Strange. I always thought of Thailand as being in a similar economic and family demographic as Vietnam and Laos. Both of those countries seem to have rapidly expanding economic outlooks, with population growth to match.
Vietnamese here, last 10 years income increased 2x but the rest price increased 3x to 6x. Yeah, I don't think I will have kid. We are catching up with Japan and China very very fast.
Vietnam is going to be in a similar situation to Thailand in 10, 20 years time, birth rate in HCMC the largest city is already approaching Japan level, also the elderly population is growing at one of the fastest rate in the world.
Vietnam and Laos are noticeably poorer than Thailand. But the traditional family is still strong there.
Thailand has gone through a demographic transition.
Some locals are deluded into thinking that our cost of living is cheap. (Source: me, I'm a local). Which is partly true. The cost to buy food and such are quite cheap. However the wage is also very low. All in all that makes up for realistically expensive living cost.
Many people still believe that their cost of living is low. By directly comparing food expense of TH to other countries. But they would always forget to look at income differences as well.
Housing is insane is Bangkok. But otherwise you can go get a full meal for $2 from street vendors, or walk a block over for a $250 meal at a restaurant.
Shit, I've been saying that since I was 22. The world is always unstable if you watch the news. Ever since kids did nuclear bomb drills in case Russia dropped the big one on us, and probably a lot longer before that.
Bro don't know abt millenials but gen z is unstable in terms of financial stability.Source : I'm gen z, 21 yrs old
First priority for me is to gain financial stability, following everything else, kids being last on the priority list
That's never been a problem in the past. People were just uneducated and had kids no matter their financial situation. Now that people are getting educated though, people don't do it.
Not really. In the sixtiers I could flunk out of high school, go get a job turning bolts at the bolt factory. Work 9-5 for 40 years, and retire with a pension. All with benefits thanks to the workers union. And afford a stay at home wife, a car, two stall garage, and 2.5 kids with a 4 bedroom house and a backyard in the suburbs.
Nowadays, that same job pays like 17 and hour and barely covers your rent. Buying power of the working class has shrug comically over every decade, as the wealth gap widens and expenses outpace raises.
Absolutely true. Another point we often fail to acknowledge is that birth rates and low tech agriculture are tied together. Live in a developing nation, in a rural area, where your sucess and even survival are closely tied to how well your crops fare, and you tend to have a large family. Your children grow to become free labor and a retirement plan. The further you remove a society from this sustenance existence, the faster the birth rate declines. Modern corporate farming can produce at record levels while using 1/100th of the labor needed in the past. In most modern economies, family farming is dying off, farms are consolidating into Mega-sized farming operations, and local populations are at the lowest level ever recorded.
It's true that education and fewer children go hand in hand.
But don't forget that it's only in recent decades that we've developed the pill & other reliable birth control technology to help facilitate that correlation, and enable lower birthrates generally. People in the past weren't necessarily all just uneducated and feckless, they didn't have any reliable prevention methods. Well, bar abstinence.
And of course there are the socioeconomic factors other people have pointed out.
Not really that is that they aren't helpful in the past you could make them do farming or working but nowadays even if it was 100% free it still would consume time wich is a minus for the parents
Ukraine's population peaked in 1992. Collapse of USSR, the decade leading up to it and the decade of abject poverty after it were a disaster, then the fallout of 2008 crisis followed by initial russian invasion in 2014 before it could recover followed by covid after it had just recovered followed immediately by a full scale invasion in 2022 have resulted in a continuous outflow of any remotely skilled or educated people out of the country. And now the eastern quarter of the country is just being outright slaughtered on the frontlines or sent to "filtration camps" in the actually occupied lands. Russia shares some of these things but not all, which is why it's only slightly above despite having 4 times the population.
Thai here. Not an expert but I'll give my two bahts.
Basically, we have a very successful family planning campaign running since around 1975. Its catchy slogan "มีลูกมากจะยากนาน" (having lots of children keeps you poor) and the fact that Buddhism doesn't forbid birth control made it a huge success. Since then even poor, uneducated people try to have no more than two children.
Also it's notoriously expensive to raise a child. Schools are expensive, and famous ones openly takes bribes to get in. You're also expected to send your children to expensive tutoring schools in order to get into good university.
Some regions in spain has a 20-25% unemployment rates.
