The Coming Global Depopulation | Nicholas Eberstadt | John Bonython Lecture

nevertheless it's apparent that worldwide sub-replacement fertility which is the precondition for Global depopulation is set to commence very much sooner than demographers would have imagined even a couple of years ago and for a quarter of the world population decline is already underway right [Music] [Applause] [Music] now in the late 9 1960s a Stanford University biologist named Paul Erick published an important book it was called the population bomb and it began with these words quote the battle to feed humanity is over in the 1970s the world will undergo famines hundreds of millions of people will starve

to death that was Paul ER in the late 60s and he linked the population explosion to other possible scenarios of Apocalypse India would be doomed England would Disappear by the year 2000 the US life expectancy would drop to 42 years by 1980 every ill it seemed was a result of exploding populations across the globe now erick's book sold 3 million copies and it helped set the intellectual climate at the time again we're talking about the late 1960s early to mid 1970s in 1970 the Harvard biologist George wal warned quote Civilization will end within 15 or

30 years unless immediate action is taken to reduce population growth in 1972 the Club of Rome in its report the limits to growth predicted that the world would run out of gold tin Mercury silver and oil within two decades Robert mcnamar who of course was the defense secretary in the Kennedy and the Johnson administrations he was in the World Bank president in the early to mid 1970s and he likened quote rampant population growth to thermonuclear Holocaust which Justified throwing tens of millions of dollars tax dollars into state-mandated population control now of course none of this

came to pass all those doomsday scenarios did not happen simply because human Ingenuity economic growth and technological progress saved the day more people have lived longer and more prosperous lives poverty across the globe has fallen dramatically most notably in India and especially China and as for England it's battered than bruised but it is still there and yet in recent times an intriguing development has taken place all that population explosion that we've seen over the centuries has now morphed into population decline with birth rates plummeting more and more societies are heading into an of pervasive and

indefinite depopulation so what lies ahead what does depopulation mean for the economy Society politics and international relations well Nicholas eat is one of the world's leading experts on demography he's the Henry vent chair in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington where he has been based for the best part of four decades he's also been a prolific contributor to many esteemed journals and newspapers most notably Foreign Affairs magazine the New York Times The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post and Nick whom I've known since we worked together at AI the American Enterprise

Institute in Washington nearly 30 years ago he's here in Australia as a guest of CIS and he's here with his wife Mary herself an acclaimed author and Scholar unfortunately Mary has come down with something of a cold so she couldn't be here this evening now before I subject Nicholas to some classic CIS style scrutiny I want to invite him here to deliver the 2024 John benthan lecture please welcome Nicholas eat Tom and April thank you for that beautiful introduction it's a pleasure and an honor to be here with you this evening ladies and gentlemen it's

only my second visit to Australia but I feel uh strangely at home here it's uh your beautiful land and your welcoming people I see so much of what I think of as the best of the country that I love uh so this evening the title of my lecture for you is the era of depopulation of ladies and gentlemen although few yet see it coming we're about to enter a new period of human history call it the era of depopulation it's arriving quietly catching most by surprise with birth rates plummeting all around the globe more and

more countries are moving into indefinite depopulation a phenomenon that will eventually Encompass the entire planet what lies ahead is a world of shrinking and aging societies net mortality and excess of deaths over births will be the new Norm with unrelenting super low fertility family structures and living arrangements previously imagined only in science fiction will become commonplace features of everyday life our species has no Collective memory of depopulation total human numbers have not declined for a very long time the last long-term Global depopulation was almost 700 years ago in the wake of the black death and

we know how the last Global depopulation ended through procreative powers of our species we do not know what will happen with this next one this time depopulation will be due to to Humanity's procreative power itself or rather to the want of it thanks to revolutionary worldwide reductions in the desire for children all around the world intellectual and policy circles are plainly unready for the new demographic order global population growth is a background music to our modern way of life we take it for granted our social institutions our economic arrangements and political Dynamics presuppose ose it

they rely on it we lack the intuitive coordinates to understand how prolonged depopulation will recast Society economy and power politics but recast these it most assuredly will the breath taking sweep and scale of the worldwide March into sub repacement fertility is not yet generally appreciated not even by demographic Specialists so please grant me a few minutes to brief you on the seemingly Unstoppable Force pushing us closer and closer to Global depopulation ever since the Heyday of the population explosion in the 1960s Global fertility has trended steadily downward as one country after another joined in the

decline according to the UN population division the world's fertility rate the average number of births per woman per lifetime was only half as high in 2015 as 50 years earlier by unpd Reckoning every country saw birth rate drops over that period every country and the downswing just kept going no matter how low the birth rates were already in recent years the birth plunge has only continued in fact it's quickened now as a general rule of thumb about 2.1 births per woman are required for long-term population replacement today however the overwhelming majority of the world's people

