2050, no regions of the OSCE will be nearly as rich in young workers as they 

are today. To keep its population growing, and to cope with need 

to support an older population, OSCE countries, especially those in 

western Europe, will need to draw on more immigrants from outside the OSCE nations. 

Some have pointed to a slight rise in recent births in Russia, 

France, and the U.K. as evidence that the recent ‘birth dearth’ is 

ending. That may be true. But the gains are very small. Moreover, 

for the next twenty years, any increase in births only results in dependent children who will themselves pose a burden on state and 

personal finances for health and education, so that they will only 

begin to contribute to the labor force in significant numbers after 

2030. 

In short, there is no alternative for Europe but to accept that the 

world has changed, and increased immigration will be part of the 

mix of policies needed to cope with demographic patterns that will 

prevail in the future. 

But that should be a cause for celebration, not alarm. Throughout history, the most fruitful and innovative societies have been 

those that mixed peoples from varied culture, and held to pluralist 

and open societies. This was true of the United States, but also of 

the periods of greatness in India, the Ottoman Empire, and China. 

During the Roman Empire—when Europeans were arguably the 

most powerful nation in the world—the peoples of north Africa and 

Europe from Scotland to the Danube were united under one set of 

laws, despite their varied religions and languages. The 

foundational values of the OSCE, if applied with regard to immigration, can offer an era of continued growth, innovation, variety, 

and prosperity for Europe and the OSCE nations as a whole. The 

alternative—nationalist closure, hostility, covert racism—by contrast offers only a return to the horrors of the early 20th century. 

The choice should be clear. 

There should be no illusions that the assimilation and integration of migrants from outside the OSCE to its member nations will 

be simple or without effort. Many complex issues will need to be 

addressed with energy and dedication, and much effort will be 

needed to implement policies designed to manage and smooth immigration. But what projects and gains of great value are achieved 

without some effort? The gains from a more open and welcoming 

system of immigration in OSCE countries will be so great, and so 

37

necessary, as to more than justify the efforts requited to achieve 

them.


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PREPARED STATEMENT OF NICHOLAS EBERSTADT, HENRY 

WENDT SCHOLAR IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE


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PREPARED STATEMENT OF RICHARD JACKSON, DIRECTOR 

AND SENIOR FELLOW, GLOBAL AGING INITIATIVE, CENTER 

FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 

Mr. Chairman and Commission Members, I am grateful for the 

opportunity to testify before the Commission on this important 

topic. 

Many have observed that the recent global economic crisis is 

helping to accelerate the relative decline of today’s developed countries and to drive the rise of today’s emerging markets. It is less 

well understood that demography is pushing in the same direction, 

though over a much longer time horizon. Demographic change 

shapes economic and geopolitical power like water shapes rock. Up 

close the force may appear trivial, but given enough time it can 

move mountains. The long-term prosperity and security of the 

United States may depend in crucial ways on how effectively it prepares for the demographic transformation now sweeping the world. 

THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSFORMATION

Most of the developed world finds itself on the cusp of an unprecedented new era of rapid population aging and population decline. 

The developed countries have of course been aging for decades, due 

to falling birthrates and rising life expectancy. But during the 

2010s and 2020s, this aging will get an extra kick as large postwar 

baby boom generations move fully into retirement. According to the 

United Nations Population Division (whose projections are cited 

throughout this testimony), the median ages of Western Europe 

and Japan, which were 34 and 33 respectively as recently as 1980, 

will soar to 47 and 52 by 2030, assuming no increase in fertility. 

In Italy, Spain and Japan, more than half of all adults will be older 

than the official retirement age—and there will be more people in 

their seventies than in their twenties. 

Meanwhile, the working-age population has already begun to 

contract in several large developed countries, including Germany 

and Japan. By 2030, it will be contracting in nearly all developed 

countries, the only major exception being the United States. In a 

growing number of countries, total population will also begin a 

gathering decline. Unless birthrates or immigration surge, Japan 

and some European nations are on track to lose nearly one-half of 

their total current populations by the end of the century. 

These trends threaten to undermine the ability of today’s developed countries to maintain global security. There is, to begin with, 

the direct impact on population size and GDP size, and hence the 

manpower and economic resources that nations can deploy—what 

RAND scholar Brian Nichiporuk calls ‘‘the bucket of capabilities’’ 

perspective. But population aging and population decline can also 

indirectly affect capabilities—or even alter national goals themselves. Rising pension and health-care care costs will place intense 

pressure on government budgets, potentially crowding out spending 

on other priorities, including national defense and foreign assistance. Economic performance may suffer as workforces gray and 

rates of savings and investment decline. As societies and electorates age, growing risk aversion and shorter time horizons may 

137

weaken not just the ability of the developed countries to play a 

major geopolitical role, but also their will. 

The weakening of the developed countries might not be a cause 

for concern if the world as a whole were becoming increasingly pacific. But this is unlikely to be the case. Over the next few decades, 

the emerging markets will be buffeted by its own potentially destabilizing demographic storms. China will face a massive age wave 

that could slow economic growth and precipitate political crisis just 

as it is overtaking the United States as the world’s leading economic power. Russia will be in the midst of the steepest and most 

protracted population implosion of any major power since the 

plague-ridden Middle Ages. Meanwhile, many other developing 

countries, especially in the Muslim world, will experience a sudden 

new resurgence of youth whose aspirations they may not to be able 

to meet. The risk of social and political upheaval could grow 

throughout the developing world—even as the developed world’s 

ability to deal with the threats declines. 

Yet if the developed world seems destined to see its geopolitical 

stature diminish, there is one partial but important exception to 

the trend: the United States. While it is fashionable to observe that 

U.S. power has peaked, demography suggests that America will 

play as important a role in shaping the world order in this century 

as it did in the last. 

THE IMPACT ON ECONOMIES

Although population size alone does not confer geopolitical stature, no one disputes that population size and economic size together constitute a powerful double engine of national power. A 

larger population allows greater numbers of young adults to serve 

in war and occupy and pacify territory. A larger economy allows 

more spending on the hard power of national defense and the semihard power of foreign assistance. It can also enhance what political 

scientist Joseph Nye Jr. calls ‘‘soft power’’ by promoting business 

dominance, leverage with NGOs and philanthropies, social envy 

and emulation, and cultural clout in the global media and popular 

culture. 

The expectation that the aging of its populations will diminish 

the geopolitical stature of the developed world is thus based in part 

on simple arithmetic. By the 2020s and 2030s, the working-age 

population of Japan and many European countries will be contracting by between roughly 0.5 and 1.5 percent per year. Even at 

full employment, the growth in real GDP could stagnate or decline, 

because the number of workers may be falling faster than productivity is rising. Unless economic performance improves, some countries could face a future of secular economic stagnation—in other 

words, of zero real GDP growth from peak to peak of the business 

cycle. 

Economic performance, in fact, is more likely to deteriorate than 

improve. Workforces in most developed countries will not only be 

stagnating or contracting, but also graying. A vast literature in the 

social and behavioral sciences establishes that worker productivity 

typically declines at older ages, especially in eras of rapid technological and market change. Economies with graying workforces are 

also likely to be less entrepreneurial. According to the 2007 Global 

138

Entrepreneurship Monitor, which surveys fifty-three countries, new 

business start-ups in high-income countries are heavily tilted to the 

young. Of all ‘‘new entrepreneurs’’ (defined as an owner of a new 

business founded within the last three and one-half years), 40 percent are under age thirty-five and 69 percent are under age fortyfive. Only 9 percent are aged fifty-five or older. 

At the same time, savings rates will decline as a larger share of 

the population moves into the retirement years. If savings falls 

more than investment demand, as much macroeconomic modeling 

suggests is likely, either businesses will go starved for investment 

funds or the dependence of the developed economies on capital from 

higher-saving emerging markets will grow. In the first case, the 

penalty will be borne in the form of lower output. In the second, 

it will be borne in higher debt service costs and loss of political leverage, which history teaches is always ceded to creditor nations. 

Even as economic growth slows, the developed countries will 

have to transfer a rising share of society’s economic resources from 

working-age adults to nonworking elders. Graying means paying—

more for pensions, more for health care, more for nursing homes 

and social services for the frail elderly. According to CSIS projections, the cost of maintaining the current generosity of today’s public old-age benefit systems would, on average across the developed 

countries, add an extra 7 percent of GDP to government budgets 

by 2030. The extra cost in most continental European countries, 

with their expansive welfare states, would be even greater. 