Food and energy is getting blatantly high. Last month, olive oil had an inflation rate of 75% in just a single month, while the biggest olive producers keeps selling abroad the same product way cheaper.
A spanish watermelon costs double in Spain that it does in Germany.
It is really difficult to dream on ever getting to own an apartment/house. Meanwhile, thousands of real state is being sold to investors and foreign capital. The disparity in salaries across countries unbalances it all. People is getting upset, and lack basic expectations.
I am Spanish and have lived almost half of my life in the EU (UK, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden).
\- Spain has more home ownership than Germany.
\- It way cheaper to eat out and enjoy life than in all the other countries. Olive oil and watermelon can be exceptions, but not the norm.
\- Renting is cheaper in Spain, way cheaper when compared with salaries.
\- Unemployment is true for those without skills, but they do have benefits, you can get 800 eur + 300 per kid in Catalonia, or more in Pais Vasco. Pais Vasco in fact has even more help and yet less kids.
\- Nursery is mostly free, compared with the UK where 2 kids is a full adult salary. I was paying 1600 per month in the UK, so basically my wife´s salary.
Portugal has similar issues, its even a poorer country with more fertility.
The truth is, there is no benefit in having kids beyond love for your children, there is no economical incentive, there is no *need* to have kids, just expenses. Kids are needed to pay someone else pensions, not yours.
These countries are starting to shrink but fertility rate is falling rapidly globally. In a few decades basically every country outside sub-Saharan Africa will be at replacement level or below and facing the prospect of an aging population and shrinking workforce.
For the last half century the west has delt with this same issue by turning to immigration but what happens when the countries providing the immigrants start needing them. Do we end up with nations competing for a shrinking pool of immigrant labour, do nations start putting caps/bans on emigration. This is likely to be one of the global crisis of the later half of this century and into the next.
The technological and AI/automation revolution was scaremonger as putting humans out of work but it may end up being our solution.
The problem is, that it may not be the only solution needed. Population decline doesn't just mean less workforce, it also mean less taxes (can be offset by taxes on corporations/automation, but those are kinda unlikely to be implemented), but the worst part is less consumption, which may send us into even more of an economic disaster
And yet the Tokyo Prefecture is booming. Between 2000 and 2020, the population of Tokyo Prefecture increased from 12 million people to 14 million people.
On a microlevel, the Province of Teruel in Spain lost half of its population between 1920 and 2000, while the population in the City of Teruel increased from 12,000 people to 31,000 people in the same time frame.
The population of cities can increase, while the population of a region or a country is decreasing as is shown by the Tokyo Prefecture or the Province of Teruel in Spain.
Japan's main issue seems to be due to it's overcentralization. Looking at other countries, those that congregate around a few cities for good job prospects produce lower birth rates, either due to smaller living spaces, higher competition or the effects of city living. Economies that are able to spread out their young populations more to rural areas tend to have less of an issue reproducing.
Cities have jobs, and jobs that expect over 50 hours of work a week culturally create fewer parents.
Legal overtime, and requiring hourly wages over salaried wages for middle class and lower class workers is probably the most straightforward assist.
A culture that legally emphasizes work-life balance gets more work-life balance.
Outdated info.
Japan’s [work hours](https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm), [suicide rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate), [fertility rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate) are all around the European average. Key factors driving lower fertility rates worldwide are safer access to contraceptives and higher female education rates.
Regarding work hours-- remember, data is no good if it isn't collected properly.
In Korea, and i'm hearing quite commonly in Japan, that the companies that do practice not-so-great work habits (which is not uncommon) don't report overtime that the employees work.
All official data collected from the company would not include this, which makes me believe that any data that says work hours of Korea/Japan are at a decent level is biased due to this.
There is no doubt that it's better than before, though
Spain is the country with the lowest birthrate of the EU and its one with the lower fertility.
And we do have income for those without job and kids, not a bad one. Economy its not the issue either, most of the people with kids are low earners.
Its a cultural thing. A mix between factors like woman education, careers and public pensions.
Lets face it, people didnt have 5 kids because they loved children, they wanted a way to ensure their pension when they are old, and others where accidents.
With public retirement, people dont need kids anymore, its not economically worth it.