live in countries with below replacement fertility levels patterns inherently incapable of sustaining long-term population stability jaw-dropping fertility collapses have been taking place in rich countries and poor countries alike a quick spin of the globe will offer you I think a startling picture start with East Asia the entire region entered into depopulation in 2021 by 2022 every major country there was shrinking today fertility levels are 40% below replacement in Japan 50% Below in China almost 60% Below in Taiwan and an astonishing 65% below replacement in South Korea next let's go to Southeast Asia that region tipped

into below replacement uh fertility around 2018 in brunai Indonesia Malaysia Singapore Thailand Vietnam we see members of the sub-replacement fertility Club these days predominantly Catholic Philippines is sub repacement too even impoverished War Riven myanmar's birth rate is below replacement in South Asia sub repacement fertility already prevails in India Sri Lanka and Nepal and Bangladesh is on the verge of sub repacement India's Urban fertility levels are just about as low as Europe's Kolkata vast Kolkata its fertility is now down to an amazing one birth per woman per lifetime that's lower than any major European city Latin

America and the Caribbean are yet another Sub repacement Zone super low birth rates are no longer unusual there fertility has dropped below one birth per woman in bulata it's under one birth per woman in Mexico City sub repacement fertility has even come to North Africa in the greater Middle East where the Islamic faith was long assumed to be a Bull workk against precipitous declines in childbearing Iran has been sub repacement for about a quarter of a century in sub repacement turkey birth levels are lower today in Istanbul than they are in Berlin in Europe of

course fertility has been sub repacement for almost half a century like the Russian Federation the European Union is now a net mortality Zone last year France tallied fewer births than in 1806 when Napoleon won the Battle of Y according to unpd the continent entered into long-term population decline in 2020 now the USA Remains the outlier among developed countries resisting the gravitational pull of depopulation but even there depopulation is no longer Unthinkable the US Census Bureau now projects that America's population could Peak around 2080 and decline continuously thereafter the only major remaining Bastion against Global uh

sub repacement fertility is subsaharan Africa with its roughly 1.2 billion people and a fertility rate of over four babies per woman the region is the planet's last consequential redout of population explosion style childbearing but even there things are changing fertility in subsaharan Africa is already fallen by a third since the population explosion days in South Africa birth levels are just fractionally above replacement with other Southern African countries following close behind off the African coast macius and Cape Verde are already sub repacement uh all in all taking all of this into account account it is possible

it's not certain but it is possible that Humanity as a whole has already dropped that the planet has already dropped below the replacement level we can't tell yet owing to the lack of up-to-date data for sub Saharan Africa nevertheless it's apparent that worldwide sub-replacement fertility which is the precondition for Global depopulation is set to commence very much sooner than demographers would have imagined even a couple of years ago and for a quarter of the world population decline is already underway right now what accounts for this extraordinary worldwide March into sub repacement truth be told this

most important of all modern social movements remains mysterious to those of us who study it nonsense you say Economic Development and material Advance explain the world's slide into super low birth rates and national population decline right not so fast Myanmar and Nepal are impoverished un designated least developed countries but they are also sub-replacement societies and there are fascinating rule thwarting exceptions for virtually every other generalization about the possible determinant of fertility decline as well eventually Economist lant Pritchett identified the most powerful National fertility predictor of them all and guess what that decisive Factor turned out

to be the number of children that women said they want who knew right human agency who would have guessed but if volition shapes birth rates what explains the sudden worldwide dive into sub repacement fertility in rich and poor countries alike the genius who finally answers that question will deserve a Nobel but I think it'll be a Nobel in literature and not in economics he or she will have to channel the global site gist chart the shifting coastlines of the modern mentality and explore the secrets hidden in billions of human hearts and uh I love the

social sciences but social science can only take a so far in any of that nonetheless a few observations and speculations may be in order at this moment first a revolution in the family in family formation not just childbearing is clearly underway around the world in rich and poor countries across cultural traditions and value systems symptoms include the flight from the family the flight from Marriage the spread of cooh habitation and temporary unions and the rise of one person homes also known as living alone further young men and women everywhere seem to increasingly prize autonomy self-actualization

and convenience and children for their many joys are quintessentially inconvenient finally a fact that may Al fact that may also be a clue there is as yet no modern case of a country that has returned to replacement levels of childbearing even briefly after dipping into very low sub replacement fertility say 30 or 35% below replacement today's population Trends should raise serious questions about all the old nostrums from sociobiology that humans are somehow hardwired to replace themselves to continue the species of conversely so-called memetic Theory which stresses the role of volition and social learning might Merit

closer scrutiny for what it can reveal about family formation and childbearing um public intellectual Mary EAD I don't know if you've heard of her she's very good uh describes social learning loss as the cat stuck in the tree problem uh those kittens rescued by fire department seem variably to be pets who did not live around or learn to climb from others of Their Own Kind so too perhaps with humans and their fertility patterns it may prove very much easier for humans to choose to enter into prolonged low fertility regimens than to choose to return to

larger families a depopulating future will be sharply different from the present in a number of obvious respects by 2050 in some unpd projections about 58 of the world's people would be living in net mortality zones Latin America and Southeast Asia would be among the new net mortality spots so too India Iran and turkey net mortality would be emerging by then in subsaharan Africa starting with South Africa once a country enters into net mortality only continued ever increasing immigration can Stave off long-term population decline labor forces will shrink due to the spread of sub repacement by