Yet the old-age benefit systems of most developed countries are 

already pushing the limits of fiscal and economic affordability. By 

the 2020s, political warfare over deep benefit cuts seems unavoidable. On one side will be young adults who face stagnant or declining after-tax earnings. On the other side will be retirees, who are 

often wholly dependent on pay-as-you-go public plans. In France, 

Germany, Italy, and Spain, over 70 percent of the income of the 

typical elderly person comes in the form of a government check, 

compared with roughly 40 percent in the United States. In the 

2020s, young people will have the future on their side. Elders will 

have the votes on theirs. 

Faced with the choice between economically ruinous tax hikes 

and politically impossible benefit cuts, many governments will 

choose a third option: cannibalize other spending on everything 

from education and the environment to foreign assistance and national defense. As time goes by, the fiscal squeeze will make it progressively more difficult to pursue the obvious response to emerging military manpower shortages—investing massively in military 

technology, and thereby substituting capital for labor. Secretary 

Gates recently warned that the hollowing out of the defense budgets of our European allies already renders the long-term outlook for 

NATO ‘‘dim, if no dismal.’’ Demographic trends threaten to make 

a bad situation even worse. 

To be sure, there is significant variation in the demographic outlook across Europe. In France and northern Europe, including the 

low countries, Scandinavia, and the UK, the fertility rate now averages a relatively buoyant 1.9, not much less than the U.S. rate of 

2.1. In Italy and the rest of Mediterranean Europe, the fertility 

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ages 1.3, on par with Japan. If the demographic outlook for northern Europe is challenging, the outlook for the rest of Europe can 

only be described as bleak. While Europe’s northern high-fertility 

zone faces a future of zero workforce growth between now and 

2050, the working-age population of Italy and Mediterranean Europe is projected to decline by 22 percent; that of Germany and 

Central Europe is projected to decline by 29 percent. 

This variation poses a serious threat to the economic viability of 

the European Union, and, in particular, the EMU. The monetary 

union, of course, is already being buffeted by the sovereign debt crisis. Yet this near-term challenge pales before the longer-term challenge posed by the aging of Europe. The viability of the EMU depends crucially on the effective coordination of fiscal policy among 

member countries. Yet member countries not only have diverging 

demographics, but welfare states that vary greatly in their generosity. As the fiscal pressures of aging mount at different rates in 

different countries, coordination will become increasingly problematic. Some governments may rise to the fiscal challenge and rein 

in spending. But if others do not, they could end up unleashing inflation on the prudent and profligate alike. 

THE IMPACT ON SOCIAL MOOD

The impact of population aging on the collective temperament of 

the developed countries is more difficult to quantify than its impact 

on their economies, but the consequences could be just as important—or even more important. With the size of domestic markets 

fixed or shrinking in many countries, businesses and unions may 

lobby for anticompetitive changes in the economy. We may see 

growing cartel behavior to protect market share and more restrictive rules on hiring and firing to protect jobs. We may also see increasing pressure on governments to block foreign competition. Historically, eras of stagnant population and market growth—think of 

the 1930s—have been characterized by rising tariff barriers, 

autarky, corporatism, and other anticompetitive policies that tend 

to shut the door on free trade and free markets. 

The shift in business psychology could be mirrored by a broader 

shift in social mood. Psychologically, older societies are likely to become more ‘‘small c’’ conservative in outlook and possibly more 

risk-averse in electoral and leadership behavior. Elder dominated 

electorates may lock in current public spending commitments at 

the expense of new priorities and shun decisive confrontations in 

favor of ad hoc settlements. Smaller families may be less willing 

to risk scarce youth in war. We know that extremely youthful societies are in some ways dysfunctional—prone to violence, instability, 

and state failure. Extremely aged societies may also prove to be 

dysfunctional in some ways, favoring consumption over investment, 

the past over the future, and the old over the young. 

Meanwhile, the rapid growth in ethnic and religious minority 

populations, due to ongoing immigration and higher-than-average 

minority fertility, could strain civic cohesion and foster a new diaspora politics in some countries. With the demand for low-wage 

labor rising, immigration (assuming no rise over today’s rate) is on 

track to double the percentage of Muslims in France and triple it 

in Germany by 2030. Some large European cities, including AmVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:24 Dec 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00143 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\WORK\062011.TXT KATIE
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sterdam, Marseille, Birmingham and Cologne, may be majority 

Muslim. The problem is not growing diversity itself, but rather the 

failure of many European countries to assimilate migrants economically and socially. In the United States and the other traditional ‘‘immigration countries’’ like Australia and Canada, migrants 

constitute an important comparative advantage. 

In Europe, the demographic ebb tide may deepen the crisis of 

confidence reflected in such best-selling books as ‘‘France is Falling,’’ by Nicolas Baverez; ‘‘Can Germany Be Saved?’’ by Hans-Werner Sinn; or ‘‘The Last Days of Europe,’’ by Walter Laqueur. The 

media in Europe are already rife with dolorous stories about the 

closing of schools and maternity wards, the abandonment of rural 

towns, and the lawlessness of immigrant youths in large cities. A 

recent cover of Der Spiegel shows a baby hoisting 16 old Germans 

on a barbell with the caption: ‘‘The Last German—On the Way to 

an Old People’s Republic.’’ In Japan, the government half-seriously 

projects the date at which there will be only one Japanese citizen 

left alive. 

U.S. DEMOGRAPHIC EXCEPTIONALISM

Over the next few decades, the outlook in the United States will 

increasingly diverge from that in the rest of the developed world. 

Yes, America is also graying, but to a lesser extent. The United 

States is the only developed nation with replacement-rate fertility 

of 2.1 children per couple. By 2030, its median age, now 37, will 

rise to only 39. Its working-age population, according to both 

United Nations and U.S. Census Bureau projections, will also continue to grow through the 2020s and beyond, both because of its 

higher fertility rate and because of substantial net immigration, 

which America assimilates better than most other developed countries. 

None of this is meant to downplay the serious structural challenges facing the United States, which include a bloated healthcare sector, a chronically low savings rate, growing dependence on 

foreign capital, and a political system that finds it difficult to make 

meaningful resource trade-offs between competing priorities. All of 

these threaten to become growing handicaps as our population 

ages—and, if not addressed, will ultimately undermine our national 

prosperity and national power. 

Yet unlike Europe and Japan, the United States will still have 

the youth and the economic resources to play a major geopolitical 

role in the decades ahead. In the end, the biggest challenge facing 

America by the 2020s may not be so much its inability to lead the 

developed world as the inability of the other developed nations to 

lend much assistance. 

TOMORROW’S GEOPOLITICAL MAP

The demographer Nicholas Eberstadt has warned that demographic change may be ‘‘even more menacing to the security prospects of the Western alliance than was the Cold War for the past 

generation.’’ Although it would be fair to point out that such 

change usually poses opportunities as well as dangers, his basic 

point is incontestable: Planning national strategy for the next sevVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:24 Dec 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00144 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\WORK\062011.TXT KATIE
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eral decades with no regard for population projections is like setting sail without a map or a compass. In this sense, demography 

is the geopolitical cartography of the twenty-first century. 

Although tomorrow’s geopolitical map will be shaped in important ways by political choices yet to be made, the basic contours are 

already emerging. During the era of the Industrial Revolution, the 

population of what we now call the developed world grew faster 

than the rest of the world’s population, peaking at 25 percent in 

1930. Since then, its share has declined. By 2010, it stood at just 

13 percent and it is projected to decline still further in the future 

to 10 percent by 2050. The collective GDP of the developed countries will also decline as a share of the world total—and much more 

steeply. According to new projections by the Carnegie Endowment 

for International Peace, the G–7’s share of total G–20 GDP will fall 

from 72 percent in 2009 to 40 percent in 2050. Driving this decline 

will be not just the slower growth of the developed world, as 

workforces in Japan and Europe age and stagnate or contract, but 

also the surging expansion of large, newly market-oriented economies, especially in East and South Asia. 

There is only one large country in the developed world that does 

not face a future of stunning relative demographic and economic 

decline: the United States. Thanks to its relatively high fertility 

rate and substantial net immigration, its current global population 

share will remain virtually unchanged in the coming decades. According to the Carnegie projections, the U.S. share of total G–20 

GDP will drop significantly, from 34 percent in 2009 to 24 percent 

in 2050. The combined share of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, 

Japan, and the UK, however, will plunge from 38 percent to 16 

percent. By the middle of the twenty-first century, the dominant 

strength of the U.S. economy within the developed world may have 

only one historical parallel: the immediate aftermath of World War 

II, exactly 100 years earlier at the birth of the ‘‘Pax Americana.’’