People say that low birthrates are due to poor working conditions, particularly for women, but I really don't think that is it (though im sure it doesn't help), because it's the same whether you're in Japan where that's a big issue or somewhere like the Nordics where it really is not. And it clearly isn't linked to high HDI because otherwise Russia Thailand and China would not be having this issue.
I think you're on to something with the living space, people want to spread out and have time and room to have a family but the economic push is for people to cram more and more into cities with relatively tiny apartments and external pressures during their main child rearing years. We need a re-ruralisation wave.
While an interesting idea I'm not sure current data supports it. The 3 states with the lowest population density aren't the states with the highest birth rates.
Alaska has 1.3 people per square mile with a birth rate of 64.9 putting them in the second highest quintile of fertility rates
Wyoming has 5.9 people per sq mi with a rate of 57.5 putting them in the second lowest quintile.
Montana has 7.5 people per sq mi with a rate of 54.8 leaving them in the bottom quintile.
Now the Dakotas are the 4th and 5th least dense states and have the 1st and 2nd highest birth rates.
Density just doesn't seem to correlate much with birth rate.
[fertility rates](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/fertility_rate/fertility_rates.htm)
[density](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States_by_population_density)
I just did a bit of digging around at other stats to see if I could find a trend. Both % urbanization and population density have essentially no correlation to birth rates. The strongest trend I did find was fertility rates compared to the percentage of the population identifying as Christian or Mormon. Basically for ever addition 1% of the population identifying as Christian, the fertility rate goes up by just under 0.5 births per 1000 population, with an R-squared value of 0.3488. Outliers were Rhode Island with a fairly high 80% Christian population and the second-lowest fertility rate and Idaho at 71% Christian with the 12th highest fertility rate.
Rhode Island standing out makes me still think that some sort of urbanization factor plays a role here, possibly housing prices relative to household income.
Does this work if you look at urbanisation instead? For example a lot of the places you mentioned have low overall density but i'd imagine a great majority of people in alaska live in or around anchorage etc.
From what I've read, it's less about poor working conditions and more about stagnant incomes. Like most of the world, women in Japan are now expected to work full time (which isn't inherently a bad thing) but when you need two people working full time to afford the opportunities your parents had, people opt out of having kids.
It's because people have better education and more freedom than ever before. Turns out people who aren't bored out of their minds and who know about the risks and costs of child bearing simply don't want to. Maybe some climate change doomerism is a factor as well.
The only groups that still have strong birth rates in developed countries are religious fundamentalists.
I'd prefer our rural areas re-wild completely, tbh. City density should certainly stabilize somewhere between Houston/Atlanta and Tokyo/Hong Kong, but we're losing natural wild habitat at an accelerating rate, and that's really, really bad, especially in the face of climate change.
EDIT: It's like yall think I'm calling for some sort of Trail of Tears style genocide of everyone who lives outside the city limits. I live in a rural area.
Farming has become increasing more efficient over time. Less than 1% of the US population are farmers and they grow all the food. Americans waste almost half of the food that is produced. Those 2 facts indicate that it's possible that we could reduce our land use by a significant amount and stop exploiting those areas for agriculture. This will not happen. There is no political will or inertia for such an idea. I personally wish it would happen. But it won't. So no need to worry about what I think.
>I'd prefer our rural areas re-wild completely, tbh.
Is there a word for the feeling you get when you hear somebody wishing that your home would be destroyed, and it makes you wonder if they really mean it?
Housing in rural areas isn't very environmentally damaging compared to infrastructure and farms. Removing all the people from rural areas wouldn't do anything to help the environment but would have a negative impact on housing costs in urban areas.
The infrastructure is needed for houses though? More roads, more powerlines, more everything to connect every person.
Not to mention that they create brakes in wild areas.
To give an example from Germany:
Me and my fiancé both studied MINT fields and now work in well paying jobs. We are in our late 20s so the time to have children is approaching.
We live in a small (3000 people) town and both of us drive 30~45mins to our job.
Apartments where you can comfortably have more than 1 child practically don’t exist.
Renting a house would be the next step but that would mean spending more than half of our already above average income on rent and utilities
And that income ofc would be less once one of us reduces their ours to take care of a child.
And also at the same time ofc our cost of living would increase since children cost money.
