Baby Bust: The Demographics of Global Depression

Taki Magazine ^ | December 08, 2008 | Spengler

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Baby Bust: The Demographics of Global Depression

by Spengler on December 08, 2008

Why will this recession be different, and likely much worse, than all the other recessions of the past?

Imagine a Paleolithic village which has no children. When all the adults grow too old to work, everyone dies. Now imagine a country with a well-funded national pension system, also without children. Everyone retires on the same day, and the pension fund instantly goes bankrupt.

These hypotheticals overstate the predicament of the industrial nations, who have too few children and too few old people, but it does not overstate it by much. The present economic crisis will not respond to the usual treatment because it arises from a deeper cause, namely the hollowing out of the population of the West. This is not a business cycle, but the grim harvest of a demographic winter.

Financial markets are only a veil for the cycle of human life. Young families borrow, older people lend to them, and retirees spend their savings. Whether the young people of the tribe share their food with the old folks, or retirees earn interest from mortgage-backed bonds issued to finance homes for young families, the result is the same. What makes this crisis intractable is not the financial system, but the social relationships that underlie it.

Taken as a whole, the developed world resembles a village without children. It’s slightly more complicated, of course. The industrial world is aging too fast. There are too many people – over 400 million – in their peak savings years, that is 40 to 64, and the number is growing. And there are too few young earners in the 19-to-40 bracket, and their number is shrinking. There aren’t enough young people in the village to support the old ones.

Figure 1: Population of Developed Countries by Age Bracket

Source: United Nations Population Prospects, Median Variant

That’s the whole developed world. Contrast this picture to a healthier profile, that of the United States of America (Figure 2). Note that there are more young workers (borrowers of savings) than older workers (savers), in contrast to the developed world as a whole. The situation is better than that of the overall developed world, skewed toward the aged by Japan and Europe, but still is headed in the wrong direction, with the number of savers (older workers) growing much faster than the number of prospective borrowers (younger workers).

Figure 2: Population of the United States of America by Age Bracket

Source: United Nations

There are only two countries in the industrial world with a positive rate of population increase, the United States and Israel. That is probably because they are the two developed countries with the highest proportion of people of faith, as I argued before.

Countries aren’t Paleolithic villages, to be sure. If savers in Japan can’t find enough young people to lend to, they can lend to the young people of other countries. The rest of the world lent the US up to $1 trillion a year in 2007. The rest of the world thrust its savings upon the United States, leading to cheaper lending rates and a bubble in home prices. Americans in turn came to expect that appreciation of capital assets made savings unnecessary. America’s savings rate collapsed as the current account deficit (or capital account surplus) expanded.

Demographics isn’t quite destiny. By calling attention to underlying causes, I do not mean to excuse the cupidity and fraud that attended the sale of $2 trillion of bonds backed by sub-prime mortgages with fanciful credit ratings, and similar incompetence. The fact that there wasn’t enough wheat to go around does not excuse the baker for surreptitiously putting sawdust in the bread. But in this case there weren’t enough returns to satisfy all prospective investors, because there weren’t enough young people to earn those returns. The shrinking contingent of young people of our metaphorical Paleolithic village came back from the harvest without enough grain to feed the old people, so they added sawdust. The effects of the sawdust show up some time later in the form of malnutrition, at which point the tribe engages a shaman (a financial expert, that is), to shake rattles and cast bones. That makes everyone feel a bit better, for a short while.

America has roughly 120 million adults in the 19-to-44 age bracket, that is, people in their prime borrowing years. That is not a large number against the 420 million prospective savers in the aging developed world as a whole. There simply aren’t enough young Americans to absorb the savings of the rest of the world. In fact, there aren’t enough young Americans to absorb the savings that America should generate internally. American demographics are healthier than those of the other developed countries, but not by a reassuring margin.

Here is the demographic dilemma underlying America’s financial problems:

1) Americans counted on capital gains in homes and to a lesser extent in equities to fund the largest wave of retirements in American history, and these gains have vanished. Many Americans will thus not be able to retire.