2050 2/3 of the planet's population could live in countries with dwindling workforces a depopulating world would be an aging one perhaps counterintuitively fertility levels have much more powerful impact on social aging than longevity so the march to low fertility and now to super low birth rates is generating a worldwide wave of topheavy population pyramids where the old beginning to outnumber the young positively aging societies will soon be the global Norm by 2050 outside sub Sahara there'll be hundreds of millions fewer people under the age of 60 than today but the numbers of seniors will be

exploding the upsurge in the super old the 80 plus contingent will be even more rapid just between today and 2050 that group's on track nearly to Triple the shape of things to come is most mind-bendingly suggested by projections for countries at the Vanguard of tomorrow's depopulation places with severely low birth rates plus favorable life expectancy Trends take China by 2050 China's median age that's the halfway mark between one group and the other uh China's median age will be somewhere above 50 years the working age population will be 25% smaller than today nearly a third of

China will be 65 or older one in 10 will be 80 or older it's South Korea however that provides the most stunning vision of a depopulating future current projections suggest South Korea will be commemorating three deaths for each birth by the year 2050 in some projections the R's median age could approach 60 years over 40% of the country could be senior citizens and one in six could be over 80 years old this is what we see on the transition to depopulation then comes the steady state of depopulation of depopulation and depopulation decline should South Korea's

current fertility Trends persist the country's population could continue to decline by 3% a year crashing by 95% over the course of a century this next chapter in human history may sound ominous and even frightening but even in an aging shrinking World steadily improving living standards and material and technological advances will still be possible this crucial Point must be underscored if only to counter unwarranted demographic pessimism demographic pessimism after all as Tom was indicating has been something of a default position in learned circles for a long time not so long ago pundits were panicking about the

population explosion prophesying Mass starvation due to childbearing in poor countries in hindsight those fears look bizarrely overblown despite tremendous population growth over the past Century the planet is far richer and far better fed than ever before the same formula that spread prosperity in the 20th century can ensure further advances in the 21st and Beyond even in a world marked by depopulation the essence of modern economic development is the unchaining of human potential something that you at C CIS know quite a bit about i' would say uh human capital plus Clement business climate are the keys

to boundless wealth generation over time improvements in health education Science and Technology fuel the motor for material Advance irrespective of demographic shrinking and aging societies can still make gains across the board in all of these remember the limits of human longevity are not yet known life expectancy at Birth in the world's longest lived countries has been heading upward for nearly two centuries on an almost perfectly straight trajectory about three months every year still is remarkable but true part of what's lengthening lives is a power of Education the world has never been as widely and deeply

schooled as it is today and there's no reason to expect the rise and training to stop given the immen gains that ACR from education to both societies and the trainees themselves remarkable improvements in health and education around the world speak to the application of science and social knowledge the stock of which has been relentlessly advancing thanks to human inquiry and Innovation that drive will not stop now so even an elderly depopulating world can grow increasingly affluent there's no guarantee War considered political decisions or other man-made disasters could sabotage it but an Ever more prosperous future

is ours to lose yet as societies assume new structures under long-term population decline as the old population pyramid is turned on its head people would need new habits of mind conventions and Cooperative objectives communities businesses and governments will have to learn new rules for development under depopulation policy makers and researchers will need to amass a corpus of practical knowledge about economic fiscal and monetary management for aging and shrinking populations investors likewise will need new playbooks to profit from an altered environment of opportunity and risk in depopulating societies pay as you go social programs for National

pension and old age Health Care will eventually fail as the working populations shrink and elderly claimants balloon current incentives are seriously misaligned for the Advent of depopulation but policy reforms and private sector responses can hasten necessary realignments to adapt successfully to a depopulating world States businesses and individuals will have to place a premium on responsibility and savings as people live longer and are healthier into their Advanced years they will retire later voluntary economic activity at ever older ages will make lifelong learning imperative prosperity in a depopulating world will also depend upon open economies free trade

in Goods services and finances to counter the constraints that shrinking populations otherwise engender and as the hunger for scarce Talent becomes more acute the movement of people will take on new saliens in the shadow of depopulation immigration will matter even more than it does today not all aged sociey however will be capable of assimilating immigrants and not all wouldbe migrants will be capable of contributing to receiving economies especially given the Stark lack of skills characterizing too many of the rapidly growing populations today competitive immigration policies will offer promise even when all countries are shrinking in

fact the value of attracting Talent from abroad then stands only to increase getting competitive migration policies right and securing public support for them promises to be a major task for future governments but one well worth the effort and Australia I may add looks to be well positioned for the future in this regard and in some others as well depopulation will not only transform how governments deal with their citizens it will also transform how they deal with one another Humanity shrinking ranks will inexorably alter the current government current balance of power and strain the existing World