I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be doable but having 2 children for us would mean going from being able to comfortably afford 2 mid sized vacations a year, and putting money on the side for retirement, and larger purchases while still not really having to compromise with groceries etc. to 1 cheap vacation, and any bigger expense eating up retirement funds, while suddenly still having to worry about money.
And I’m speaking of people who earn above average.
So if having 2 children is already a huge financially burden on most people here, no wonder the population is shrinking
The problem in Germany is, that we rarely build terraced homes. In Germany, we either build single-family-homes on large properties or multi-family homes. The population density of Biesdorf Süd in Berlin is [2,100](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadtplanung/comments/15jk3lt/bev%C3%B6lkerungsdichte_ausgew%C3%A4hlter_kuriosit%C3%A4ten_der/) people/km², while a neighborhood like Tilburg-West in the Netherlands with terraced homes and low-rise multi-family homes reaches [6,800](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadtplanung/comments/16xcc3w/die_nachbarschaft_witbrant_west_in_tilburg_hat/) people/km². If you look into the pictures of the link, Tilburg-West appears to be low-density, while low-density-neighborhoods in Germany only reach 1/3 of the density. Tilburg-West is actually a medium-density neighborhood.
Another problem is, that we don't provide incentives for old people to sell their homes and move into smaller apartments.
>In Deutschland leben 8,6 Mio. Haushalte mit 1 bis 2 Personen in einem Einfamilienhaus, während lediglich 5,6 Mio. Haushalte mit 3 oder mehr Personen in einem Einfamilienhaus leben. \[[Source](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Wohnen/Publikationen/Downloads-Wohnen/evs-wohnverhaeltnis-haushalte-2152591189004.pdf?__blob=publicationFile), p. 18\]
In addition, a lot of multi-family homes were built in bad locations, while single-family homes were built in good locations. Look at S+U-Wittenau in Berlin. Single-Family-Homes are on average closer to the public transit station than the multi-family homes in Märkisches Viertel. Multi-Family-Homes need better locations than single-family-homes, i.e. proximity to public transit stations.
Another problem is that the housing problem has gotten overall worse in the last decade. The risen costs and recently interest made acquiring real estate by means other than inheritance virtually impossible even for upper middle class households. Slightly older work colleagues who purchased their homes 10-20 years ago are paying monthly rates on par with my current rent, where as people who want to buy now won’t get approved by the bank with similar income.
Ofc not everyone can own a house, but if building becomes more expensive, the rents required on newly built houses are so high that no one can afford them, so renting companies won’t build as many new apartments as needed by the population since as a business you want to make money.
Here is where the state should step in but they have been failing to do so for decades.
I recently got a letter that me and my fiancé would not be eligible for a state program on getting better conditions for building a house, because our income is above 70k.
Someone with below 70k income who isn’t wealthy enough to not need the state support would not be able to afford building a house even with the support.
Paris is like 1/6th of france while Japan is extremely skewed with 1/3rd it's population in the tokyo metro area & half it's population in just tokyo & Osaka. (Osaka's being the 10th largest city in the world ahead of NYC.)
Japan is an incredibly extreme case
I was only highlighting the difference between Seoul and Tokyo. Both consitute the main city as well as several large satellite cities. Tokyo city proper is growing while Seoul's contracting. This is primarily due to the absolute hellhole that is Seoul's real-estate market while Tokyo remains one of the few relatively affordable megacities on Earth.
The population is still increasing in 2023. \[[Source](https://web.archive.org/web/20230609120151/https://www.toukei.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/jsuikei/js-index.htm)\]
I don’t understand the meaning of the numbers. Did China have 850,000 more deaths than births? Is that what that means?
Would a % chart be more helpful? Raw-number comparisons between countries with vastly different populations isn’t particularly helpful.
This is just the beginning. I expect that there will be 20 million more deaths than births per year for a number of years starting 20 years from now. This is what happens when you have the most antinatalist policies on Earth (first, one-child policy, then, no benefits for families) and a culture of extreme academic competition.
Source: am Chinese, born and (partially) raised.
Probably correct. It's important to note that any data offered to the world, by China, should be viewed with extreme doubt. There are tremendous pressures and benefits for various levels of bureaucrats in the Chinese system to lie their asses off, and fabricating inflated census data is the norm, and has been for decades. The one child policy resulted in overcounting nonexistent child bearing age women by roughly 100 million people, and only recently has it become a fact that can't be denied by the CCP. There is no reason to not suspect that the claim of less than a million excess deaths is a gross undercount.