All told, population trends point inexorably toward a more dominant U.S. role in a world that will need us more, not less. For the 

past decade or so, the United Nations has published a table ranking the world’s twelve most populous countries over time. In 1950, 

six of the top twelve were developed countries. In 2000, only three 

were. By 2050, only one developed country will remain—the United 

States, still in third place. By then, it will be the only country 

among the top twelve with a long historical commitment to democracy, free markets, and civil liberties.

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1Polybius, The Histories, Volume 6. Quoted in Robert de Marcellus, ‘‘A Foundering Civilization,’’ Human Life Review 28:1–2 (Winter/Spring 2002), pp. 7–18. 2The phrase ‘‘Demography is destiny’’ is generally attributed to Auguste Comte (1798–1857), 

a 19th century French mathematician and sociologist. 3Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (Ballantine Books, 1968; a Sierra Club edition followed 

in 1969, to which the following page citations refer.) The ‘‘battle . . . is over’’ phrase is from 

the Prologue. For the denial of food aid, pp. 143, 148. 4 Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 

1992) is filled with such bombast, pp. 177, 40, 78 5Social Problems, 4th ed., (Addison Wesley Educational Publishers, 1990), Chapter 17, ‘‘Population,’’ p. 487. 6 U.S. Census Bureau, Global Population Profile 2002, p. 22. 

7Table IV.1. ‘‘Life Expectancy at Birth by Development Group and Major Area, Estimate and 

Medium Variant, 1950–1955, 2000–2005, and 2045–2050’’, United Nations Secretariat, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Prospects: The 2004 

Revision, Volume III, Analytical Report, p. 55. The increase in life expectancy in the less developed world would have been even more dramatic without the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, 

and the resurgence of malaria, in Africa. In Chapter 6 we will explore the extent to which population control programs are responsible for rising mortality in Africa. 8 Joel Cohen, ‘‘Human Population: The Next Half Century‘‘, Science (2003) 302:1172–1175. The 

U.S. Census Bureau puts the percentage at 2.2 percent and the years at 1963–1964. See the 

U.S. Census Bureau’s Global Population Profile 2002 (2004, U.S. Government Printing Office), 

p. 3. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF STEVEN W. MOSHER, PRESIDENT, 

POPULATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE 

THE WHITE PESTILENCE: THE IMPLICATIONS OF DECLINING

BIRTHRATES IN THE OSCE COUNTRIES

One remarks nowadays all over Greece such a diminution in natality and in general manner such depopulation that the towns are 

deserted and the fields lie fallow. Although this country has not 

been ravaged by wars or epidemics, the cause of the harm is evident: by avarice or cowardice the people, if they marry, will not 

bring up the children they ought to have. At most they bring up 

one or two. It is in this way that the scourge before it is noticed 

is rapidly developed. The remedy is in ourselves; we have but to 

change our morals. 

Polybius (204–122 B.C.) 1

n.b. Rome annexed the Greek states in 146 B.C. 

Demography is destiny. 

Auguste Comte 2

Five centuries after the Black Plague devastated Europe, a 

White Pestilence is now decimating that same continent. Many nations, especially in Europe, are already in a death spiral, losing a 

significant number of people each year. Listen closely, and you will 

hear the muffled sound of populations crashing. I am an anthropologist and East Asian specialist by training, so I am going to concentrate on the cultural factors at work here. I will not pit anthropology’s poor spears against demography’s statistical juggarnaut. 

First, let’s clear up a central misconception. The old ‘‘demographic transition’’ charts showed birthrates leveling off precisely 

at the replacement rate. But many of today’s young adults in Europe and elsewhere are too enamored of sex, the city, and the single life to think about marriage, much less about replacing themselves. A single Swedish woman may eventually bear one child as 

her biological clock approaches midnight, of course, but she is un-

[Editor’s Note: Some footnote references were missing in the 

original.]

154

9Peter Drucker, ‘‘The Future that Has Already Happened,’’ Harvard Business Review, September-October 1997, 20, 22, 24. 10Some researchers have attempted to make the case, counterintuitive at best, that an aging 

and shrinking population will not create serious economic and social problems. I have not been 

generally impressed by these efforts. Economist Phil Mullan, for example, has written The 

Imaginary Time Bomb (I. B. Tauris, New York: 2002), a self-described effort to debunk unfounded anxiety about the consequences of societal aging. Mullan’s conclusion, that ‘‘The economic importance of population changes is often grossly exaggerated,’’ (p. 212) seems remarkably modest in view of his thesis. It is also one that, given the incessant scaremongering over 

the population bomb, I have no trouble assenting to. 11 Very low fertility is not limited to the more developed regions. Of the 148 countries and 

territories defined by the U.N. Population Division as ‘‘less developed regions,’’ 22 have below 

replacement fertility. The U.N. has issued two recent reports on this surprising development 

(2000, 2003), and a number of articles have been dedicated to this topic (Morgan, 2003; Goldstein, Lutz and Testa, 2003; Billari and Kohler, 2004). 12The UN Population Division labels its three principal population projections the ‘‘high variant,’’ the ‘‘medium variant,’’ and the ‘‘low variant.’’ Each is calculated using different assumptions about future fertility. The medium variant unrealistically assumes that all countries will 

approach a ‘‘fertility floor’’ of 1.85 over the next half century. It does not explain how this ‘‘fertility floor’’ was determined, nor does it explain how countries such as Italy will regain the ‘‘fertility floor’’ after spending the last two decades in the ‘‘fertility basement.’’ The high variant is 

even more unrealistic. It assumes that the fertility rates of all countries will converge on 2.35, 

a fertility rate that has been achieved by no developed country, even those with strong pro-natal 

policies. I favor the low variant, which has fertility falling to 1.35. World Population Prospects: 

The 2004 Revision, Volume III, Analytical Report, p. 33. 

likely to bear a second. What was supposed to be the perfect family—a boy for you and a girl for me and heaven help us if we have 

three—has been scorned by moderns on their way to extinction. 

The declining number of traditional families has been unable to fill 

the fertility gap thus created. 

This is the real population crisis. This population implosion, by 

reducing the amount of human capital available, will have a dramatic impact on every aspect of life. Peter Drucker, the late management guru, wrote back in 1997 that ‘‘The dominant factor for 

business in the next two decades—absent war, pestilence, or collision with a comet—is not going to be economics or technology. It 

will be demographics.’’ 9 Drucker was particularly concerned with 

the ‘‘increasing underpopulation of the developed countries,’’ but a 

decade later this reproductive malaise has spread even to the less 

developed world, and is a truly global phenomenon affecting all 

OSCE countries and all OSCE partners.10

By 2004, the U.N. Population Division (UNDP) found that 65 

countries, including 22 in the less developed world, had fertility 

rates that were below the level needed to ensure the long-term survival of the population.11 Most of the rest, the agency warned at 

the time, were likely to enter this danger zone over the next few 

decades. In this prediction, the UNDP is certainly correct. In fact, 

the latest revision of the UNDP numbers, the 2010 revision, shows 

that 79 countries, including several dozen in the less developed 

world, have fertility rates that are below the level needed to ensure 

the long-term survival of the population. 

According to the agency’s ‘‘low-variant’’ projection, historically 

the most accurate, by 2050 three out of every four countries in the 

less developed regions will be experiencing the same kind of belowreplacement fertility that is hollowing out the populations of developed countries today.12 Such stark drops in fertility, cautioned the 

UNPD, will result in a rapid aging of the populations of developed 

and developing countries alike. With the number of people over 65 

slated to explode from 475 million in 2000 to 1.46 billion in 2050, 

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13 United Nations Secretariat, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision [working paper]. Volume I, ‘‘Comprehensive Tables.’’ 14The UN Population Division’s medium variant projection, which assumes that the TFR in 

low fertility countries will rise to 1.85, is 9.1 billion. Only the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its Special Report on Emissions Scenarios, is still discussing a total 

population of 15.1 billion by 2100, a number that is supported by no demographic projections 

that I know of. 

existing social security systems will be threatened with collapse.13

It will prove difficult, if not impossible, to establish new ones. 

These sobering projections show that the population of the world 

will continue to creep up until about the year 2040, peaking at 

around 7.6 billion people.14 This is only a fraction more—one-sixth 

or so—than the 6.5 billion that the planet supports at present. 