2) Americans need to rebuild their finances, that is, to save, just when their incomes are falling and unemployment is rising.

3) Home prices are not likely to recover in the foreseeable future because demographics are against them. Empty nesters are increasing as a proportion of the population, which is why one academic study forecasts a 40% oversupply of large-lot single family homes by 2025.

If Americans save rather than spend, consumption and output will fall further, according to the conventional economic wisdom. That is why both the Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration offer “fiscal stimulus,” that is, throwing money out of helicopters to encourage consumer spending. It isn’t going to work.

On Dec. 5, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the sharpest fall in employment since 1974. In fact, the three-month average of employment change is the worst on record. What Americans have discovered is that an economy based on opening boxes from China and selling the contents at Wal-Mart, and selling homes back and forth, is highly vulnerable. America does not need as many people to sell homes or to open Chinese boxes, and businesses are laying such people off. Service jobs are vanishing just at the point that tens of millions of prospective retirees will be looking for just the sort of jobs that older people seek when they cannot fund their retirement – selling houses, or manning a department-store counter. Wages will fall as older workers seek employment of any kind rather than retire. This effect will be far greater than the impact of immigration on American wages.

American households will cut their consumption further, voluntarily, or because financial institutions cut their credit-card limits. Falling mortgage rates may slow the decline somewhat, but not stop it. Service employment will fall further, particularly as state and local governments find that the collapsing real-estate tax rolls do not justify the generous staffing of past year, and that will lead to further consumption cuts. Businesses will not borrow when investment-grade companies pay 9% for long-term money and speculative-grade companies pay 20%—and that is a real interest rate, for no-one can raise prices in this environment.

Meanwhile the U.S. Treasury will borrow at a $1 trillion annual rate during the fourth quarter of 2008, and at a considerably higher rate next year, depending on how much the new Administration chooses to spend. With $8.5 trillion of federal support already in place through loans, investments, securities purchases and guarantees, the contingent liabilities of the Federal government are enormous, and no doubt will grow further. Treasury borrowing will vacuum up the world’s diminishing fund of available capital keep economic activity depressed.

America’s economy may remain depressed for years. There aren’t enough young people in the developed world—the consequence of the collapse of religious faith, in my view. In the example of the aging village, things don’t get better, ever, at all, unless more young people can be found. John Maynard Keynes thought that the “animal spirits” of entrepreneurs were the source of economic growth. Even animals, though, require the presence of prospective prey, and the necessary (if not sufficient) condition for the revival of animal spirits is the presence of sufficient young people.

The only major source of young people is the Third World. Some years ago Cardinal Baffi of Bologna suggested that Europe seek Catholic immigrants from Latin America. In a small way, something like this is happening. Half the working population of Ecuador has left the country, mostly for Spain. From the American vantage point, it may seem odd for the Europeans to wish themselves inundated by Latin American immigrants, but the alternative for Europe is to get immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. All told, Latin American Catholics are a better fit. Most of Europe has reached a demographic point of no return where nothing but immigration will avail it.

The origin of the crisis is demographic, and its solution is demographic. To break the vicious circle, America needs to find productive young people to whom to lend. There are two ways this might be accomplished: immigration or exports. East Asia has almost 500 million people in the 19-to-40-year-old bracket, half again as many as the entire industrial world. The prospect of raising the productivity of Chinese, Indians, and other Asians opens up an entirely different horizon for the American economy. Since the Asian financial crisis of 1997, Asians have invested their savings in the United States. In theory, the opportunities for investment in Asia are limitless, but political trust, capital markets, regulatory institutions, and other preconditions for such investment have been inadequate.

The arithmetic shows that the demographic imbalances cannot be addressed within the confines of one country’s economic policy. How and whether the capital of aging Americans (and citizens of other industrial countries) will engage the labor of young Asians is difficult to envisage. If America fails to do so, its economic misery will persist for a very long time. America will have to engage China, India, and other Asian countries in a very different way than in the past and understand its economic policy in a far more global fashion than ever before.