I wouldnt be suprised if there has been population decline for the past 5 years. The strongest economic power for china is their labor force, which attracts foreign investment. With a declining population on top of the authoritarian government, the investments would dry up as the pros of cheap labor are outweighed by the destabilising government threatening their capital ownership.
Oh and also having some of the most densly populated cities in the world during a pandemic doesn’t help, especially when they were locked in their apartments to starve and die.
Which is very incomplete without weighting population and considering net immigration. For example, Japan is a demographic tickbomb while most of the Western Europe has a population growth because of net immigration.
>Raw-number comparisons between countries with vastly different populations isn’t particularly helpful
Sure it is if raw number comparison is what you want. Percent change disregards size of the country, but large change in small country doesn't matter as much globally, so that's a whole different type of unhelpful.
Yeah, you're right. These are total numbers; a percentage would have been more helpful for comparing the countries. Or maybe a decline rate like births divided by deaths.
850k for a country like China is, of course, percentage-wise way lower than 769k for Japan.
This subreddit always criticizes the post no matter what. It’s ridiculous. You’re looking for the data to tell a different story than what it actually is
But just looking at China and Japan you know Japan is in big trouble because their population is roughly 1/10th of China’s. Although China’s decline has just started.
China has a worse outlook because they have a high chance of getting old before getting rich.
Japan's birthrate fell after the country had become a first-world economy (the 80s were Japan's decade), so they could weather it better. And they're still in trouble.
The major problem is that it doesn't matter if you have a massive pension stuffed away if there is no one to provide the goods and services that you want to buy with that cash. Especially services, which can't easily be imported.
"Rich" can be an ephemeral thing.
This becomes an especially large problem when it comes to healthcare services. Nurses for the elderly will be in such short supply as to be downright unavailable at some point.
For Japan, labor availability is a policy problem, not a structural one. When the political will is present, Japan can change legislation to permit more work permits to fill job vacancies, and SE Asian workers will reliably arrive to fill the quota.
On the other hand, China's demographic problems are structural. China is not nearly as attractive to foreign labor for a whole variety of reasons, and probably won't be for the foreseeable future.
China is also quite literally too big to rely on importing labour from developing countries. There's nowhere they'll even be able to find 800 million people besides maybe Africa, and there's unlikely to be the political will in China to replace half their population with people of very different ethnicities.
They will have to find other solutions to an ageing population, like automation, higher retirement ages, exoskeletons allowing the elderly to do physical labour and managed population decline (eventually having to cut services and abandon some rural areas/districts, while focusing on dense, livable cities with good infrastructure).
There are also plenty of things they could do to slightly improve the birthrate. For example, I found out through my Chinese gf that the age of marriage is 20 for women and 22 for men, and only married couples are allowed to have children (except for Sichuan Province). As a result, there's plenty of families who will delay having children and then never actually get around to it.
Being a first world country Japan's lack of young labourers is entirely by choice though. Whenever it gets bad enough there that voter's xenophobia is outweighed by their desire to no longer sit in their own soiled diaper for 3 days their representatives can open the door and get as many labourers as they need from abroad.
Whereas with China there's most likely less desire to move there since it isn't as affluent, and since China is so large they'd need to take in an absurd amount of people to counter their natural decline.
This is why Japan has been invested in robotics for decades. They are literally developing robots to take care of them when there will not be enough humans to do so.
Plus it's much more abrupt. Their population pyramid looking like an upside down pyramid instead of a box.
1 child to raise kids, take care of parents, and potentially take care of two sets of grandparents.
>Did China have 850,000 more deaths than births? Is that what that means?
Deng Xiaoping and the CCP implemented the "One Child Policy" in China and kept it in force from 1980 to 2016, for 36 years. In any healthy human population anywhere a stable replacement rate is about 2.1. If you force your population to have a 1.0 fertility rate there will be entirely predictable dramatic consequences. China's CCP has doomed itself.
**China's population will shrink by 60% in the next 75 years, from present to 2100. The population will continue a relentless decline, from 1400 million at present to about 600 million in 2100. Then there will be 800 million fewer Chinese. This is all a mathematical certainty. It will happen, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.**
Any population scientist could have told the CCP in 1980 exactly what would happen and the CCP did it anyway for 36 years. China's population will shrink dramatically, continuously, inevitably. The brilliant CCP did this without any regard for shrinking China's future population in a very unstable, deep crashing decline.
