Population Collapse Will Reshape the Global Economy by 2050

If people or kids do not exist, then they cannot contribute to a nations economy. These will be huge effects by 2050 and even larger by 2100 and beyond. All of the forecasts that China and India will have economies many times larger than the USA will NOT happen. The other part of the forecasts of super-China and super-Indian economies also assumed a steady and strong rise in per capita income. The assumption was that the developing countries would have huge gdp growth from technological catchup. If both of these things do not happen or are far worse then China and India stagnate at about today’s economic levels and then start shrinking in line with the population collapse from 2050 onwards.

It is not just that the countries get old before they get rich, the countries economies shrivel up and shrink.

All of the developed countries except Israel have a total fertility rate below the replacement level of 2.1. Even almost all of the less developed countries like Mexico and Philippines have fertility rates that have dropped below replacement. Dropping total fertility from 1.5 to 1.8 down to 1.1 drops the working age population by 20-30%. Dropping total fertility from 1.1 down to 0.8 drops the working age population by another 10%. India has already dropped below replacement fertility in 2021-2022 based on recent Indian survey data. The total fertility rate (births per woman) also fell from 3.96 in 1991 to 2.0 in 2023 for India, whereas in the USA, it fell from 2.05 to 1.66 and in China from 1.93 to 1.18 during the same period.

India’s National Family Health Survey indicated a fertility rate of 1.99 in 2017-19, in contrast to the WPP’s estimate of 2.16. If India’s population fertility estimate is off by 10% on the key metric of current fertility rate and is overestimating future fertility as 1.8 instead of 1.2 then the projected population will be double the correct projection in 2100. India with a fertility rate of about 1.5 instead of 2.2 from 2023-2050 will mean 20-30% fewer working age people.

Japan is going from 122 million people today to about 100 million people in 2050-2056. By 2050, its population could fall below 100 million, of whom 38.8% will be 65 or older. IF there was magic policy to double Japan’s birthrates then instead of a working age population of about 58 million in 2050, Japan could have 72 million working age people and a population of about 120 million.

China currently has a total fertility rate of 1.18. However, a survey of Chinese women indicates similarities to South Korean women for family size. South Korea has a total fertility of 0.78. IF China will struggle to stabilize its fertility rate at 0.8, then its population will fall to less than 1.02 billion by 2050 and 310 million in 2100. If China succeeds in holding its fertility rate to 1.1 and prevents it from declining, its population will likely fall to 1.08 billion by 2050 and 440 million by 2100. This would be 232 million fewer people in China in 2050 than the UN projections. The UN was assuming that China would have a total fertility rate of 1.5. This would be about a 18% drop in total population but a 30-40% drop in the working age population by 2050.

The numbers get far worse for India, China, Japan, Korea and other low fertility countries as the decades and centuries pass. There is constant halving or thirding every 50 years into the future so long as the fertility rate is 0.8 to 1.0. One third of the 2050 economy in 2100. One third of the 2100 economy in 2150. One tenth of the 2050 economy in 2100. 2% of the 2050 economy in 2300.

China currently has about 960 million working age people versus the US at about 208 working age people. The US has about 168 million people working vs China at about 800 million people.

If China drops to 1.02-1.08 billion people in 2050 then the working age population would be about 600-680 million people. If the US had 400 million people (via high immigration) then it would have about 250-270 million people of working age. China would go from 4.5 times the US level of working age people today to 2.5 times the working age people of the US in 2050. China would have to reach about Japan levels of per capita income in 2050 to have an economy the size of the US. China will have to double its per capita income just to hold even on its overall economic size. China will need more than an extra 2% per year in annual GDP growth to make up for population loss.

Japan Peaked in 2008

Japan’s population peaked in 2008 at 128,083,960. Japan’s population was 123 million last year and is at 122 million this year. Japan has 15.2 million (15-39) women who could potentially have children. Japan in 2008 had 19.2 million women (15-39) who could potentially have children. In the 15 years before 2008, Japan had 17 million children but int he 15 years before 2023, Japan had 14 million children. The actual number of women who are having children is really between 20-32. There is significant dropoff in fertility from 32-40. Particularly if it is a first child. Culturally, the developed world is not using the 15-20 ages of fertility. Practically, Japan has 11 million women who could and are more active in having children.

I follow antiaging closely. The complete functional anti-aging regimen that could work and be deployed at scale and one that would rejuvenate fertility is at least 2040 or later and 2050-2060 is quite possible and could be delayed even more. Planning humanity based upon advanced tech deployment is not a good plan. Population decline is clearly in the population pyramid and total fertility data. Clearly, modern career, work and families and cities are not family and fertility friendly.

The only current fertility technologies to be deployed at scale are egg freezing and IVR. Those are in the hundreds of thousands to a few million per year now and could be scaled to hundreds of millions with a large adjustment to public health and medical systems. It would take a COVID pandemic vaccination scale response. Making sure that all of the people who plan to have children and families achieve this and we maximize those numbers with social and work life adjustment… I think all of that is a maximum +0.5 children to TFR. 0.8 goes to 1.3, 1.5 goes to 2.0. It can’t just be pulling forward some already planned kids, we have to fill in what would have been zero with one or two kids. A policy of mass scale surrogacy. Using freezing eggs with surrogacy (again by the millions), I think that could work. There would need to be as many surrogate mothers and state sponsored nannies as the standing armies of the world. Surrogacy would be most of their career and they would need to be compensated like a career. National propoganda to declare mother, surrogates and nannies as national heroes would also be needed.