in some ways it will do with this are relatively easy to foresee but depopulation is also going to scramble geopolitics in the ways that we can't yet predict one of the most uh one of the demographic certainties about uh the generation ahead is that differentials in population growth will make it will make for Rapid shifts in the relative size of the world's major regions tomorrow will be much more African a seventh of the world's population today lives in the sub Sahara but that region accounts for nearly a third of all births its share of the

world Manpower and population are thus set to increase immensely but that does not necessarily mean an African Century lies ahead in a world where per capita output can vary by as much as a factor of a 100 between countries human capital matters greatly to National Power not just headcounts the outlook for human capital in subsaharan Africa remains disappointing according to standardized testing in fact a stunning 94% of Youth in the region lack even basic skills India is now the world's most populous country on track to grow further for at least another few decades its demographics

virtually assure the country will be a major power in 2050 but India's rise is also compromised by human resource vulnerabilities India has a world-class contr of scientists technicians and Elite graduates yet education for ordinary Indians lags woefully behind a shocking seven out of eight young people in India today lack basic skills the skills profile for China's youth is decades maybe Generations ahead of India's today so India is unlikely to surpass a depopulating China economically for a long time a coalescing partnership between between China Iran North Korea and Russia is intent on challenging the us-led Western

order these revisionist countries have ambitious aggressive leadership seemingly confident in their International objectives but the demographic Tides run against them Russia and China are long-standing sub-replacement societies now both with shrinking Manpower and declining populations Iran is likewise far below replacement levels population on North Korea remain State Secrets but Kim jong-un's very public worrying about national birth rates suggests he's not happy about the country's demographics that doesn't mean that Washington and her allies can be complacent the real world is replete with graying and depopulating states that rely on brinkmanship and confrontation one of them Russia recently

attacked an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine another China is very publicly planning a campaign of coercion against its neighbor in Taiwan assuring the success of deterrence will remain imperative in a depopulating world too as for the United States demographic fundamentals look fairly sound at least by comparison to the comp competition demographic Trends are on course to augment American power over the decades immediately ahead lending support for continuing us Global dominance given the domestic tensions and social strains that Americans are living through today and the general decline back home and trust and confidence in the country and

its institutions these long-term American advantages may come as a surprise but they're already beginning to be taken into account by observers and actors abroad thanks in no small measure to immigration the US is on track to account for a growing share of the rich world's labor force Youth and highly educated Talent no other country on earth is better placed to translate population potential into National Power that demographic Edge could be at least as great in 2050 compared to contenders in short us demographic looks fairly strong today and might look even better tomorrow pending it must

be emphasized continuing public support for immigration the US Remains the most important geopolitical exception to the coming depopulation at least for the Next Generation Australia of course is also likewise a great exception but depopulation is going to affect the balance of power in ways we cannot yet foresee two unknowns Stand Out above all others how swiftly and adeptly the depops will adapt to their unfamiliar new circumstances and how prolonged depopulation might affect National will and morale nothing guarantees that societies will successfully navigate the turbulence caused by depopulation achieving economic and social Advance despite depopulation will

require substantial reforms in government policies the corporate sector social institutions and personal norms and behavior far less heroic programs of Reform fail all the time in our current world the majority of the world's GDP today is generated by countries that will be grappling with depopulation a generation from now depopulating societies that fail to Pivot will pay a price if enough depopulating societies fail to Pivot their struggles will drag down the world economy the nightmare scenario would be a zone of important but depopulating countries accounting for much of the world's output Frozen by pessimism anxiety and

resistance to reform into sclerosis or decline even if depopulating societies eventually successfully adapted to their new circumstances as I think we might reasonably expect there's no guarantee they'll do so on the timetable that the new population Trends demand another immense iic unknown is whether pervasive aging anemic birth rates and prolonged depopulation will affect the Readiness of shrinking societies to defend themselves and their willingness to sustain casualties in doing so despite all the Innovations changing the face of battle there is still no substitute in war for warm and vulnerable bodies defense of one's country cannot be

undertaken without sacrifices including sometimes the ultimate sacrifice but the flight from family underw way throughout much of the rich world today is manifestly a flight from sacrifice too on the other hand it's possible that many people especially young men with few familial bonds or obligations might be less risk averse more hungry for the kind of community belonging and sense of purpose that military service might offer casualty tolerance in depopulating countries may depend greatly on unforeseen contingent condition and may turn out to surprise the Russian invasion of Ukraine provides a test both countries were already long-established

depopulates on the eve of the invasion and both the authoritarian aggressor and the Democratic Defender have proved willing to absorve Grievous casualties in the war now grinding into its third year China presents perhaps the biggest question mark when it comes to depopulation and willingness to fight today and tomorrow China's military will perforce be staffed in large part by men raised as only children a mass casualty event would have devastating consequences for families across the country bringing entire lineages to an end seems reasonable to wager that China would fight ferociously against a foreign Invasion but such

casualty and such casualty tolerance might not extend to overseas adventures and expeditionary Journeys that go arai if severely sub-replacement China eventually decides to undertake a costly campaign against Taiwan the world would learn something Grim about what may lie ahead in the world of depopulation to conclude depopulation will transform our world profoundly likely in numerous ways we've not begun to consider and may not yet be in a position to understand yet for all the momentous changes ahead we can also expect important and perhaps reassuring continuities Humanity has already found the formula for banishing material scarcity and