Then the global population implosion, slow at first, but accelerating 

over time, begins. We fall back to current levels by 2082, and then 

shrink to under 5 billion by the turn of the next century. That population will be much older than we are today. 

If this impending population implosion catches you by surprise, 

you have the UN Population Division (UNPD) to thank. The agency 

buries its ‘‘low-variant’’ projection deep within its biennial reports, 

where only demographic bores like me bother to look. Reporters 

looking for quick stories skim the UNPD’s press releases and the 

‘‘executive summary’’, which highlight the ‘‘medium variant’’ projection of 9 billion plus by mid-century. But the ‘‘medium variant’’, despite its moderate-sounding name, is anything but middle of the 

road. All of its numbers hang on a single, unexplained, and incredibly unrealistic assumption—also deeply interred in the UNPD reports—that all countries will approach a ‘‘fertility floor’’ of 1.85 

children per woman over the next half century. 

How was this ‘‘fertility floor’’ determined? The UNPD report does 

not say. Why would fertility in countries like Mexico fall to 1.85 

and no further? The UNDP report offers no explanation, despite 

the fact that many countries have already fallen through this supposedly solid ‘‘floor.’’ And what about those countries? How will 

Italy or Spain, for example, climb back up to the ‘‘fertility floor’’ 

after spending the last two decades in the ‘‘fertility basement?’’ The 

UNPD report is silent. 

This slight of hand seems even more evident in the latest revisions. The U.N. Population Division apparently decided that its 

earlier predictions about world population growth were too restrained. So it upped the ante in its 2010 report, revising almost 

all of its numbers upwards. It now assumes that people in low fertility countries will suddenly become enamored of babies again. 

They predict, in short, that birthrates will somehow gravitate to replacement levels again. 

Building this new assumption into their numbers has produced 

the predictable result. The medium variant projection now shows 

that the world’s population will reach 9.3 billion by the time 2050 

rolls around—or several hundred million higher than earlier predictions. Not only that, instead of beginning to fall at that point, 

the UN now claims that the numbers will continue to grow until 

the end of the century, reaching 10.1 billion in 2100. 

The UNDP is supposed to be objective in its predictions, but its 

latest batch of junk science suggests that it has become anything 

156

15 Replacement rate fertility is the level of fertility at which each successive generation of 

women produces exactly enough offspring so that the same number of women survive to have 

children themselves. Replacement rate fertility is often said to be 2.1 children per woman over 

her reproductive lifetime, but this is in fact the replacement rate fertility of a relatively developed country. For the globe as a whole, the replacement rate fertility estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2002 was 2.3. See Global Population Profile, 2002 available at http://

www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/wp-02.pdf, especially p. 21 16 A June 29, 1999 report from the UN Population Division projected that by 2050 1 person 

out of every 5 will be 60 years or older. By 2150, this figure will be 1 in every 3. 

but. In fact, after the retirement of Director Joseph Chamie, its 

prognostications seem more and more driven by politics. At the 

very least, it has produced numbers that tend to show population 

growth as far more exuberant than it really is. The reason for this, 

I fear, is that the UN Population Fund provides part of the UNDP 

budget—and the UNFPA is first, last, and always a population control group. The UNFPA seems to be using its funding to ‘‘leverage’’ 

the UNPD into producing numbers that the UNFPA can in turn 

use to justify the continuation and expansion of population control 

and abortion. 

The ‘‘low variant’’ projection, which has global fertility falling 

gradually to 1.35, seems preferable for a host of reasons. First and 

foremost, it has been historically the most accurate. For two decades and more, the low variant has been a better predictor of population growth. Second, the low variant accurately reflects the fertility rates in dozens of developed countries around the globe. Fertility rates between 1.1 and 1.6 are typical of post-modern societies, 

even those with strong pro-natal policies. In fact, the UN Population Division admits as much, writing ‘‘in recent years fertility 

has fallen well below replacement to reach historically unprecedented low levels (1.3 children per woman and below) in most developed countries as well as in several less developed ones.’’ The 

‘‘low variant’’ makes the intuitively reasonable assumption that, as 

additional nations modernize, they will behave like modern nations. Finally, the only effective counter to falling fertility, as we 

will see in later chapters, is strong religious faith, combined with 

a tax structure that completely shelters young couples from taxes. 

But religious faith, in Europe and some other developed countries 

at least, has long been on the wane. And taxes are on the rise—

in part to pay for an increasing number of elderly. 

What happens to the world’s population after 2050 depends on 

the fertility decisions of those not yet born. It is impossible to predict accurately. But all of the current trends point downward. 

Women around the world were averaging 5.0 children in 1970. This 

had fallen to 2.6 by 2002—not far above replacement rate fertility 

of 2.3—and it is projected to drop to 1.54 children per woman by 

the year 2050.15 But who’s to say that it will stop there? Shaped 

by powerful, if partially hidden, economic, political and cultural 

forces, the one-child family appears well on the way to becoming 

a universal norm in many countries. Pockets of higher fertility, 

driven by religious motivations and traditional values, will still 

exist. But, as in present-day Japan or Germany, most families will 

have no more than one child. The number of the aged will skyrocket, and the world’s population will be in free fall.16

This is the real population problem. 

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17For a good discussion of how the liberal welfare state relentlessly suppresses fertility, see 

Phillip Longman, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity [And 

What To Do About It], esp. Chapters 10 and 12. 18The nations whose populations are currently declining are Russia, Ukraine, Romania, 

Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Poland, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Armenia, Czech Republic, Serbia and Montenegro, and Estonia. Were it not for massive immigration 

from Eastern Europe, the populations of Spain, Italy and Germany would be declining as well. 19Table 3. ‘‘Total Fertility for the World, Major Development Groups and Major Areas, 1970–

1975, 2000–2005, 2045–2050, by Projection Variants.’’ In WPP 2004, Analytical Report, p. xxi. 20Table 1. ‘‘Population of the World, Major Development Groups and Major Areas, 1950, 1975, 

2005, 2050, by Projection Variants.’’ WPP 2004, Analytical Report, p. xviii. 

MORE COFFINS THAN CRADLES

This barren world of tomorrow can already be glimpsed in the 

Europe of today. For all of Europe, from Ireland in the West to 

Russia in the East, is aging and dying. French historian Pierre 

Chaunu has coined an apt phrase for the strange infecundity of 

present-day Europeans and their overseas descendants, who are 

failing to produce enough children to replace themselves. He calls 

it the White Pestilence. 

The phrase contains a ghostly echo of the Black Death of the 

Middle Ages, which emptied out the cities and towns of the continent in successive pandemics of Bubonic plague from 1347 to 

1352. But unlike the Black Death, Chaunu’s White Pestilence does 

not fill up the graveyards; it empties out the maternity wards. And 

it is not the result of bacteria that infect our bodies’ so much as 

dark, anti-natal thoughts that invade our minds. These are reinforced by an economic system that puts a premium on expanding 

the work force at the expense of maternity, and a political system 

that weakens families, putting those with children at a financial 

disadvantage that is both unjust and shortsighted.17 Europe, along 

with its offspring in North America, Australia, and New Zealand, 

for some time now has been refusing to pay its debts to those who 

provide for the future in the most fundamental way—by providing 

the next generation—and are thus mindlessly committing a form of 

collective suicide. 

Just how bad is the White Pestilence likely to be? Obscured by 

debates over epiphenomena like exploding immigration and bankrupt pension funds is the brute fact that Europe is already suffering from a devastating, crippling shortage of people. The populations of no fewer than thirteen European countries, including 

Russia, Poland, and Hungary, have already begun to crash.18 The 

total fertility rate for Europe, including the former Soviet Republics, currently averages an anemic 1.4 children per woman, and no 

increase is in sight.19 As a result, the current population of 728 

million will plunge to only 557 million by the year 2050, a drop 

similar in magnitude to that occurring during the Black Death.20

At that point, Europe will be losing 3 to 4 million people a year. 

If the crash continues—and there is no reason to expect it not to—

the White Pestilence will over time prove far more lethal than its 

medieval predecessor. Three out of four Europeans will have disappeared by the end of the 21st century, and the population will 

number only 207 million. By then the population decline will be irreversible, with the surviving Europeans averaging more than 60 

years of age. 

Well before this time, the aging of the population will have created unbearable strains on social security and health care systems. 