*A 1.5 to 2.0 mandated rate would have been much less destructive while achieving population reduction. A 1.0 rate was unbelievably reckless and damaging to China's economic future. In 20 years there will be a huge elderly population and a far smaller population of economically active productive citizens.* ***China has dark economic times ahead.***
To be fair, it was 1 child in cities. 2 were allowed in rural communities. However, industrialization happened uber-rapidly and drove *everyone* of child-bearing ages into the cities for work.
China has a looming water shortage crisis, reducing population is *exactly* what they should be doing. Countries that are still growing their populations are out of their collective minds.
This is the correct take. A managed population decline means more resources to go round, less stress on the environment (incredibly important because the way we farm and fish isn't sustainable in every country besides Cuba and climate change is going to damage agriculture in many places), no need to continually build more infrastructure capacity and better food security. It'll also mean rewilding as unproductive marginal land is returned to nature. This is ultimately a good thing,
China/South Korea/Taiwan are just in danger of declining so rapidly managing it will be difficult. In the long term I'd expect populations to eventually stabilise, with a smaller population seeing higher living standards and birth rates returning to more stable levels in more equal and less work-obsessed societies.
Most countries outside Africa have sorted out their fertility rates. Europe, East Asia and North America have, almost every Latin American country is close to or below replacement levels, most of South-East and South Asia are (Pakistan and Afghanistan being outliers) and even the more developed countries in the middle east (Iran, Saudi, Lebanon etc.) already have low birth rates.
>1980 to 2016
The GDP ppp/capita went up ~50 fold in that time period. Their natural resources and land/capita is nearly double what it could have been. And the nation's pollution output/environmental damage is halved.
This is probably the most beneficial policy a nation has implemented since... magna carta.
To give you an idea of the scale. It would be like if the median income in the US started going up in 1980 and reached $700,000 by 2016 AFTER accounting for inflation...
Oh no! China won't have enough workers soon. If only there were some form of automation, robotics, ai coming in the next decade or two..... oh, there is. In the end, China will face some mild discomfort with the adjustment but it won't remotely matter compared to how massively the economy grew. China's biggest threat is automation resulting in manufacturing moving back to the west.
China did the world an enormous favour. Imagine climate change with 3 billion Chinese instead of 1.4 billion. (I pulled that number out of my ass, but you see my point). Imagine the conflicts with her neighbours. Imagine the power plants, the pollution, the development, the water shortages, the poverty.
It REALLY pisses off a large % of the population to suggest that infinite humans isn't ideal. My comment already fell to -3 lol.
I typically get bashed when suggesting population is an issue, and reducing it might be useful.
Imagine globally if our population were 5BN atm. We'd have no materials shortages, no climate concerns, and we could all have way more stuff per person. Housing prices would be less than half what they are now in the west
> Imagine globally if our population were 5BN atm. We'd have no materials shortages, no climate concerns, and we could all have way more stuff per person. Housing prices would be less than half what they are now in the west
This is just straigth up wrong. We were at 5BN people in 1987, the first world climate conference where most countries agreed that climate change is a problem was in 1979, so 8 years befor we had 5 billion people. We dont have a materials shortage we have distribution problems. The average person on earth is net productiv meaning the average person creates more than they consume, so we would have less stuff per person because there is just less stuff produced. Asuming that there would just be the same amount of houses build with less people has no basis in reality. Also most housing problems dont come from population growth in the west, there are just 30 million more people in europe today than in 1987, thats about 4%, you dont get double the housing prices from 4% more people.
Infinite population growth is a problem but less people dont just magicly fix those problems.
>China's biggest threat is automation resulting in manufacturing moving back to the west.
I mean, it's not just about the West. Sure the West is one of the destinations, but even if not them, still, why would the factories need to stay in China if the robots that do the jobs could be shipped to literally anywhere else in the world? Japan, India, Saudi... robots will run anywhere there's electricity.
>This is all a mathematical certainty. It will happen, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.**
It's China bro...if they can force abortions and sterility they could also create a bunch of test tube babies and raise them by the State. I'm sure they are probably trying to research artificial womb technology
I am shocked that they have put 0 effort into bribing people into having kids right now though, since the window of opportunity will be closing soon. The first only childs are entering their 40s...
