Thursday, February 19, 2004
Youth Brings Power
Power and Population in Asia by Nicholas Eberstadt - Policy Review, No. 123
In a very interesting article that predicts future demographics of dominant Asian countries, where most of the world's population resides, it is concluded that countries like China will face a problem of an aging population.
Most interesting, however, is the end of the article, which discusses US demographics in 2025:
Youth brings with it innovation and dynamism; if these demographic predictions hold true it seems to be a safe bet that the United States will continue to be the world's dominant nation well into the 21st century.
Not a bad development at all.
However, those that postulate on a rising European or Chinese superpower should take these demographic statistics to heart. The net population decrease that Europe will suffer, and the burden on the Chinese family and economy that an aging population will bring, could thwart such possibilities.
I'm going to ask Jon Mearsheimer, a Professor of Political Science here at the University of Chicago who writes in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics that the US will have to battle a rising China in the future for global dominance, what he thinks these statistics mean. I'll let you know what he has to say.
UPDATE: Daniel Drezner, who I just discovered is an Assistant Professor here at the UofC (yeah, we are the illuminati of the blogosphere) has a post on this Policy Review article.
In a very interesting article that predicts future demographics of dominant Asian countries, where most of the world's population resides, it is concluded that countries like China will face a problem of an aging population.
Most interesting, however, is the end of the article, which discusses US demographics in 2025:
Interestingly enough, the Asian Pacific power with the most strategically favorable profile may be one that we have not yet discussed: the United States.
By the unpdÂs medium variant projections, the United States is envisioned to grow from 285 million in 2000 to 358 million in 2025. In absolute terms, this would be by far the greatest increase projected for any industrialized society; in relative terms, this projected 26 percent increment would almost exactly match the proportional growth of the Asia/Eurasia region as a whole. Under these trajectories, the United States would remain the worldÂs third most populous country in 2025, and by the early 2020s, the U.S. population growth rate  a projected 0.7 percent per year  would in this scenario actually be higher than that of Indonesia, Thailand, or virtually any country in East Asia, China included.
In these projections, U.S. population growth accrues from two by no means implausible assumptions: 1) continued receptivity to newcomers and immigrants and 2) continuing Âexceptionalism in U.S. fertility patterns. (The United States today reports about 2.0 births per woman, as against about 1.5 in Western Europe, roughly 1.4 in Eastern Europe, and about 1.3 in Japan.) Given its sources, such population growth would tend, quite literally, to have a rejuvenating effect on the U.S. population profile  that is to say, it would slow down the process of population aging. Between 2000 and 2025, in these unpd projections, median age in the United States would rise by just two years (from 35.6 to 37.6). By 2025, the U.S. population would be more youthful, and aging more slowly, than that of China or any of todayÂs Âtigers. (Furthermore, to state the obvious, neither a resurgence of hiv/aids nor an eruption of imbalanced sex ratios at birth look to be part of the U.S. prospect over the decades immediately ahead.)
One may of course debate the magnitude of the impact of such relative demographic advantages. For the time being, however, it would appear that demographic trends may, in some limited but tangible measure, contribute to the calculus of American strategic preeminence  in the Asia Pacific region, and indeed around the world.
Youth brings with it innovation and dynamism; if these demographic predictions hold true it seems to be a safe bet that the United States will continue to be the world's dominant nation well into the 21st century.
Not a bad development at all.
However, those that postulate on a rising European or Chinese superpower should take these demographic statistics to heart. The net population decrease that Europe will suffer, and the burden on the Chinese family and economy that an aging population will bring, could thwart such possibilities.
I'm going to ask Jon Mearsheimer, a Professor of Political Science here at the University of Chicago who writes in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics that the US will have to battle a rising China in the future for global dominance, what he thinks these statistics mean. I'll let you know what he has to say.
UPDATE: Daniel Drezner, who I just discovered is an Assistant Professor here at the UofC (yeah, we are the illuminati of the blogosphere) has a post on this Policy Review article.
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