158

21Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2003. 22 C. J. Chivers, ‘‘Putin urges plan to reverse slide in the birth rate,’’ The New York Times 

(May 11, 2006). 23 United Nations Population Division, ‘‘World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision Population Database,’’ http://esa.un.org/unpp/p2k0data.asp. Another UNDP publication, World Population to 2300, has Russia’s population declining to 101.5 million by 2050, and to 80 million by 

the end of the century. See World Population to 2300 (UNDP, 2004, Tables 5, 8, and Figure 

39). The Russian decline is alarming because it is fed not only by a declining and well-below 

replacement level birthrate, but also by an unprecedented rise in the numbers of early deaths 

of working-age men. The dramatic increase in deaths of Russian men aged 30 to 50 has pulled 

down male life expectancy from a 1991 average of 63.5 years—which was already well behind 

most other nations—to an astonishing 57.7 years in 2004. ‘‘Russian population declining as 

births, life expectancy drop,’’ The Washington Times, 26 September 2006, p. A12. The World 

Bank’s 2005 report, Dying Too Young: Addressing Premature Mortality and Ill Health Due to 

Non Communicable Diseases and Injuries in the Russian Federation, also pegs male life expectancy at 57.7. 

By mid-century, seven nations—Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Romania and Spain—will have populations 

with an average age above 55. At the current time, 1.6 workers 

support one young or retired dependent. By the middle of the century, each worker will have to support one dependent, placing a 

huge tax burden on the rapidly declining work force—and further 

driving down fertility. 

Europe is already suffering tremendous economic and social dislocation caused by a rapidly aging population and, in Western Europe, massive in-migration. Baby bonuses and child allowances, 

such as Poland’s 1,000 Zloty bonus (about $320) to the mothers of 

newborns, have done little to alleviate the problem. If Europe’s 

problems are bad now, as its population is just beginning to dip, 

it is frightening to think about how much worse they will become 

during the coming demographic free-fall. 

The plunge has already begun in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. 

The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 triggered a sharp 

drop in Russian births, which have stayed low in the years following because of the sudden loss of a social system that formerly 

provided employment and housing for nearly every Russian, the ongoing economic stagnation, and a general lack of confidence in the 

future. Current Russian birthrates are the lowest in the nation’s 

history, substantially lower than those achieved during the upheavals of World War I and the Russian Revolution, and equaled only 

by the worst year of World War II when German armies overran 

the western third of the country. Russia’s population is already decreasing by three-quarters of a million people each year; Ukraine’s, 

by a quarter million. 

By 2003 the birthrate had been so low for so long that Russian 

leaders became concerned. Russian President Vladimir Putin 

warned the Russian parliament that the lack of babies was ‘‘a serious crisis threatening Russia’s survival.’’ 21 Three years later, Putin put in place a one-time payment of $9,000 upon the birth of a second child, along with additional cash and child-care subsidies for 

additional children.22 But the crisis, apparently, continues. Russia’s 

population is slated to decrease from 143 million in 2005 to 112 

million in 2050. This is the UNDP’s medium variant projection, 

which unrealistically assumes that most Russian couples will start 

having two children again.23 It is hard to see how a country can 

lose a quarter of its population and build a modern economy at the 

same time. Yet the converse is also true: Until the Great Russian 

Depression ends the birthrate is likely to say low. The largest counVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:24 Dec 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00162 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\WORK\062011.TXT KATIE
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24This is the estimate given in the CIA’s The World FactBook, https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/fr.html. Other estimates are comparable. 25See ‘‘France’s End,’’ by Joseph D’Agostino, for an extended discussion of Muslim immigration and Europe’s new demographic realities. PRI Review (November–December 2005) 15 (5):1, 

6–7. 26 ‘‘Falling Population Alarms Europe,’’ The Washington Times, 2 December 1987, pp. 1, 8, at 

8. 27 Ibid. 28Tess Livingstone, George Pell: Defender of the Faith Down Under (Ignatius Press, 2002), 

p. 314. 29Personal communication, November 2005. 30Tom Wonnacott, ‘‘Census shows youth will be missing from next generation,’’ PRI Review 

(May–June 2003) 13(3): 5–6. 31Muslim majority countries near or below replacement birthrates include Algeria at 2.5, 

Azerbaijan at 1.85, Bosnia-Herzegovina at 1.32, Tunisia at 2.0, Iran at 2.12, Kuwait at 2.4, Lebanon at 2.3, and Turkey at 2.5., Indonesia at 2.4., and the United Arab Emirates at 2.5. Egypt 

and Libya, at 3.3 and 3.0 respectively, are higher, with Saudi Arabia and Iraq, at 4.0 and 4.8 

respectively, are higher still. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has a reported TFR of 7.5, one 

the highest in the world. From the 2004 WPP. 32The figures come from Table III.5. ‘‘Ten Countries and Areas with Largest Per Cent Declines in Total Fertility, by Development Group, 1970–1975 to 2000–2005,’’ UNDP, WPP, p. 43. 33 Egypt was listed as a country of special concern in ‘‘National Security Study Memorandum 

200,’’ Chapter 5. 

try in the world seems locked into a fatal spiral: a dance of death 

between demography and depression. 

Birthrates are higher—although still running below replacement 

levels—in Western Europe. What might appear cause for celebration, however, is in fact cause for concern. For birthrates in many 

Western European countries are being ‘‘propped up’’ by more fertile 

immigrants. France’s estimated Total Fertility Rate, for instance, is 

running at 1.86 children per woman.24 This is high by European 

standards, but much of this fertility is attributable to mostly Muslim immigrants. The French government forbids the collection of 

statistics by race or religion (‘‘We are one people,’’ it maintains), 

but demographers believe that the immigrant population is about 

10% of the whole, and that it is out-reproducing the native-born 

French population by two or three to one. The department of SeineSaint-Denis has both the highest percentage of immigrants in the 

country—about one-quarter of the population of the department is 

foreign, mostly Muslim—and also the highest birthrate. Subtracting the 3 or 4 children of the average immigrant leaves the native population averaging only 1.3 children or so, about the European average.25

In 1987 Antonella Pinnelli, a Rome-based sociologist and demographer, called the continent’s flight from fertility ‘‘very worrisome, 

because when a society loses the will to reproduce, it loses its vitality.’’ 26 Two decades of rock-bottom birthrates later, Italy and other 

European countries are in danger of losing more than their vitality. 

Their history, traditions and, indeed, their very existence are at 

risk. The cross of St. George, the English national flag, has now 

been banned in British prisons, only the first of what will undoubtedly be many efforts to culturally appease a growing Muslim population. In the end, however, only the numbers matter. Demographers now estimate that France, for example, will be as much as 

40% Muslim by 2050. 

‘‘In demographic terms, Europe is vanishing,’’ remarked thenPremier Jacques Chirac in 1984. ‘‘[Soon] our countries will be 

empty.’’ 27 Empty of Gauls, Teutons, Britons, and Slavs perhaps. 

But other tribes, more fruitful than the modern-day European 

ones, will certainly come to occupy the pleasant lands north of the 

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31Muslim majority countries near or below replacement birthrates include Algeria at 2.5, 

Azerbaijan at 1.85, Bosnia-Herzegovina at 1.32, Tunisia at 2.0, Iran at 2.12, Kuwait at 2.4, Lebanon at 2.3, and Turkey at 2.5., Indonesia at 2.4., and the United Arab Emirates at 2.5. Egypt 

and Libya, at 3.3 and 3.0 respectively, are higher, with Saudi Arabia and Iraq, at 4.0 and 4.8 

respectively, are higher still. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has a reported TFR of 7.5, one 

the highest in the world. From the 2004 WPP. 32The figures come from Table III.5. ‘‘Ten Countries and Areas with Largest Per Cent Declines in Total Fertility, by Development Group, 1970–1975 to 2000–2005,’’ UNDP, WPP, p. 43. 33 Egypt was listed as a country of special concern in ‘‘National Security Study Memorandum 

200,’’ Chapter 5. 

Mediterranean. And the surviving Europeans will retreat to their 

retirement homes, as the Neanderthals once retreated across the 

same terrain before the advance of Cro-Magnon Man. In France, as 

in most of Western Europe, the successor population is already in 

place. 

To put the point bluntly, many of these nations are committing 

a kind of collective suicide. The Europeans had better make up 

their minds about who they want to give their countries to, since 

they don’t seem to want it themselves. 