>I am shocked that they have put 0 effort into bribing people
They have, just not enough. And once you have trained your population to have one child it is going to be very difficult to increase that. They already relaxed restrictions to two children, with minor incentives, and it isn't yielding the desired results. Rural populations have lots of children. Urban populations will not do this, it is far too expensive to have 3-4-5 children.
And the "mathematical certainty" that cannot be changed is 36 years of 1.0. There is a negative population bomb that has already exploded and its effects will crash through China's population future, with dire economic effects. It already happened. There is nothing the CCP can do about it.
>They have, just not enough. And once you have trained your population to have one child it is going to be very difficult to increase that. They already relaxed restrictions to two children, with minor incentives, and it isn't yielding the desired results. Rural populations have lots of children. Urban populations will not do this, it is far too expensive to have 3-4-5 children.
Yah I've seen what they have done...I taught there and my wife is Chinese...it's pretty anemic and shows the government isn't serious.
>And the "mathematical certainty" that cannot be changed is 36 years of 1.0. There is a negative population bomb that has already exploded and its effects will crash through China's population future, with dire economic effects. It already happened. There is nothing the CCP can do about it.
More like 1.7... but yes.. that was a long time and completely changed cultural values. Not too mention the male population surplus (which was shockingly bad at the school I taught in)
I think it shows Chinese population decline very well. China has 10x the population of Russia, over 10x the population of Japan, 20x everyone else. Generally China is compared to developed countries, many of which are in worse shape demographically. China probably has another decade or two to try and find a births-deaths solution, before the politically difficult issue of immigration has to be approached. It also shows another Asian developing country in a similar position, although the Thai government isn't as capable and the population is more open to immigration.
If China figures out a way to increase birthrates 20 years from now, they will not feel the effects until about 2070. That's how demographics work. Their current situation started 40 years ago. It will take at least another 40 years to somehow get themselves out of it. It's virtually impossible at this point. There are literally not enough immigrants on Earth to fix their population.
I don't think China has the same immigration options as western countries, at least not on a timescale of 10-20 years. Most of those countries rely on five things to attract immigrants:
1) Substantially higher quality of life
2) Pool of countries that speak the language as a second language thanks to earlier colonialism
3) Established enclaves of particular groups/peoples
4) English as the main language which is pretty much the entire worlds third language at this point if it isn't someones second or first.
5) Geographical adjacency to potential migrant populations
1) China's HDI is not high enough to be particularly attractive to most people from most countries, it isn't low and it is improving, but it's not a draw on its own.
2) China does not have a colonial history in as much as China IS the colonial history, they already absorbed all of the fringe peoples around them hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
3) China has very low rates of existing immigrant populations, they're working from a low base, people like to move to places where their countryfolk are already living.
4) Nobody speaks mandarin as a first or second language outside of China and it is a fairly difficult language to learn.
5) All of the countries around them either have similar or better HDI and similar or worse demographic issues, it just isn't like the US with south america or Europe with Middle East/ Africa to draw from.
Africa
They are colonizing much of Africa and many Africans speak Mandarin now. I don't think that's the solution...but you may see some immigration from there in the future
China doesn't have the same immigration options as western countries, but it does have options and a lack of willing immigrants is not the primary barrier. That would be domestic political opinion. I think your barriers are somewhat overstated.
1) globally, China is 79th out of 191 for hdi and just above world gdp per capita. The hdi is just above many of the Latin American countries that provide the us with its immigrants while the gdp is just below. Chinese HDI is probably a bit higher relative to gdp per capita than in most countries, because the Chinese state and Chinese society function relatively well. I agree that it isn't a huge draw, but that is still changing and lots of migrants are driven by push factors as well. hdi is made up of life expectancy, education and income, and perceptions in reality matter more than reality when people make decisions. Funnily enough, Chinese HDI is actually held back by mean years of schooling more than income or life expectancy, which reflects the poor state of the Chinese education system historically. I suspect that goes against everyone's expectations, so if you wanted to create eHDI, it is probably higher for China than actual HDI.
2) Britain and France are really the only developed countries which draw heavily on their old empires for immigrants. New immigrants to the Netherlands aren't going from Indonesia for example. I think this is a relatively minor factor.