Spengler is the pen name of an essayist for the Asia Times Online. His archive can be found here.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Demographics and depression

 

Thursday April 30, 2009

Categories: Economics, Population

Economist David Goldman at First Things says our failure to reproduce enough children to sustain our society will make us poorer. Excerpts:

Life is sacred for its own sake. It is not an instrument to provide us with fatter IRAs or better real-estate values. But it is fair to point out that wealth depends ultimately on the natural order of human life. Failing to rear a new generation in sufficient numbers to replace the present one violates that order, and it has consequences for wealth, among many other things. Americans who rejected the mild yoke of family responsibility in pursuit of atavistic enjoyment will find at last that this is not to be theirs, either.

It will be painful for conservatives to admit that things were not well with America under the Republican watch, at least not at the family level. From 1954 to 1970, for example, half or more of households contained two parents and one or more children under the age of eighteen. In fact as well as in popular culture, the two-parent nuclear family formed the normative American household. By 1981, when Ronald Reagan took office, two-parent households had fallen to just over two-fifths of the total. Today, less than a third of American households constitute a two-parent nuclear family with children.

What could we do to promote natalism at the policy level? Goldman suggests:

Numerous proposals for family-friendly tax policy are in circulation, including recent suggestions by Ramesh Ponnuru, Ross Douthat, and Reihan Salam. The core of a family-oriented economic program might include the following measures:

• Cut taxes on families. The personal exemption introduced with the Second World War's Victory Tax was $624, reflecting the cost of "food and a little more." In today's dollars that would be about $7,600, while the current personal exemption stands at only $3,650. The personal exemption should be raised to $8,000 simply to restore the real value of the deduction, and the full personal exemption should apply to children.

• Shift part of the burden of social insurance to the childless. For most taxpayers, social-insurance deductions are almost as great a burden as income tax. Families that bring up children contribute to the future tax base; families that do not get a free ride. The base rate for social security and Medicare deductions should rise, with a significant exemption for families with children, so that a disproportionate share of the burden falls on the childless.

• Make child-related expenses tax deductible. Tuition and health care are the key expenses here with which parents need help.

• Change the immigration laws. The United States needs highly skilled, productive individuals in their prime years for earning and family formation.

We delude ourselves when we imagine that a few hundred dollars of tax incentives will persuade individuals to form families or keep them together. A generation of Americans has grown up with the belief that the traditional family is merely one lifestyle choice among many.

[snip]

Without life, there is no wealth; without families, there is no economic future. The value of future income streams traded in capital markets will fall in accordance with our impoverished demography. We cannot pursue the acquisition of wealth and the provision of upward mobility except through the reconquest of the American polity on behalf of the American family.

Philip Longman has covered this ground before, from a secular liberal point of view. Last November, Longman and his New America Foundation colleague David Gray proposed a new pro-family "social contract" (PDF form here) to address the same problems David Goldman identifies. Excerpt:

Americans instinctively revere the family as an institution that helps facilitate all other aspects of life. The family fosters attachments across generations, provides a nurturing environment in which to raise children, and is a means of transmitting values from one generation to the next. It is the foundation upon which our social contract has been built.

Historically, public discussions of the social contract
have largely ignored the role of families. In a pre-industrial
world in which children both performed economically useful
tasks while young and, as adults, offered vital support
to their aging parents, it was easy to assume that the family
as an institution could be relied on to take care of itself.
Today, however, the economic basis of the family is
largely eroded. Children are no longer economic assets to
their parents, but costly liabilities. Due to the growth of
Social Security, Medicare, and private pension schemes,
support in old age no longer depends on an individual's
decision to raise a family, but on other people bearing the
burdens of parenthood so as to produce the vital human
capital to keep the system going. Meanwhile, the widening
life options of a secularized society raise the opportunity
cost, for both men and women, of nurturing the next
generation.

One result of these changed circumstances, in all
advanced nations, has been a dramatic fall in birthrates,
often to well below replacement rates, and rapidly aging
populations. At the same time, the state of family life has
become deeply problematic, with high rates of divorce and
out-of-wedlock births, and increasing downward mobility
among parents.

