Latest news with #Malthus
Mint
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Migration is a win-win game that can be turned into a double blessing
Thomas Malthus, the 18th century English cleric, painted a dire picture of the consequences of population growth. In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, he predicted a bleak future for humankind: 'The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." Technological advancement since then has disproven Malthus. Today, our planet is home to about 8 billion people—eight for each one alive in his times. Yet, it's no exaggeration to say that for the vast majority of us, if not everyone, our quality of life is far superior to anything seen in previous centuries. Far from being a bane, population is now seen as a vital enabler of greater prosperity. Indeed, the pendulum has swung the other way. Also Read: India's population can be an asset in the world's war against climate change Today's fear is not of a runaway headcount, but of numbers failing to keep pace with the needs of economies, especially in the rich world. This is the result of fertility rates falling faster than mortality rates, a gap that has skewed the age profile of many countries upwards, making it harder for them to support the ageing. The trend of fewer births and longer lives is global enough to mean that in various ways and stages, the world is in the throes of a profound shift: Population growth is no longer driven by fertility and mortality, but by its third driver: migration. The motives of migration are mostly economic, with people venturing out for better lives. Also Read: Gender and Age: We need a female perspective on ageing populations According to the UN's World Population Prospects 2024, immigration is projected to be the main driver of population growth in 52 countries and areas through 2054. This group includes Australia, Canada, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the US. The West is in the midst of a migration boom unlike any before. The IMF estimates that America's foreign-born labour force is 9% higher than at the start of 2019. In the UK, Eurozone and Canada, it is around a fifth higher. The US insurge means that its economy will be 2% larger over the next decade than had been forecast. But the impact of migration goes beyond the favour it does GDP; it extends to inflation, living standards, public budgets and even to the realm of a society's intangible social fabric. The pressure on public goods—think of roads, schools, hospitals, public housing—combined with the complexities of local absorption often puts migration at the risk of a backlash. For political leaders looking for a scapegoat at which they can direct public anger, migrants are soft targets. The rise of right-wing extremism in large parts of the US and Europe is evidence of this. Sadly, distrust of incomers is not limited to cross-border migrants. Within India too, we see people in more prosperous states displaying xenophobic attitudes towards migrants from other parts of the country. Also Read: Population decline is not a problem but hungry kids are The long-term answer is better-balanced regional development. But in the short-term, governments in states with large migrant populations must address the inevitable demands made of public provisions. The contribution of migrants to the local economy must be matched with more spending on transport, housing, health, etc, so that migrants don't find themselves in a scramble with locals for scarce public goods and everyone can rub along in harmony. This, plus a vigil on parochial behaviour, could be a win-win game for all states, be they sources or recipients of migrants. Migration, as Portia said of mercy in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, is twice-blessed: 'It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." Countries and communities would do well to remember that.
CNA
30-05-2025
- Business
- CNA
Commentary: The world of work is much more pleasant than we expected
LONDON: There is a market for sweeping economic analyses, generally predicting that the sky is about to fall on our heads. Thomas Malthus arguably started it with his 18th-century prediction that population growth would always run ahead of food production. He was unlucky in having his conjecture picked over for centuries. Normally, economists get away with it. Before reading the IMF's recent long-term prediction of global labour markets, therefore, I felt the need to go back a quarter of a century to see what similar organisations were forecasting. The OECD's 2000 report on 'reforms for an ageing society' is representative of the thinking at the time and its logic remains sound. Baby boomers in middle age would start to retire in the 2000s, it predicted, ensuring that total employment as a proportion of the population would start falling from 2010. This drop would be mitigated by more women working, but overall, the effective working life of someone in an advanced economy would hover around 34 to 35 years. CONTRARY TO PREVIOUS FORECASTS 'The data suggests retirement and active ageing are not yet going hand-in-hand,' the OECD concluded, adding, patronisingly, that evidence showed older people simply spent time on 'more television-watching and sleep'. What nonsense. Even though the world has had its fair share of economic crises since the millennium, the proportion of the population in employment is showing signs of rising rather than falling. An end to shorter male working lives and much higher employment rates among women have also ensured that effective working lives have risen beyond 38 years, far more than expected. Almost everything that the OECD described as a challenge has improved significantly. It is not often that columnists write about what has gone right, so it is worth examining why jobs and lifetime employment have done so much better than previously thought. The OECD might like to claim that these changes were caused by its own warnings, prompting governments to reform labour