> By 2050, China will have lost one-third of its working-age population. Meanwhile, the U.S. will bestride the earth as the youngest industrialized nation after India.
How are we divining the mating habits of people born in 2020 to 2030's US?
How are we divining the mating habits of people born in 2020 to 2030's US?
US population growth has been outpacing China and Europe for the last decade [2]. If trends stay about the same (no plagues, massive wars, or other major changes in population), the population growth happening today will translate to growth in the work force 20 to 30 years from now. Note: population growth includes immigration, which is something the US experiences more of than China or Europe.
In a nutshell, we expect the Chinese demographics to shift older faster than the US. This raises questions on how China will fund services, entitlements, etc 30 years from now (which is what I imagine Joffe was getting at).
[1] http://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/united-states.chi...
[2] http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&m...
So the assumption is that the population of the US will continue to climb slowly due to natural growth, accelerated a little bit, but not much, by immigration.
Now if you look at the EU or China, they have a very different story. The EU has been stuck in a massive population drop rate (roughly approaching next generations being 50-70% of the previous generation for all of Western Europe, coupled with massive immigration numbers that make the numbers barely stable). That means that in a lot of countries in Western Europe, approaching 50% of the <20 population is of foreign origin, first or second generation, mostly from Northern Africa and the middle east. These numbers look scary, yet in the major cities, Paris, London, ... they look a lot scarier still. If the "unemployed youths that don't fit into society leads to revolution" crowd is correct, Europe has maybe 5-10 years left before that happens. There may be a further delay because of the simple fact that European mistreatment of the poor is still a lot better treatment than islamic nations' treatment of the middle class and the rich. So the immediate immigrants are actually quite content to be abused. Their children, however, are not.
China is in a pickle. They need, absolutely need, a lot of population growth to avoid disaster, but in absolute numbers everything they built is filled to the brim. They are trying to use the "one child policy" to spread out the population by relaxing it for ethnic Chinese in the outer regions, like Xinjang or Tibet. So if you are Chinese and want kids, if you move there and get a job there (Chinese control most businesses and employers are at least somewhat racist, so it's not impossibly hard), the government will let you do that, up to 5 kids in some places. The purpose is, of course, slow ethnic cleansing, but given that it's China, the UN will never even mention it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy#Current_status
Rural Han Chinese can have up to 2 children. Minorities can have up to 4 in rural areas. Tibetans are unlimited.
You need to retract your comment. Everything in your last paragraph is false and brings question to everything you've written.
This is not true, actually if you are Han people, no matter where you move to (within China), you still can only have one child unless you married to "ethnic minority" who no need to follow "one child policy".
To be honest, I think you may have read too much Mark Steyn. There is little cause for demographic apocalyptics, including the tired "Muslims are going to revolt/take over" kind. In fact, a flat or slightly declining population is probably a blessing (e.g. from an environmental perspective).
Imagine you have the problems of economic class and then add another dimension of cultural class. Society becomes much more fragmented. The new dimension is not really worse than economic class, but class alone is already unpleasant. It will turn out all right, I guess, but there will be minor persistent problems for a long time.