Other sectors of society have effectively appropriated for
themselves much of the value in human capital created by
families, contributing to the strain on parents and a decline
in overall fertility rates. Public policy and current law stacks
the odds against those who choose to raise children.
We need to make major adjustments to the social contract
in order to allow parents to retain more of the return
that comes to society through their investment in children.
Because stable families make a great difference in the lives
of children, the next social contract should support them.
Because having and raising children is a public good, the
next social contact should focus on supporting parents and
children as early in life as possible.

[mlocher]

The origin of the crisis is demographic, and its solution is demographic. To break the vicious circle, America needs to find productive young people to whom to lend. There are two ways this might be accomplished: immigration or exports.

This is a fallacy. If each person were resonsible for their own pension (IRAs, 401Ks, etc.) then each individual could invest their capital where the workers are -- be it in the United States or elsewhere -- that will provide a fair return on their investment.

[Star Traveler]

No problem .... the Muslims are making up for the dearth in births ... LOL ... they're planning on taking over here, just by having babies ... hoo-boy!

See the following from another post of mine..., and make sure you see that short little video on "Demographics" ...

---

That evil and oppressive governmental idealogy of Islam and the way of implementing it by Sharia law is already making inroads right here in this country — the good ole USA. We’re about to see a “takeover” of the U.S. by the evil and oppressive idealogy of the government of Islam (that is aiming for world-wide conquest and has stated that the U.S. is *on its list* to take over...)

And for those people who need some additional facts about what the evil and oppressive governmental idealogy of Islam is doing, look at some of the following.

There’s no question about it... the enemy is *Islam* itself and the evil and oppressive and false idealogy that it perpetrates. Some say the problem is “fascism” (instead of the basic oppressive governmental idealogy of Islam, itself). But, that is to engage in “political correctness” and nothing more... and sidetracks people from the *true enemy* in this war.

In one generation we’ll see, right here in the United States that “Islam” is the enemy and not “fascism”...

Muslim Demographics...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU

and also, this...

Islam: What the West Needs to Know - FULL LENGTH ENGLISH VERSION
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-871902797772997781

and then, looking at this...

“The Third Jihad” (video - abridged version of film)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2271522/posts

This is the allowance of “false gods” to take over this nation because of the ignorance of the people of the land in regards to the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...

And so, we see that we’re going to have the “false god of Islam” ruling over the USA and running the USA in just one generation from now.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Demographic Winter

Demographic Bomb

[thulldud]

We delude ourselves when we imagine that a few hundred dollars of tax incentives will persuade individuals to form families or keep them together. A generation of Americans has grown up with the belief that the traditional family is merely one lifestyle choice among many.

A generation of Americans has grown up out of the wreckage left by the divorce culture, and concluded that even if the traditional family is the best lifestyle choice among many, it's a "bridge too far."

[panzerkamphwageneinz]

you missed it.

You won’t invest in an area of the world where there are people but your investment isn’t safe through good and enforceable laws.

The countries that have enforceable laws to protect your money aren’t having kids.

You say I’ll put my money where I want to but you won’t choose a place like North Korea would you? How about Cambodia? Cuba?

The safest areas are those where children are becoming a rarity.

That’s the sad thing. We lost our faith, we quit having kids. There won’t be a Russia in 2050, they have a negative birthrate.

The west turned it’s back on God and God isn’t one to tap you on the shoulder.

[Salvation]

Baby Bust: The Demographics of Global Depression

The Surest Sign of a Decadent Culture
Protestants and Birth Control
The Protest of a Protestant Minister Against Birth Control
Contraception: Why Not?
The Bible & Birth Control
Our Gravest Moral Responsibility: Convert the Contraception Mentality
Contraception and Conversion
Evangelical Leaders are Ok with Contraception
The pill and 50 years of misery [the pill kills!]
The dawn of demonic deception [the birth control pill]