markets and retirement systems. It is a comforting thought for those working in international organisations, but highly unlikely. In a telling recent study, economists at Goldman Sachs noted there was precious little correlation between longer working lives and changes in official retirement ages in different countries. The trend towards longer working lives has taken place almost regardless of whether governments have undertaken targeted policy reform. LONGER WORKING LIVES Of course, this positive story cannot cover every employee in every workplace. The lower paid often work longer — or retire but then return to the workforce — to have even a basic living standard in retirement. This has been mitigated by the fall in male manual labour, so there are no longer large numbers of men physically unable to do their jobs, and that should persist as long as Donald Trump doesn't get his way with a return to manufacturing roles. The IMF showed increased cognitive faculties of older people over the last 25 years have been the biggest driver of the ability to work longer. As far as our brains are concerned, 70 really is the new 50, it concluded, so these trends can continue. Further efforts to make jobs work for older people can mitigate three-quarters of the projected slowdown in global growth due to ageing in the next 25 years, the IMF predicted. I know this is another bold forecast from economists. But the positivity is new and striking.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Column: Baby boom, baby bust and the 'Big Beautiful Bill'
As the Senate takes up the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' (Donald Trump's name for it) passed by the House last week, there's finally some discussion of the national debt. That's because the bill is estimated to add $3.8 trillion over the next decade to the current debt: $37 trillion, or more than 120% of U.S. GDP. The bond markets have been shouting their disapproval. Bond investors are demanding higher yields because they're starting to doubt that we can be trusted to pay off our obligations. Interest on the debt in fiscal year 2025 will exceed spending on defense, Medicare and Medicaid. By 2035, it's projected to overtake everything but Social Security. Rather than indulge in the usual punditry about Republican and Democratic hypocrisy and spending misfeasance, I want to pull back the lens a bit. We can't let Congress off the hook, but it's worth asking whether our problems are more structural than the Washington-centric story about cowardly politicians suggests. Read more: Senate Republicans vow changes to Trump megabill The phrase 'demography is destiny' is overused and abused, but there's some truth to it. Consider Thomas Malthus. In 'An Essay on the Principle of Population' (1798), the pioneering economist identified what came to be known as the 'Malthusian trap.' In prosperous times, population grows geometrically but food supplies increase only arithmetically. More babies lead to fewer resources per person, eventually causing a population crash. Malthus gets a bad rap because he was broadly right retrospectively but profoundly wrong prospectively. In other words, he offered a serviceable rule of thumb about how demographics and economics had worked for thousands of years at the precise moment that rule was hitting its expiration date. Since 1800, humans have figured out how to increase food supplies to far outpace increases in population. But if you were a policymaker in 1800, you'd have been a fool not to take Malthus seriously. The problem today, unlike in 1800, is that we're in uncharted territory when it comes to the population-and-resources calculation. No society has gotten so rich and so old amid such a crash in fertility rates as ours. And while our debt is driven by many factors, it is the cost of entitlements, particularly for the elderly, that is by far the most serious across much of the rich world. In 1940, when retirees first started receiving Social Security benefits, there were 42 workers per recipient. Today there are about 2.7 workers for every Social Security beneficiary. In Japan, the oldest nation in the world (where debt is above 255% of GDP), the number is 2.1. This trend applies across the developed world. Read more: Calmes: The 'One Big Beautiful Bill' is a big, ugly mess The primary reasons for it are pretty simple: We are making fewer babies and old people are living a lot longer. In 1940, life expectancy at birth for American men was 61.4; for women it was 65.7. If you made it to 65, most people had about a dozen years left. Today life expectancy at birth is close to 80. Not only do more people reach 65, but when they do, they also can expect to live nearly 20 more years. Oh and contrary to a lot of political rhetoric about how Social Security payments are simply 'your money' paid in to the system by you over a lifetime; a majority of beneficiaries receive far more than they paid in. The 'dependency trap,' as economists and demographers call it, is the ultimate First World problem. And it is a profound challenge, particularly for democracies. Old people vote. The biggest voting bloc in America is people over 65: 7 out of 10 of them vote, and they vote their economic interests. Read more: Medicaid rule proposal may deal a blow to California Of course, the imbalance between workers paying in and retirees isn't just a challenge because of Social Security, but it's telling that Social Security is the only program that is so expensive that it will continue to outpace interest payments on the debt if current trends hold — one reason why it's projected to be insolvent in eight years. Medicare, the old-age healthcare program, is projected to be insolvent in 11 years. This leaves out the enormous private costs of an aging population. Many families spend vast sums on the last years of their parents' lives. Again, we don't know how this will end because societies haven't been here before. But if we do nothing, some kind of debt crisis seems inevitable. There are things politicians could do to mitigate the worst-case scenarios. Both the U.S. and Germany have incentivized later retirement to help mitigate the problem. But I for one do not find much comfort in the idea that our current politicians will suddenly find the wisdom and courage required to do much more. Another source for hope is the same one that ended up rendering Malthusianism moot: technological innovation. Medical breakthroughs could make old age more affordable. Artificial intelligence could boost productivity to make the worker-per-retiree burden lighter. Large-scale immigration would temporarily have a similar effect. But the most indispensable prerequisite for dealing with the debt problem would be for voters to care about it. Alas, I don't see much hope for that either. @JonahDispatch If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