Engineering ever greater Prosperity that formula can work regardless of whether populations rise or fall human volition the driver behind today's worldwide declines in childbearing stands to be no less powerful of force tomorrow than it is today Humanity bestrides the Planet explores the cosmos and continues to reshape itself because we are the world's most inventive and adaptable of animals we will undoubtedly need all our species trademark inventiveness and adaptability to cope with the manifold unintended future consequences of the family and fertility choices we are making today thank you all now comes a fun bid where we

try to challenge Nick's thesis and uh I have to say just from the outset nick uh it the numbers are striking especially Northeast Asia Taiwan South Korea uh less than one yeah really low but we've seen this story a bit before though with Japan in the 1970s uh there was a lot of Doom and Gloom about Japan's uh demographic death spiral in the 1970s and Ja Japan remains one of the world's largest economies uh so it's not been the disaster that many people imagined so can we take hope that perhaps the same thing might apply

to Taiwan South Korea and the so-called Asian tigers of Northeast Asia well d as I as I tried to argue it's possible for depopulating societies to maintain and improve their prosperity and I uh I hope that going to um we've got some room for Hope from what we've been seeing in Japan which is the longest standing depop at this point there's one thing I didn't mention though uh which I thought would get us down too much of a rabbit hole oh what we're seeing now in Japan we're going to see elsewhere is the implosion of

the family structure uh in Japan today a woman born in 1990 uh has about even odds of living to see any any biological grandchildren given marriage and childbearing patterns I don't think we know yet what a societ is going to operate like when there's pervasive childlessness and a lack of family support that may turn out to be the biggest challenge for there is a school of thought um that says managed population decline is not only uh desirable but it's essential to our long-term survival and the argument goes like this that fewer humans mean fewer demands

on everything from fish to Farmland to fossil fuels emissions that create climate change in other words shrink the economy to save the world how do you respond to that critique I mean if you uh if you don't like having people around you you're in luck just wait around a little bit but I think that in uh uh of course it's true that with uh smaller population there'll be more land per person there will be more area per person in the world um it's it's not clear to me that uh that depopulation is uh is the

key to saving the planet though I think that human Ingenuity is the key to saving the planet yeah well human Ingenuity economic growth that has unquestionably R helped reduce poverty all around the world in the last few decades but our critics say it is hardly delivered equality this is a recent Guardian Australia report now I use the guardian not because I'm endorsing the guardian I'm just trying to use it as a way of testing you true true sure and I think as I often say at CIS events it's important to know what our critics say

because then you know our own weaknesses of course uh but this is the guardian Australia it's a report written by Tor Shepard and I'm grateful to my colleague Greg Lindsay for pointing this article out to me good to see you reading the guardian Greg um quote statistics show the largest from economic growth overwhelmingly ends up in the pockets of the already rich an endless economic growth is inextricably tied to consumption which in turn is disrupting the parallel push for sustainability your response to the guardian there are a lot of different ways of measuring inequality my

favorite way is the inequality between being alive and being dead and one of the remarkable and unexamined phenomena with the explosion of Health around the world has been the change in the distribution of years of life on the planet if you did the same sort of Genie coefficient that you hear about on income for Genie coefficient on years of life you know age at death you'd find that the inequality in lifespans has radically shrunk over the course of the 20th century and is continuing to shrink that's why the Gap in life expectancy between rich and

poor countries is shrinking by the same token the distribution of years of schooling all around the world is also shrinking pervasively and systematically with the improvements in mean years of schooling around the world uh I think we're seeing a lot of evidence that by things that matter to human beings inequality is diminishing not increasing and just look one final thing at what's happening in the estimates of extreme poverty around the world Tom you mentioned that uh I didn't think I would live to see the day where extreme poverty in India is down below 1% um