Researcher finds strong link between contraception and HIV
The Birth-Control Riddle
Social Science Proves Humanae Vitae
"Contraception Is Wrong. Now Here's How You Use It . . ."
Suit claims birth control warning not enough
Natural and Unnatural (father of 5 shocks mother of 1)
Planned Parenthood Uses Teens to Distribute Injectable Birth Control in Rural Ecuador
Study: Low-Dose Birth Control Pills Decrease Bone Density in Young Women
Spanish drug agency confirms grave effects of morning-after pill
Another Woman Dies of Hormonal Contraceptive in Switzerland

Study Finds Half of Women on "Birth Control Shot" Suffer Bone Problems
The Re-Birth of Population Control: Human Life Seen as a Carbon Problem
Radio Replies First Volume - Birth Control
Abortion, birth control pill linked to breast cancer, surgeon says
God before contraception (Australia)
Fighting the 'contraceptive mentality'
Birth control pill creator regrets population decline
Polluted Water, Polluted Culture (one more consequence from contraception)
Abortifacients -- The Other Forbidden Grief
NFP and Contraception: What’s the Difference?

Wisconsin requiring Catholic institutions to provide contraceptives coverage
Contraception: The history you may have missed and would rather not know
Why does Pope Benedict talk about Humanae vitae in the new encyclical? [Catholic Caucus]
New Evangelical Documentary Exposes Abortifacient Qualities of the Birth Control Pill, Promotes NFP
In Quiverfull Movement, Birth Control Is Shunned
Press in a Dither Again over Pope’s Reaffirmation of Catholic Teaching
How Birth Control Changed America for the Worst
If You Are Contracepting, You Are Part of A Very Big Problem
Vatican and Italian government criticize sale of RU 486 in Italy
New Condom Ads Target Catholics, Latinos

St. Padre Pio, Humanae Vitae, and Mandatory Abortion
Responsible Parenthood in a Birth Control Culture, Part Two [Open]
Responsible Parenthood in a Birth Control Culture, Part One [Open]
Humanae Vitae and True Sexual Freedom — Part 6 of 6 [Open]
Contraception v. Natural Family Planning — Part 5 of 6 [Open]
Sex Speaks: True and False Prophets — Part 4 of 6 [Open]
Contraception and the Language of the Body — Part 3 of 6 [Open]
Does Contraception Foster Love? — Part 2 of 6 [Open]
Contraception and Cultural Chaos — Part 1 of 6 [Open]
Priests still suffering from effects of Humanae Vitae dissenters, Vatican cardinal says (Must read!)

"Provoking reflection" (Contrasting views on Humanae Vitae)
Humanae Vitae The Year of the Peirasmòs - 1968
Catholics to Pope: Lift the Birth Control Ban
[OPEN] The Vindication of Humanae Vitae
Catholic Clergy Challenge Colleagues to Reacquaint Themselves and Their People with Humanae Vitae
White House proposes wide "conscience clause" on abortion, contraception
THE EX CATHEDRA STATUS OF THE ENCYCLICAL "HUMANAE VITAE" [Catholic Caucus]
“A degrading poison that withers life”
Australia Study: 70 Percent of Women Seeking Abortions Used Contraception
[Fr. Thomas Euteneuer] In Persona Christi: The Priest and Contraception

A Challenging Truth, Part Two: The Day the Birth Control Died
A Challenging Truth, Part One: How Birth Control Works
Ten Challenges for the Pro-Life Movement in 2008
The concept of the "intrinsically evil"
Pope Tells Pharmacists Not to Dispense Drugs With 'Immoral Purposes'
Massive Study Finds the Pill Significantly Increases Cancer Risk if Used more than Eight Years
Birth Control Pill Creates Blood Clot Causing Death of Irish Woman
Seminarians Bring Church’s Teaching on Contraception, Sexuality to YouTube
Abortion and Contraception: Old Lies
History of Catholic teaching on Contraception

Pope: Legislation "Supporting Contraception and Abortion is Threatening the Future of Peoples"
Contraception: Why It's Wrong
On Fox News Fearless HLI Priest Takes on Sean Hannity (may be indebted for saving his soul)
VIDEO - SEAN HANNITY vs REV. THOMAS EUTENEUER (must see!)
The Early Church Fathers on Contraception - Catholic/Orthodox Caucus
Pope on divine love vs. erotic love
Conjugal Love and Procreation: God's Design
Being fruitful [Evangelicals and contraception]

[Valpal1]

You just rephrased what you quoted. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the government or the individual doing the investing if there is no younger generation to invest in.

