Don't be so sure that everything follows the patterns of the past.
But, we best not remain complacent.
Treating all the things that were called "The Roman Empire" as one thing is a pretty big stretch. Modern nations have much more rigid and well-defined natures.
Like other the Asian Tigers with death spiral demographics still grew significantly simply because cohort of skilled workers increased massively even though demographics broadly declined. There's a reason PRC is rapidly moving up science and innovation indexes (controlled for quality, not just citations). The reality is, PRC demographics has never been MORE competitive, and will increasingly be, because advanced economic development phase is just getting started. Quantity of quality is in human capital is increasing at stupendous pace. Now add in PRC is adopting as much industrial robots / automation than the next 15 countries combined and that overall demographic decline (as in net population decline) only improves PRC strategic position by reducing import dependence. And that the massive regional income disparity + huge home ownership + enviable house hold savings rate = PRC elderly simply don't have significant expection (or need) for old age social support. In many ways, PRC is almost optimized for weathering demographic bomb with less social cost relative to properly developed countries that are seeing comparable demographic decline.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/gdp-growth-r...
Not for JP because their skillforce potential was already relatively maxed out, their education reform paid off late in 70s while domestic politics squandered female labour participation. JP stagnanted after it tapped out demographic divident of educated/skilled work force in 80s - JP didn't have enough people / demand to upgrade what she had left to push further. Ultimately she settled in fairly prosperous status quo, but as medium sized country, also did not have sufficient internal market or requisite talent to compete across every sector.
VS PRC's recent skilled demographic explosion form 00s academic / S&T / R&D reforms that have not been fully exploited, which is the critical cohort that will build national strength. PRC has internal markets and talent pool to compete in every sector and will move up value chain accordingly. Ultimately just due to sheer amount of people, huge % of whom are lost cause, PRC will settle somewhere below JP, but still significantly higher than where it is now, likely much than US in gross/real ppp terms. Another important dynamic is PRC moving up value chain across all sectors will chip away at western economic primacy. PRC's skills driven growth trend will be slower relative to historic performance of other Tigers because even world demand was not enough to uplift 1.4B people. But that slower growth will start to directly challenge / eat lunch in sectors wealthy west dominantes. PRC may grow slow, but it merely growing will ensure west grows SLOWER if not regress.
One should expect PRC economy to grow slower and stagnate in 20-30 years, but will pull head of US, substantively in real GDP / PPP terms. All while moving up the up value chain, increasing comprehensive national power, and simulatenously erode western economies growth potential. Antcipate a future where every $1 growth in PRC hightech exports takes away 2% from west. Expect PRC industrial/trade policy sell at -$1 loss to cost west $4. JP as US vassel post war did not have the political freedom to play that game, it got Plaza'ed instead.
It's hard to engage economically with a diverse world when your available viewpoints are less diverse. At some point you reach a ceiling.
China has run through the Japanese hypergrowth years (leverage wage disparity, then move up value chain by producing copies of higher value items) and is now in the R&D phase. We'll see how it goes from here.
As opposed to most of Europe ...
Also, the quality of your human capital is more important than just having a large unsustainable population growth without much marketable skills or know-how on the international scale. Otherwise parts of Africa and Asia would be economic super powers by now.
Even the so hated "refugee crisis" from Syria saw mostly middle-class Syrians moving to Europe (putting it in fear quotes since the whole of the EU had fewer refugees than Turkey alone to accept).
That's mostly false. I haven't met a single programmer from Romania in Austria or any dev from turkey who wishes to emigrate here. Non-EU skilled people I met all want to move to low tax high salary places like Switzerland, UK, Netherlands. Having an open borders immigration policy is discouraging for those with skills who can afford to shop around for the better option vs economic refugees who shop around for the country with the most welfare.
If I look at the immigration statistics here, most immigrants are refugees from Africa, Middle East, and East Asia, not doctors and engineers with visas, those are only a tiny minority of the total immigration.
> Non-EU skilled people I met all want to move to low tax high salary places like Switzerland, UK, Netherlands.
The Netherlands at least is still part of the EU. You'll also find plenty of high-skilled migrants in Ireland as well, and France and Germany also attract quite a few.
Note that language concerns and attitudes towards foreigners, especially foreign workers, are a huge part of how many people come to work in a particular country. Ireland and the UK have a huge advantage here purely by virtue of speaking English, as does France for the populations in North Africa. The Netherlands are very open to using English in business, even though their own language is quite obscure. German is less internationally spoke than English or French, but it is not that obscure either.
All that said, Europe is going to have to become much tougher on refugees in the coming decades. I foresee a re-negotiation of the various refugee conventions written at a very different time in history.
Young people + a functioning and accessible education system is what produces highly skilled workers.
Last week I saw a report with Middle Eastern migrants stuck in Serbia wanting to cross into the EU (Germany and Austria specifically). They interviewed one migrant from Iraq with his wife and five small kids, let's call him "Bob", and the reporter asked Bob why he's trying to get to the EU. He said it's because there's no future in Iraq. Well Bob, let me ask you this, if you knew there's no future in Iraq, why did you decided to have five kids then? Surely if you live in poverty, then birth control is a better idea no? Or oral/anal/pulling out, if that's not available. But instead, the EU(German/Austrian) taxpayer will have to pay to house a man with no knowledge of birth control or sense of personal responsibility, who's only professional skill is busting nuts, and his numerous family.
A mixed-race friend of mine volunteers in a refugee center here since he speaks several languages and he's pissed that migrants just laugh at us, saying "Europeans are so stupid they pay us for everything then give us more money which we just send back home".
This kind of immigration does not breed the results you're hoping for since it mostly encourages the ones willing to cheat to get free stuff rather that to contribute to the host nation.
The rich countries with restrictive immigration policies and high barrier of entry (US, Canada, Australia, New-Zeeland, Switzerland), attract the highly skilled and most productive immigrants that will add the most amount of value back into the economy. EU mostly attracts welfare shoppers.
I'd point out that in all your replies in this subtree, you're essentially making the same point.
And if you're making the same point, you're not really thinking about what you're replying to: you could be replying to a wall for all intents and purposes.
And how big is the % of medical professionals or medical students among all the total (legal and illegal) immigration into the EU? 0,000001%?
I have not been able to find very recent data, but here is a paper from 2007 [0], showing that the percentage of physicians working in the country at that time who were migrants either from inside or outside Europe was well over 5%, with significant outliers such as the UK (30%), Ireland (30%), Norway (15%). In Austria it was 5%, though most migrants were from other rich EU countries.
[0] https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/...
Also, the cost of housing in Europe is increasing so much that all those young people don't see a bright future ahead without help from the bank of mom and dad.