I think people in India would probably think that's pretty good yes but again our critics would say or some of them at least would say that the fertility crisis is bogus John quigan um was a professor at the University of Queensland for many years he was a columnist at the financial review uh you know a man of the left but he he says that the fertility crisis is bogus and in his judgment it's not just because uh policies to address it appear to be universally failing this is his quote economically the cost of raising children

is much higher than the cost of looking after old people the odds are you'll be in a reasonable sh shape until about 6 months before you die at which point you'll need about the same hair as a baby and Professor Quan concludes quote so raising a baby to look after an old person makes no sense so following on from that the question here is is the cost of raising a child way more than the cost of putting someone in AG Care yeah I don't know how it works uh in O but I can I can

tell you that in the United States there have been a lot of studies on uh consumption by age by year of life and uh consumption by the old is consistently significantly higher than consumption by the young uh so I don't know that that arithmetic Works particularly in the United States I would say however that the real Point uh with regard to costs of childbearing uh concern um priorities uh if you look at the United States if you look at Europe I suspect if you look at Australia uh people have never had as much income as

they have today they've never had as much housing space as they have today they've never had as many cars as they have today they've never had as many vacations as they have today uh there's just one thing that they have fewer of yeah as children and that doesn't tell me but just by looking at those facts that this is a question of affordability it looks like a question of priorities yeah and the context is important if you go back to the early 60s the fertility rate here in this country uh was about 3.5 today it's

about 1.6 maybe 1.8 did get up to 2 to 2 and a half I think in the 2000s uh primarily some would argue because of the Howard costell government's policy on the baby bonus I'm sure you've heard about that um but we've also had paid maternity leave uh we have various family tax benefit allowances uh subsidized child care now one of our economists Robert Carling is here this evening he talks about the um there about five or six areas of government spending as a percentage of GDP that are going through the roof we all know

about ndis this is our national disability program um uh gonsky schools uh funding um Age Care Child Care is one of them as well so we do a lot here uh to help uh address this issue but what else do you think political leaders and policy makers should do to help boost fertility the most fundamental thing that uh government policy can do is to help uh populations become as rich as fast as they can and people can decide what they're going to do with their own money um the record of pratal policies around the world

as I read it is uh well well-meaning perhaps but very expensive for very modest long-term demographic gains for reason that I mentioned of L pritchett's uh observation that the real the real most important determinant of family size is the number of children that people uh want to have if you had a uh if you had a government Ministry that tried to change people's minds about uh how many children they wanted to have you might end up with some us but that sounds a little scary to me just keeping with fertility before we talk about geopolitics

um many people would not surprisingly say that Islamic faith is a and I think you mentioned this in your lecture is a bullwark against precipitous declines in childbearing and indeed if you look at Muslim communities in Europe and in Australia the fertility rates among Muslim families are a lot higher than they are among non-muslim families so to the extent that's true should Western Nations like Australia uh in coming decades expect a huge immigration intake from not just subsaharan Africa that you highlighted in your lecture but also the Sunni and Shia Muslim parts of the Persian

Gulf in the Middle East one of the things which I I found so surprising there so many things that are surprising about population Trends because the the and demography is so weak and human beings are so inventive right one of the things things which I found surprising was how rapidly birth rates are dropping in the Oma in the seven of the 10 fastest 20year drops in birth rates that I could find in the postwar era were Muslim majority countries including places in the Gulf including Iran yeah and and it's not because they were having Taiwan

style socioeconomic modernization it's because there's a change in mentality that was occurring despite the teachings I kind said to the extent you're right that means we shouldn't expect a huge influx of Muslim immigrants uh with with immigration well comp to African at least there there may there may be uh there may be people who want to come to Australia but I think if you have a skills-based policy as I read your uh read your documents you'll be able to decide who's going to be uh who are going to be the skilled people that should be

contributing to your future now following on from immigration um there's a growing movement in this country uh that supports slashing immigration to among other things address our housing affordability crisis our chief Economist in this area Peter tulip agree disagrees with that argument but nevertheless there is a a movement growing in this country to slash immigration to help address a housing crisis in our cities now you said in your lecture that Australia is well positioned for the future tell us more well um I you've lived it I just look at it from I think you know

a lot more about it than I do uh but you know because a lot of Australians are a bit I mean lot people around in America be depressed about the way of life and you're an optimist about Australia tell us well um if you are if you are successful in bringing in Talent from abroad you're going to be creating uh at least the possibility of unlocking value of Human Resources in your own country what will that do uh that will at the very least postpone the crisis of the existing welfare state but it may do

uh it may do many more things for growth and for dynamism uh in your in your Society we have um we have a big problem in the United States on our Southern border uh at the moment that I don't think is exactly a secret and what concerns me the most about that honestly is I think that if I were trying to design a uh an event or a policy that would poison American settlement against continuing positive immigration I don't think you could do much better than what's going on there the United States has benefited immensely

from immigration over uh over the entirety of its history and you don't have to be uh you know kind of a Horatio aler about this there are always a lot of problems with assimilation there's always a lot of uh pains with it but the the benefits of immigration for the United States I think have clearly exceeded the costs at least to date and I'd be surprised if that isn't the case for Australia as well okay we'll talk about America very soon but let's just put your thesis in a geopolitical context and start with China you

say that one consequence of depopulation Nick is that the long- heralded China Le Asian Century may never truly arrive you made this point in foreign affairs magazine a few months ago but you see the CCP officials the Chinese Communist Party officials they would say that they've got it under control because of artificial intelligence robotics information technology and taken together with the end of the one China policy that had been in place since the 1980s that means that China will actually boost its demographic levels uh in coming decades how would you respond to the Chinese Communist