ISLAM CONTRACEPTED

The millions of Muslims flooding into Europe are not being driven out of their homelands by population pressure so much as they 

are being drawn into a demographic vacuum as Europe empties 

itself of offspring. There are still pockets of high fertility in the Islamic world—impoverished Afghanistan has one of the highest 

birthrates in the world—but the trend is towards three- and even 

two-child families.31 Indonesia, at 223 million the largest majority 

Muslim country, had a 2.4 fertility rate in 2005, according to the 

UNPD. 

In recent years a number of Muslim countries have seen fertility 

declines that are among the largest ever recorded. The only two 

majority Muslim countries in Europe, Albania and BosniaHerzegovina, dropped their birthrates farther and faster than most 

of their neighbors. In the less-developed world, Kuwait, Algeria, 

Iran and Tunisia all saw their fertility rate drop by two-thirds during the last three decades of the Twentieth Century. All were at 

or below replacement by 2000. The ‘‘least developed countries,’’ UN 

parlance for the poorest of the poor, generally saw smaller declines. 

But here, too, the Muslim states of Bangladesh, Sudan, and the 

Maldives all cut fertility by a third or more, and are currently averaging three or four children.32

The Koran, like the Torah and the Bible, comes down firmly on 

the side of natality. But Islam lacks a central religious authority, 

and any Imam can issue a fatwa—an Islamic religious opinion. 

Knowing this, the population control movement has sought out and 

cultivated liberal Muslim clerics, encouraging them to rethink Islam’s traditional encouragement of childbearing. 

One of the earliest Muslim countries to be targeted for re-education in this way was Egypt. As the Middle Eastern country with 

the largest population, it was listed as a ‘‘country of concern’’ in a 

key National Security Council study in the early seventies.33 The 

U.N. Population Fund immediately moved in, among other things 

helping to set up an International Center for Population Studies 

and Research at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. In the years folVerDate 0ct 09 2002 12:24 Dec 10, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00164 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\WORK\062011.TXT KATIE
161

34 ‘‘Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee’s point of view on birth planning,’’ PMID: 12343622 [PubMed—

indexed for MEDLINE], Population Sciences (Cairo, Egypt), 1988; (8):15–7, http://www . ncbi . 

nlm . nih . gov/entrez / query.fcgi?db = pubmed & cmd = Search & itool = pubmed l AbstractPlus&term = %22Al%2DAzhar + Islamic + Research + Academy%2E + Fatwa + Committee % 22 % 5BCorporate + Author % 5D. [Editor’s Note: Web address contains no spaces, 

spaces were added for typesetting purposes only.] 35As I have explained, I have here used the low variant projection of the U.N. Population Division, which shows a TFR for 2005–2010 of 2.74. The earlier numbers for the 2000–2005 period 

were, of course, higher at 3.3. The 2006 CIA’s The World FactBook gives a figure of 2.83. 36 ‘‘Fewer Means Better,’’ The Economist, 5 August 1995, 41. 37 ‘‘Iran Promoting Birth Control in Policy Switch,’’ The Washington Post, May 8, 1992. 38 Yeni Yuezul, quoted by Youssef Courbage, ‘‘Nouveaux horizons de ́mographiques in 

Me ́diterrane ́,’’ National Institute of Demographic Studies (Paris, February 27, 1995), http://

www.ined.fr/englishversion/publications/collections/courbage/chapter3.pdf (accessed November 

2006). 39 ’’Contraception is Treason, Turkish Islamist Leader Says,’’ Agence France Presse, February 

16, 2002. 40The WPP gives the TFR for ‘‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’’ as 5.00 (medium variant) or 

4.75 (low variant) for 2005–2010. For Israel it reports 2.66 (medium variant) and 2.41 (low variant). 

lowing, it carried out a series of projects on ‘‘Population in the Context of Islam’’ which were consciously designed to shift religious 

opinion. 

Nevertheless, it was 1988 before the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar 

University could be induced to issue a major fatwa affirming the 

acceptability of family planning ‘‘for personal and national justification.’’ He decreed that contraceptive use was permissible ‘‘in the 

case of a three-child family who can afford more children physically 

and financially, but who want no more children because their country has a population problem.’’ 34 Consequently, the Egyptian birthrate has fallen sharply in recent years, and by 2006 women were 

averaging only 2.74 children.35

Birthrates are also falling in relatively prosperous, Westernized 

Turkey, despite the exhortations of government leaders to have 

more children. ‘‘Our population which is nearing 65 million is not 

enough,’’ warned Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan of 

the Islamist Refah Party in 1995. ‘‘Population is the power by 

which we shall establish right in the world,’’ he told a cheering 

crowd. ‘‘These would-be westerners [i.e., population control advocates] are trying to reduce our population. We must have at least 

four children.’’ 38 As the fertility rate fell past 2.5 children per 

women in 2002, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, soon to become Turkey’s 

prime minister, attacked contraception as ‘‘straight out treason to 

the state.’’ ‘‘Have babies,’’ he urged Turks. ‘‘Allah wants it.’’ 39

JAPAN: LAND OF THE SETTING SUN

A decade and a half ago, the Japanese economic boom appeared 

well nigh unstoppable. Industry was flourishing under the guidance of Long Range Vision plans issued by elite bureaucrats at the 

Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). The 

salarimen, as the Japanese middle class are called, were grinding 

away at their customary 70-hour work week. Economic growth was 

consistently running at 4 to 5 percent a year, and Japan’s trade 

surplus with the U.S. was surging toward the $100 billion dollar 

mark. 

Conceding defeat, Harvard academic Ezra Vogel wrote a book 

called Japan as Number One, admonishing Americans that we 

were falling behind because of our lack of Japanese-style ‘‘central 

direction’’ and ‘‘government and business cooperation.’’ We should, 

162

41 Ezra Vogel, Japan as Number One, (Pelanduk Publications, Selangor, Malaysia, 2001). 42George Friedman and Meredith Lebard, The Coming War with Japan (St. Martin’s Press, 

1991) 43On a Purchasing Price Parity basis. 

he advised us, ‘‘adopt policies more suited to the postindustrial 

age.’’ 41 Others feared that if we didn’t join them, they might beat 

us. The Coming War with Japan had the yellow peril once again 

leading a ‘‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,’’ and once 

again threatening Pearl Harbor.42 Both became bestsellers. 

It wasn’t long thereafter that the Japanese economy ran into a 

demographic brick wall. Economic growth stalled, averaging an 

anemic one percent growth for most of the nineties. During the 

Asian economic downturn of 1998, Japan’s GNP actually shrank by 

2.8 percent. Never number one, the Rising Sun soon slipped to 

fourth, behind the European Union and China.43

The experts told us that crony capitalism, corruption, and protectionism were to blame. But when has this not been true in postWorld War II Japan? The Liberal Democratic Party has been in 

power since it was formed by a coalition of three conservative parties in 1956. It is bound together less by a political philosophy than 

by loose alliances between factional leaders who trade favors, give 

and accept bribes, and are periodically disgraced and forced out of 

office by scandal. The subterfuges used by Japanese bureaucrats to 

keep out foreign-made goods in key industrial sectors are legion. 

Don’t bother looking for American-made cars on Japanese highways; you won’t see any. 

What really happened in the 1990s is that the yellow peril 

turned quietly grey. For over four decades now, the Japanese people have been having too few little Mikis and Yosukus to replace 

themselves. The Japanese fertility rate first fell below replacement 

around 1960. After fluctuating around 2.0 for the next 15 years, it 

began to sink again in 1975. By 1990 it had reached 1.57, leading 

Japanese journalists to invent the term ‘‘1.57 shock.’’ Further 

shocks followed at regular intervals: ‘‘1.53 shock’’ in 1992, ‘‘1.47 

shock’’ in 1993, and the ‘‘1.38 shock’’ in 1998. Since then the fertility rate has hovered around 1.4 children per woman. The voluntary childlessness of the Japanese exceeds even the forced-pace 

population reduction in China’s one-child policy. 

This prolonged Japanese birth dearth has resulted in what Yamada Masahiro of Gakugei University calls the world’s first ‘‘lowbirthrate recession.’’ With ever smaller cohorts of new workers, the 

salarimen have been getting wrinklier and their ranks thinner, 

year by year. The depopulation crisis has already forced Japan to 

slash pensions and raise the retirement age from 60 to 65 to keep 

pension funds afloat. By 2040, says the Organization for Economic 

Co-operation and Development (OECD), the rise in the ratio of dependent old to working young may be reducing Japan’s growth in 

living standards by three-quarters of a percentage point per year, 

cutting Japan’s GNP by 23 percent by mid-century as a result. 