27-05-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Baby boom, baby bust and the ‘Big Beautiful Bill'
As the Senate takes up the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' (Donald Trump's name for it) passed by the House last week, there's finally some discussion of the national debt. That's because the bill is estimated to add $3.8 trillion over the next decade to the current debt: $37 trillion, or more than 120% of U.S. GDP. The bond markets have been shouting their disapproval. Bond investors are demanding higher yields because they're starting to doubt that we can be trusted to pay off our obligations. Interest on the debt in fiscal year 2025 will exceed spending on defense, Medicare and Medicaid. By 2035, it's projected to overtake everything but Social Security. Rather than indulge in the usual punditry about Republican and Democratic hypocrisy and spending misfeasance, I want to pull back the lens a bit. We can't let Congress off the hook, but it's worth asking whether our problems are more structural than the Washington-centric story about cowardly politicians suggests. The phrase 'demography is destiny' is overused and abused, but there's some truth to it. Consider Thomas Malthus. In 'An Essay on the Principle of Population' (1798), the pioneering economist identified what came to be known as the 'Malthusian trap.' In prosperous times, population grows geometrically but food supplies increase only arithmetically. More babies lead to fewer resources per person, eventually causing a population crash. Malthus gets a bad rap because he was broadly right retrospectively but profoundly wrong prospectively. In other words, he offered a serviceable rule of thumb about how demographics and economics had worked for thousands of years at the precise moment that rule was hitting its expiration date. Since 1800, humans have figured out how to increase food supplies to far outpace increases in population. But if you were a policymaker in 1800, you'd have been a fool not to take Malthus seriously. The problem today, unlike in 1800, is that we're in uncharted territory when it comes to the population-and-resources calculation. No society has gotten so rich and so old amid such a crash in fertility rates as ours. And while our debt is driven by many factors, it is the cost of entitlements, particularly for the elderly, that is by far the most serious across much of the rich world. In 1940, when retirees first started receiving Social Security benefits, there were 42 workers per recipient. Today there are about 2.7 workers for every Social Security beneficiary. In Japan, the oldest nation in the world (where debt is above 255% of GDP), the number is 2.1. This trend applies across the developed world. The primary reasons for it are pretty simple: We are making fewer babies and old people are living a lot longer. In 1940, life expectancy at birth for American men was 61.4; for women it was 65.7. If you made it to 65, most people had about a dozen years left. Today life expectancy at birth is close to 80. Not only do more people reach 65, but when they do, they also can expect to live nearly 20 more years. Oh and contrary to a lot of political rhetoric about how Social Security payments are simply 'your money' paid in to the system by you over a lifetime; a majority of beneficiaries receive far more than they paid in. The 'dependency trap,' as economists and demographers call it, is the ultimate First World problem. And it is a profound challenge, particularly for democracies. Old people vote. The biggest voting bloc in America is people over 65: 7 out of 10 of them vote, and they vote their economic interests. Of course, the imbalance between workers paying in and retirees isn't just a challenge because of Social Security, but it's telling that Social Security is the only program that is so expensive that it will continue to outpace interest payments on the debt if current trends hold — one reason why it's projected to be insolvent in eight years. Medicare, the old-age healthcare program, is projected to be insolvent in 11 years. This leaves out the enormous private costs of an aging population. Many families spend vast sums on the last years of their parents' lives. Again, we don't know how this will end because societies haven't been here before. But if we do nothing, some kind of debt crisis seems inevitable. There are things politicians could do to mitigate the worst-case scenarios. Both the U.S. and Germany have incentivized later retirement to help mitigate the problem. But I for one do not find much comfort in the idea that our current politicians will suddenly find the wisdom and courage required to do much more. Another source for hope is the same one that ended up rendering Malthusianism moot: technological innovation. Medical breakthroughs could make old age more affordable. Artificial intelligence could boost productivity to make the worker-per-retiree burden lighter. Large-scale immigration would temporarily have a similar effect. But the most indispensable prerequisite for dealing with the debt problem would be for voters to care about it. Alas, I don't see much hope for that either. @JonahDispatch