Currently the places that still have positive birthrates are communists (famous for their respect of private property) and muslim (also famous respectors of rights and freedoms).

Think your savings will be safe with them?

[kabar]

There are only two countries in the industrial world with a positive rate of population increase, the United States and Israel. That is probably because they are the two developed countries with the highest proportion of people of faith, as I argued before.

Immigration is driving our increase in population. We will add 130 million people in the next 40 years, 75% due to immigration. We are importing poverty, which will hurt this country economically. Milton Friedman said, “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” We have both.

[Mad Dawgg]

'A generation of Americans has grown up out of the wreckage left by the divorce culture, and concluded that even if the traditional family is the best lifestyle choice among many, it's a "bridge too far."'

Early on in the USA children were an asset to the farm. Each would do a share of the day to day work that needed done to produce food for the family and to sell for income.

Also children were employed in other family businesses as apprentices and such and thus helped the bottom line of those businesses as well.

But with the change in the work place and fewer and fewer family farms in the USA a child is no longer an asset. (I am talking purely production here not about family values and such) Back in those days having children balanced out financially and even give the family the ability to produce more exponentially with each child added.Not so nowadays.

These days, rare it is that a child adds to the family's monetary bottom line, mainly because of the way society has morphed into a situation where Mom and Dad both work just to keep even with inflation (unless you live a fairly sparse lifestyle or are lucky enough to have one adult with a very high paying job.) Bottom line children "cost" alot now and with ever higher price inflation and the devaluing of the dollar it ain't gonna get better anytime soon!

[mlocher]

you missed it.

...

The countries that have enforceable laws to protect your money aren’t having kids.

I understood the point. When money flows into a region, investors will demand accountability. They will want better accounting and better laws. China and India are two examples of this occurring the last 4 decades.

You say I’ll put my money where I want to but you won’t choose a place like North Korea would you? How about Cambodia? Cuba?

There are better places to invest where the population and the economy are growing at a healthy rate. You have scraped the bottom of the barrel to come up with these rogue states.

[Star Traveler]

Thanks for the reference. I’ve found an online source to view one of them and I’m going to check it out and see how it is. I’ll decide if that’s one that I want to get ...

The trailer makes it look like it will be very good. I’ll let you know what I think ... :-)

[Brian Kopp DPM]

I bought both of them. They are superb, must viewing!

I show them to my CCD (Sunday school) classes.

I've been meaning to put a TV in my office waiting room, playing those two and "EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed" in a continuous loop, but my dear wife is concerned it may push some of my patients who are faculty at the local university over the edge ;-)

[Age of Reason]

America is overpopulated as it is.

We don’t need anymore people and we don’t need any further loss of freedom that comes with population growth.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

You know nothing about demographics and economics.

[Star Traveler]

You were saying ...

America is overpopulated as it is.

We don’t need anymore people and we don’t need any further loss of freedom that comes with population growth.

You gotta be kidding or just plain ignorant ... I don't know which it is ...

Go look at Post #4 ... and take a good look at the Demographics video. It's pretty short.

If there are more people who think like you, it's no wonder this country is going downhill ... hoo-boy!

[Age of Reason]

You know nothing about overpopulation and loss the of freedom that comes with it.

[Age of Reason]

it's no wonder this country is going downhill ... hoo-boy!

Funny, we have twice as many people as fifty years ago precisely because of immigration.

And yet we're going downhill.

I guess that must be a coincidence?

[Mad Dawgg]

"America is overpopulated as it is."

Really? Good then you will be able to answer this question easily...

If we took all the people in the world (lets call the number 7 Billion to make sure we get everyone) and grouped them together for a nice tight aerial group photo how many states in the United States would we all cover grouped together in such a fashion?