Japan is suffering from the four ‘‘D’’s: Debt, deflation, and declining 

demographics—and the latter two are ultimately responsible for 

the first two. 

Japan is on the brink of a major demographic meltdown. Japan’s 

population of 127 million has stopped growing and—if the birthrate 

163

44 Victor Mallet, ‘‘Procreation does not result in wealth creation,’’ Financial Times (January 

4, 2007), 45For a discussion of robots and the Japanese future, see Eamonn Fingleton’s, In Praise of 

hard Industries (Houghton Mifflin, 1999). 

continues at this low level—will soon begin to shrink at an alarming pace. According to U.N. estimates, by the year 2050 Japan will 

have 35 million fewer people than it does now. The 92 million Japanese who remain will have a median age of 54, with those aged 

75–80 constituting the largest five-year population cohort. The 

ratio of workers aged 20–65 to retirees will have fallen to just over 

one-to-one. By then, barring a striking upturn in fertility, Japan’s 

complete demographic collapse is virtually assured: Projections 

show so few women of childbearing age that the population decline 

will inevitably accelerate. A population bust, like an explosion, proceeds in geometric progression. 

Yet there are foreign observers, like Victor Mallet of the Financial Times, who are celebrating the decline of the Japanese population as good for the world and for Japan itself. Mallet bases his 

optimism on the fact that the ‘‘the labor force has been rising this 

year as older people rejoin the workforce and more women take 

jobs. Robots and immigrants . . . will also help to keep the economy growing.’’ 44 Each of his proposed measures, however, is either 

a temporary stopgap measure, or is self-defeating. The newly rehabilitated elderly will soon be forced to retire again, this time for 

good. As for women joining the work force in greater numbers, this 

will surely drive the birthrate down even more, exacerbating the 

labor shortage over time. Nor is immigration likely to solve Japan’s 

problems. It would take an estimated 600,000 immigrants a year 

to offset the impending decline in the labor force, an influx of such 

magnitude that would shake Japan’s homogenous and insular 

monoculture to the core. 

Staking Japan’s future on the promise of robot manufacture 

seems an equally dubious proposition. While it is true that more 

than half of the world’s industrial robots—57 percent to be exact—

are located in Japan, few jobs off the assembly line are suited for 

robots, at least at their present level of sophistication.45

Mallet’s laissez faire attitude towards Japan’s demographic crisis 

is emphatically not shared by the Japanese leadership. Reacting to 

reports that the 2006 total fertility rate had dropped to 1.25, the 

Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, announced on January 26, 

2007, that he would ‘‘set out a full-scale strategy to reverse the declining birthrate.’’ A ‘‘Strategic Council to Study Measures to Support Children and Families’’ has been established, with instructions 

to report on ways to encourage more births that go beyond the current—and largely ineffectual—child allowances. Still, it remains to 

164

46 ‘‘Prime Minister Abe to set up a strategic council to counter the falling birthrate,’’ Asahi 

Shimbun (January 28, 2007), p. 1. The Minister of Health, Hakuo Yanagisawa, tried to directly 

encourage women to have more children by saying: ‘‘The number of childbearing machines is 

fixed. Each [women] should do her best.’’ Needless to say, this clumsy word choice provoked calls 

for his resignation. See ‘‘Prime Minister reprimands health minister for his inappropriate remarks referring to women as ‘‘child-bearing machines,’’ Tokyo Shimbun (January 29, 2007), p. 

2. 47 I witnessed the arrival of female infanticide to the Pearl River Delta during my fieldwork 

there in the early eighties. 48 Nicholas Eberstadt, ‘‘Growing Old the Hard Way: China, Russia, India,’’ Policy Review,’’ 

Hoover Institution, April, May 2006, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/

2912391.html. See also, ‘‘Old Age Tsunami,’’ ‘‘Opinion’’ section, WSJ, November 15, 2005. 

be seen whether any post-modern society, including Japan’s, can 

revive a sagging birthrate.46

The old age tsunami that is about to hit Japan will not spare 

other Asian countries. The Four Tigers—Taiwan, Hong Kong, 

South Korea, and Singapore—are already getting long in the tooth. 

China and India, the world’s two demographic giants, are tottering 

along not far behind. 

THE CRISIS OF THE EMPTY CRADLE

Unlike the endlessly propagandized ‘‘crisis caused by our burgeoning numbers,’’ the crisis of the empty cradle has crept upon us 

quietly. Classic ‘‘demographic transition’’ theory assumed that parents in pre-modern societies were motivated to have many children 

to ensure that at least two survived to adulthood. Cradles were 

kept full because so many newborns departed via coffins so soon 

after their arrival. Reduce the infant and child mortality rate, the 

theory went, and parents would adjust their childbearing downward to compensate. A new and stable equilibrium of low mortality 

and low fertility would result in zero population growth. 

No such equilibrium was ever reached. In the developed countries, trends like more education, especially for women, the widespread availability of birth control devices, legalized abortion, the 

move from farm to city, the decline of religious belief, anti-natal 

propaganda and the dominance of a radically individualistic, materialistic worldview have caused the birthrate to continue to plummet ever lower. Materialism, in its various forms and guises, is 

probably the chief culprit, given that it creates an overarching 

worldview in which children are cast as the enemies of wealth and 

happiness. I once received a letter from a friend who lives in Florida. A neighbor of his, a young woman who commutes 50 miles one 

way to work, was bemoaning how little time she had to spend with 

her four-year-old son. My friend suggested that she sell her $40,000 

SUV and get a job closer to home. Not only would she have more 

time to spend with her son, he told her, she would probably also 

be money ahead. She shook her head. ‘‘You don’t understand,’’ she 

said. ‘‘My husband and I love this SUV.’’ Who was it that said that 

no man can serve two masters? The young woman in Florida apparently believes that she is driving an SUV. But in fact it is driving her. 

Of all the factors affecting fertility, all but one works to keep the 

cradle empty. The sole exception is the raft of advances in human 

reproductive technology. But helping tens or even hundreds of 

thousands of infertile couples to conceive a child hardly 

165

49Scott McConnell, ‘‘Delayed Motherhood: Is it Good for Society?’’ New York Post, 24 May 

1995. 

counterbalances the millions who consciously limit themselves to 

one or no children. 

Those who actually work in the field of reproductive endocrinology have long admitted what the population controllers are 

loath to admit, that fertility delayed is fertility denied. At a gathering of the American Fertility Society held in San Antonio in the 

mid-nineties, the speaker, Dorothy Mitchell-Leef, a prominent reproductive endocrinologist, asserted that ‘‘modern American women 

have been sold a bill of goods.’’ American women have been encouraged by both ‘‘doctors and authoritative voices in the culture’’ to believe that they could start a family just as easily at 38 as at 22—

perhaps even more easily, because in their late thirties they would 

be financially better off. Medical advances—injected hormones, in 

vitro fertilization, and screening of genetically damaged fetuses—

made the usual biological limits seem old-fashioned. Not only is 

this picture false, she went on, but the fallacy of this view has been 

known for decades. A French study, conducted way back in the 

’70s, followed women with infertile husbands who were trying to 

get pregnant through artificial insemination. The results showed 

that the chances of conception diminished sharply with age, with 

fertility showing a significant drop after age 30 and a sharp decline 

after 35. It was time, Mitchell-Leef asserted, for doctors to ‘‘begin 

telling women that if having children was a high priority, they 

should think of having them earlier in life rather than later.’’ Her 

audience of professional American women, many of whom had experienced firsthand the ‘‘grief felt by women whose infertility treatments had failed, burst into applause.’’ 49

The overall pattern in the developed world seems too evident to 

ignore. Once people are educated, urbanized, and begin to enjoy a 

certain level of wealth, birthrates plummet. More and more couples 

live in urban conditions where children provide no economic benefits, but rather are, as the Chinese say, ‘‘goods on which one loses.’’ 

Education delays marriage and provides other options for women 

besides marriage and family. For materially minded couples in 

countries where the state provides old age benefits, the way to get 

ahead is to remain perpetually childless. Why give up a second income to bring a child into the world who will never, at least in material terms, repay your investment? Why provide for your future 

in the most fundamental way, by providing the next generation, if 

the government has pledged to keep you out of the poorhouse in 

your dotage anyway. 

