The Destabilizing Mix of Demography and Entitlements, Part II

January 22, 2021 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty 

A few days ago, I shared some slides from a presentation to an e-symposium organized by Trends Research in Abu Dhabi.

Here’s a video of my presentation, which includes 16 visuals to drive home the point that the world is facing a demographic/entitlement crisis.

Today, I want to share five more visuals to underscore the severity and magnitude of this catastrophe.

But before we look at the charts, I’ll start by saying this isn’t a fast-developing problem. It’s taken several decades to get where we are now and most nations probably have several decades before an actual crisis materializes.

Though what’s already happened in Greece (and what’s presumably about to happen in Italy) should underscore the seriousness of this issue.

This issue is global, as illustrated by this chart showing the staggering shift that will happen to the world’s population. Simply stated, there are going to be lots and lots of old people, but no concomitant increase in the number of children.

It’s not just that there’s not a corresponding increase in the number of children.

The real story is that birthrates are plummeting.

The data for Europe is particularly sobering.

Here’s a look at some other nations that face big fertility declines.

By the way, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with families deciding they want fewer children.

But it does create a big fiscal problem because governments have tax-and-transfer entitlement programs that were created when everyone thought there would always be ever-larger generations.

But that’s not happening now, which explains why the world is going from eight workers per retiree to four workers per retiree.

That’s the global data. For many developed regions, such as Europe, the situation is far more challenging.

And the United States isn’t far behind.

I’ll close by observing that there’s actually a very simple solution to this problem. We need genuine entitlement reform.

Sadly, that definitely didn’t happen in the past four years in the United States. And it also won’t be happening in the next four years.

P.S. Hong Kong and Singapore have very low birth rates and very long lifespans, but those jurisdictions are in reasonably good shape because they didn’t make the mistake of imposing western-style welfare states.

P.P.S. Some have argued that the demographic problem can be solved by having government-created incentives for fertility. At the risk of understatement, I’m skeptical of that approach.