Party um I tried I tried to argue today that technological innovation Better Health and education mean that a shrinking aging Society can maintain and improve prosperity and one would hope that that could happen for China as well um it helps to have a positive business climate um the business climate is essential to unlocking the value of human resources and certainly what we've seen over the last decade in China has been a sort of a retrogression in business climate I don't want to get too much into the Weeds on that but I I don't think it's

really great for business climate to establish uh you know a uh Communist party uh Central in every Western business um so uh it's not it's not clear to me that the that the CCP at the moment is more interested in economic flourishing than political control if it were more interested in economic flourishing I think there'd be more potentiality what about the retirement age in China let's go through some of these figures because I found this astonishing when I Was preparing for this interview I read this in the South China Morning Post the legal retirement age

for men in mainland China is 60 for women it's 55 for white collar workers and 50 for blue collar workers now those ages have been unchanged for more than 70 years now if the CCP redefines working age to include older people and improve the participation rate in the labor market won't China be better able to address the demographic crisis it it sounds like it should if one reads like the Soviet Constitution upon which those you know uh those guarantees were based originally by Ma in the 50s the problem is that the guarantees only apply to

a very small portion of the Chinese labor market the state-owned Enterprises and to some of the municipalities a fifth maybe a quarter of the entire very very limited if you um if you if you look at the workforce participation in China uh by age it's about the same as in Japan it's about the same as in the USA which is to say that even at older ages uh quite a few people in China are working more than in Europe for example I don't think there's that much scope for increasing that I now if you're right

if this demographic death SPO continues in China could we expect to see China's Xi Jinping or whoever is leading the CCP a bit like Putin's Russia could we expect uh these countries to seek military solutions to their demographic problems in other words could their awareness of the demographic Doom Loop make them more desperate and therefore more dangerous oh I think very definitely so I mean there is a school of thought in the academy about what's called geriatric peace it means that there countryes become grayer they become more risk averse and I think if the country

you're studying is Belgium that's probably true but I don't think that works quite as well with Putin's Russia or with xiin Ping's China for for autocracies you can see a lot of reasons that they might become more skittish U more uh more uh aware of vulnerabilities including domestic vulnerabilities uh with aging and shrinking so um I mean we we do we do have a conflict Now with uh enaging shrinking Russia and we do see a coercion campaign underway not a Invasion but a coercion campaign underway with an aging shrinking China yeah but Ukraine has lower

birth rates than um than Russia uh and Ukraine of course is outmanned and outgunned on the battlefield so what does this mean for Ukraine you Ukraine's Got a very tough situation um I've I've paid a little bit of attention to looking at you were there a few months ago I was there a few months ago I've been paying attention to what re Human Resources would uh would look like in an eventual reconstruction of the country and part of the part of the problem for Ukraine is that in some ways is their human resource situation is

more Russian than Russia they've got uh uh they have as you say very low fertility they've got big health problems they uh they have this Paradox just as Russia has of seemingly high education but low human capital with poor health and poor knowledge production so uh be there's there's a big challenge ahead for uh for Ukraine after uh after the war ends now on the n States you're obviously a bit upbeat about America in your lecture you talk about the Fairly sound demographic fundamentals but there are um negative Trends eating away at uh the foundations

of us power and I want to put to you the views of keaw marani the distinguish Singaporean intellectual past guests at CIS you've heard it all before us life expectancy has been dropping for much of the past decade us progress in public health indicators have been painfully slow and very expensive improving and educational attainment have stalled in the US in recent decades us fertility rates have been falling recent decades failure to defend and secure America's Southern border as 2 million migrants from all over the World PED across you acknowledge that and that's not to mention

the problem with debt now Neil Ferguson the distinguished Scottish historian who's our guest at consilium he's our guest speaker and he makes the point uh that a great power that spends more on servicing its death then spending on defense won't remain great for long so given all of that is your optimis about America misplaced so I I think that there there are a number of uh pressing problems that the United States faces and uh I've written about them myself I in 2017 I wrote a cometary magazine a piece called uh our miserable 20th century where

I tried to do a diagnosis of these different uh human resource problems and more recently I did a little book called lessons for an unserious superpower uh I'm tried to uh uh in a loving sort of way explain to others in Washington maybe how they ought to grow up a little bit about some of the problems we're facing including most specifically uh the budgetary problems um are are these uh are these uh things that I'd want for my country no not at all are they uh are they fatal derailers um I think the budgetary thing

could eventually be a fatal derailer I think they could event I think Neil is exactly right that if uh there's no attention paid eventually to the US public finances we know what's going to happen Mar the E is still a reserved currency the dollars is still a reserved currency there there's a there's a lot of for fecklessness and we've used quite a bit of it but there's still more um but um the the great the the single greatest problem I would think is uh if the US public um becomes poisoned and hardened to uh immigration