As Phillip Longman has remarked, the modern nanny state has 

created a strange new world in which the most ‘‘successful’’ individuals in material terms are the most ‘‘unfit’’ in biological terms. In 

all previous ages of human history wealth and children went handin-hand. Wealth made it possible to marry earlier, to bring more 

children into the world, and ensured that more of these children 

survived. Numerous progeny in turn virtually guaranteed continued family prosperity. But no longer. The cradle-to-grave social 

welfare programs found in developed countries, along with the 

heavy tax burden these demand, have not merely made the care 

166

50See Phillip Longman’s The Empty Cradle, for an extended discussion of this problem, especially Chapter 7, ‘‘The Cost of Children.’’ The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten 

World Prosperity and What to Do About It (Basic Books, 2004), 240 pp. 51 In the absence of a general theory of fertility change, it is impossible to offer any reliable, 

quantitative estimates of the precise impact of these diverse programs. But, as we will see in 

succeeding chapters, these programs have often been coercive in character and their impact on 

fertility necessarily dramatic. To put it another way, one doesn’t require a general theory of fertility change to interpret or explain the low fertility rate of a woman who has been forcibly sterilized. 

and feeding of children superfluous to wealth; they have made children themselves wealth’s enemy.50

True enough, some may answer. But what is behind the radical 

declines in fertility that we are now seeing among still poor peoples 

in Turkey, Egypt, and Albania? Peoples who do not yet dream of 

SUVs, of education beyond the village primary school, or even employment outside the family field? Why are people in countries 

where the state does not even provide a bare minimum of support 

for the elderly also radically downsizing their families? Why, in 

countries where infant mortality rates are still relatively high, are 

couples failing to fill empty cradles? 

The answer is that the demographic implosion that has occurred 

‘‘naturally’’ in the developed world has been in large part imposed 

by force on the less fortunate, less powerful peoples of the world. 

The U.S. and other developed countries consciously set out in the 

sixties to engineer a radical decline in Third World fertility. Weak 

nations, dependent on the U.S. and Europe for financial aid, military security, or access to markets, were bullied or suborned into 

mandating anti-natal measures. Paid for by the West, these measures ranged from the free provision of contraceptives to enforced 

sterilization programs. Hapless villagers worldwide have been subjected to clever marketing schemes, bait-and-switch health ploys, 

anti-family TV soap operas, and even blunt coercion in an effort to 

deprive them of the free exercise of their fertility.51

Their governments, despite having adopted population control 

programs under duress, are slow to abandon them even after birthrates begin to plummet. Let’s take a look at another OSCE Partner 

for Cooperation, South Korea. South Korea in 1961 embarked on a 

family planning program at the insistence of the U.S. government. 

The program quickly evolved into a de facto two-child-per-family 

policy, complete with strong punitive measures against those who 

dared violate this limit. Civil and military officials with more than 

two children, for example, were denied promotions or even demoted. Third and higher order children were declared ineligible for 

medical insurance coverage, educational opportunities, and other 

government benefits. Couples who agreed to sterilization were 

given priority access to scarce public housing. This did matters 

stand for three long decades. 

By the time the government began to rethink this policy in the 

mid-nineties, the fertility rate had dropped to an anemic 1.7 children, the population was aging rapidly, and had developed a fullblown labor shortage. Moreover, the country was experiencing an 

epidemic of sex-selective abortions, in which Confucian-minded parents anxious for sons were ending the lives of girl fetuses because 

of their gender. With young women in increasingly short supply, 

the population was poised to drop precipitously. 

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52 ‘‘Government to Do Away With Birth Control Policy,’’ Korea Times, June 5, 1996. 53 In 2006, the number of babies born in the city of Seoul increased slightly, but it seems unlikely that this is the beginning of a resurgence in Korean births. ‘‘New Babies Rise Again in 

Seoul,’’ Kang Shin-woh, Korea Times, January 19, 2007. 54 ‘‘Thailand’s Grim Harvest,’’ Population Research Institute Review, January/February 1997, 

p. 14. 55 According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s International Data Base, the Total Fertility Rate in 

2005 was 1.6. See http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbsum.pl?cty=TH (accessed on March 5, 

2007). 56 U.N. Population Division, World Population Policies, 2005, http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WPP2005/Publicationlindex.htm. 

It was 1996 before the South Korean government finally got out 

of the population control business, announcing on June 4th of that 

year that all restrictions on childbearing would be lifted. No new 

pro-natal measures were enacted, however, unless one counts the 

government’s promises that public health clinics would soon begin 

offering infertility treatment (in addition to birth control) and that 

it would crack down on sex-selective abortions.52

But if the government thought that, left to make their own decisions about family size, the Koreans would begin reproducing 

themselves, it badly miscalculated. Thirty-five years of anti-natal 

education and policies, combined with South Korea’s rapid modernization, had done its work. With nary a pause, the birthrate 

continued to drop. It reached an all-time low of 1.2 in 2004, with 

the South Korean population now poised to shrink in absolute 

numbers.53

Thailand is another OSCE Partner for Cooperation that, strongly 

encouraged by the U.S. government, undertook a full-blooded population control program in 1962. Forty-five years later, its demographic profile resembles that of the dying West. Its villages are 

bereft of children, its schools are closing down for lack of students, 

and its population is rapidly aging. The average Thai mother today 

has 1.6 children, well below the replacement rate level of 2.2. 

Many in Thailand are now having second thoughts. Tiang 

Phadthaisong, a researcher from Chiang Mao University in Northern Thailand, is among those who believe that ‘‘the family planning 

program has been too successful.’’ In 1997, when the TFR was 

passing 1.9, Tiang published a paper called ‘‘The collapse of Thai 

society: the impact of family planning,’’ in which she detailed the 

demographic disaster awaiting the Thai people. End family planning policies, she urged the government, so that the birthrate can 

once again rise to replacement levels.54 Her pleas have fallen on 

deaf ears, even as the birthrate continues to fall.55

The profound changes in the human condition caused by longterm, below-replacement birthrates can rightly be termed a ‘‘Demographic Revolution.’’ But unlike the Industrial Revolution of the 

nineteenth century, or the Information Revolution of the late twentieth, or the Democratic Revolution that succeeded the fall of the 

Soviet Union in Eastern Europe (if not in Russia itself), all of 

which vastly improved the lives of billions, most of the consequences of the ongoing Demographic Revolution will be negative. 

Population growth has been an important escalator of consumer 

demand. Try selling cars, houses, refrigerators, or anything else, 

for that matter, in a depopulating country. Or try to seek profitable 

investments in the stock market when millions of elders start liquidating their IRAs and 401Ks to survive. This is not to say that 

168

57 Nicholas Eberstadt, ‘‘World Population Implosion,’’ The Public Interest, 1996. 58 ‘‘The Bomb that Fizzled,’’ Ben Wattenberg, New York Times Magazine, 23 April 1997. 

some few sectors of the economy, such as pharmaceuticals and 

health care, will not expand. But as Peter Drucker clearly saw, 

shrinking demand elsewhere will more than offset these gains in 

a few sectors. 

Falling birthrates are also drastically shrinking family circles. 

Consider China’s forced pace fertility reduction program known as 

the one-child-per-family policy. The first generation of children 

born under this policy has no brothers or sisters. These only children are now producing a second generation who are missing not 

only siblings, but uncles, aunts, and cousins as well. Demographer 

Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute looks 

ahead to a world in which ‘‘for many people, ‘family’ would be understood as a unit that does not include any biological contemporaries or peers’’ and that we may live in ‘‘a world in which the 

only biological relatives for many people—perhaps most people—

will be their ancestors.’’ 57 Lacking close family ties, many seniors 

will be socially isolated and painfully lonely. As Ben Wattenberg 

has remarked, ‘‘Young DINKs (double income, no kids) may be 

cute. Old LINKs (low income, no kids) may be tragic. Clergymen 

say that the saddest funerals are those in which the deceased has 

no offspring.’’ 58

Modernity alone would have been sufficient to effect a demographic transition in South Korea and elsewhere, but the population engineers were not content to wait. They artificially induced 

a precipitous fall in birthrates by strict, nationwide anti-natal policies and, with the assistance of U.S. family planning funds, have 

produced a full-blown Demographic Revolution. 

The hundreds of millions of dollars that foreign agencies like 

USAID poured into Korea’s two-child policy is but a tiny fraction 

of the $100 billion or so that has been spent on fertility reduction 

programs in the world at large. Imagine putting billions of dollars 

into programs to undo the Industrial and Information Revolutions, 

and you will understand the insanity of our current approach. We 

are making the old age tsunami predicted by Peter Drucker and 

others even worse. And, as we do so, we are causing a flood of 

human misery and a global economic malaise.

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