in the future because so far that's been a an Ace card for us and a Saving Grace and we've benefited despite our absolutely shambal uh immigration policy seems almost as if we can't help it we've been vacuum cleaning Talent from around the world in a way that's helped dynamize our economy i' say that compared to competitors not compared to the ideal or compared to the W way I would wish things to work in my country compared to real existing competitors uh the United States has the advantage and would uh would I or would Kure want

to trade uh the US hand for the Chinese hand I don't think so yeah but um one thing we've overlooked in this conversation is the toxic political polarization in Washington now a decade ago you may remember Nick uh Robert Gates who was the defense secretary under both presidents Bush and Obama he said um a decade ago so before Trump even arrived on the scene that the greatest national security threat to the United States wasn't China or Russia or Sunni jihadist like Islamic State or Iran the greatest national security threat to the United States Gat said

was the two square miles between the capital building and the White House in other words that toxic political polarization and in the last few months we've had some distinguished Scholars put forward some pretty disturbing thesis uh Robert Kagan uh a neoconservative scholar at the Brookings institution who actually gave the John benthan lecture here 20 years ago um he says that a reelected Donald Trump could create or bring about fascism in the United States he's not alone but he's in the oon and then it got you got someone like Ed loose from the financial times the

prent British colonist in Washington he says that America could very well be on the cusp of a civil war so given this toxic polarization these bitter divisions in American public life if indeed the outcome of this upcoming presidential election contest is is as as exceedingly close as all the polls indicate it will be I mean could we Face the biggest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War in the 1860s well it's how do I explain this I mean United even for people who have lived in the United States all their lives including some pundits

the United States is a very hard country to understand and the whole reducio ad hitlerum thing that we've heard for the better part of the past decade it it seems to me is kind of hysterical and overblown we have plenty of political problems in the United States and there is um there's a great lack of trust in the United States part of this has to do with an empathy Gap that has developed with in my country where seems to be for some reason exceedingly taxing for people in one political party to describe in a recognizable

form what people in the other political party actually believe and so there's there's less trust and um too little respect uh in the contending uh in the contending factors a for the body politic well so so it you have to go back to the Constitution the Constitution is a Doctrine which more or Les which is designed to force people to negotiate with each other uh it's not a Doctrine by by which you're going to uh lead to enduring success by grandstanding uh in front of a limited constituency it's it's made naturally defined uh defined consensus

and unfortunately uh in over the last generation or more uh people have had a lot of incentive to kind of avoid finding consensus uh but the the framework is there and uh if we had I guess a little bit more grown-up leadership in the United States I think we'd we'd see the benefit okay talk about growing up political leadership we have an presidential election in two months time carela Harris from the Democrats and Donald Trump um from the Republican Party um the betting markets all the season experts for what it's worth I mean they've been

wrong so often in the last few years eventually everyone's predicting an exceedingly tight race what do you suspect will happen on November 5 so this is where I get to make a fool of myself okay um so I follow the betting markets because I think that they're better predictors than the public opinion polls it does look as if at the why is that um because the betting markets ask people who they think is going to win rather than who they want to win and there's I think there's more information in it um the things could

things could change uh sharply in the uh after the presidential election if one of the two candidates uh makes serious missteps uh things can always change if there's an international crisis uh and those those were also Beyond uh immediate prediction um I would would I would tend to think that Trump has a very slight Advantage here but as we know from seeing Donald Trump on the world stage uh for a decade uh slight Advantage is something that he's uh sometimes quite good at uh losing but low expectations in politics are Priceless political asset low expectations

indeed um finally um you know you you've been with a very prominent center right uh conservative free market oriented uh think tank in Washington that supports many of the values that we at CIS support April mentioned them earlier competitive markets free trade uh religious pluralism um equality under the law regardless of identity all these things um whom would you like to see win on November 5 there there there are a few there are a few principled names that uh I mean in politics today uh well I mean it's obviously going to be Harris little Trump

though he can't get it out of it like that I mean who well well C certainly uh you certainly the i' I'd like to say uh I'd like to say Trump the problem with Trump I think is not exactly uh secret to anybody um he's uh uh um he surprised uh he surprised a lot of his backers and disappointed a lot of his backers with this kind of unpredictability and maybe narcissism question is uh what would happen uh what would happen if he became president again the one area when he was president where he uh

kind of um satisfied and in some way surprised his backers was in his support for the Supreme Court with putting nominees on the Supreme Court there's a long-term uh there's a long-term benefit from having a kind of a constitutionalist approach to the Constitution um it's uh but his unpredictability is very disturbing surely so it's it's going to be a it's going to be a big question about uh who Trump uh if if he wins about who Trump chooses as his executive team and how he gets along with the uh with the Congress one of the

small s you know pleasant surprises in the United States in uh recent years has been uh the leadership that we've seen from the current uh speaker of the house from Mike Johnson somebody that very few in America had heard of before last year and I think very few people of abroad have it is still possible to find uh leadership in Washington and I think that Mike Johnson has shown no you know shown a way that would hope more would follow well on that optimistic note it's been a pleasure Nick thank you very much for decades

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