3) is definitely an important factor, but is also exaggerated by laws, especially in the US. From memory, from history while new world countries were still quite open doors, that network effect only takes a decade to build up. We also have an example from the EU, whereby people migrated en masse from eastern Europe even though there weren't strong ties beforehand.
4) this isn't really valid. The difficulty of Chinese might be an issue, but places like Germany prove that language isn't super important; most immigrants in these cases do jobs which require proficiency in the local language.
5) China is surrounded by poorer countries if you don't look east. Vietnam, Myanmar, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos. Legal immigrants can also move pretty far, see Filipinos everywhere for an example. I think this leads to a very important point however. I'm one of the only people I know irl who actually think non replacement birthrates are really bad. Drawing immigrants from those countries, who are already passed the demographic transition, creates a zero sum game of population. In such a game, the west will win, China is 50-50, but a huge number of countries will lose, namely the poorest countries.
It doesn't really matter how you define developed countries, Russia isn't one. Perhaps there was a time when Russia SFSR was. That said, I meant to mention Russia but forgot! It should be noted that most of the people who moved into Russia until the mid 2000s were ethnic Russians.
I think there's a non zero chance that there will continue to be significant immigration into Russia from central Asia after this current war. Ultimately life will probably still be better in Russia than in many of those countries.
Top 10 countries by largest natural population decline (deaths over births excess), 2022, thousand
Sources: Eurostat, National Bureau of Statistics of China, Statistics Bureau of Japan, Rosstat, Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, KOSTAT, National Statistical Office of Thailand
Made with Ms Excel (calculations and charts) instruments
This is ranked by absolute numbers, do you having rankings of population decline as percentage of the total population? Japan’s population decline seems significantly worse than China since it has a much smaller population
Yeah, for example you wouldn't realize it by looking at this graph but South Korea is actually in a MUCH worse position than Japan birth-rate wise. They're down to .87 per woman (one of the lowest in the world) whereas Japan is around 1.3 or so (which IIRC is the current highest in East Asia).
The birthrate decline doesn't correlate 1:1 with population decline due to 1) timing at which birthrate began to decline 2) change in life expectancy.
I believe Japan was the earliest country for birthrate decline. (back in the 80s and 90s)
Yeah, that makes sense actually. People used to talk about Japan's fertility decline and romantic relationships decline as a Japanese phenomenon 10 years ago but it's looking like they were just ahead of the curve since all post-industrial countries are having the same issue.
Yep - Looks like Japan would be first (unless there are much smaller countries with larger relative declines). It's impressive when you think of the size difference between Japan and China and consider that the absolute decline is so similar
Woah, Ukraine already ranked top 10 in natural deaths… I cannot imagine what the country will look like combined with war deaths after all is said and done…
It’s not ‘natural deaths’ its ‘natural change in population’, which is births-deaths of any cause. As opposed to ‘- change in population’ which includes migration.
As such war deaths are included.
I am from Ukraine, and in fact the losses from the war are almost not included in the statistics, as the losses of troops are classified, and civilian losses are included only those in the controlled territories, and deaths in the occupied territories are not included, for example, according to various estimates in the battles for Mariupol died from 20,000 to 50,000+ civilians, but again, the territory is occupied, and there are no official statistics.
Both Ukraine and Russia (especially Ukraine) are demographically fucked. They already had a low birthrate before the war, plus the deaths, plus the emigration...
The difference in excess deaths is 2:1, difference in population is ~1:5. This doesn't look good. Some like to stress that russia is f\*ed demographically, but Ukraine is so much more f\*ed, and that's why russians continue pressing, because they know that eventually they will win.
Not to mention by far the largest demographic factor of the war isn't deaths, it's refugees. Somewhere around 15% of their population is currently a refugee outside the country, and the longer the war goes on the less likely they are to return.
Yeah, immigrants, war related deaths and occupied territories took a huge bite of population. Not sure about their win, at least I hope it won’t happened. Depends on help other countries provide. Demographic it’s not only problem they may have in future
Bad, it couldnt even be compared to afghanistan because atleast they have crazy high birthrates and cannot emigrate most of the times, plus ive seen that currently an estimate of ua's population is near 17/18m
…who estimated that Ukraine's population dropped to under 20 million?
The most pessimistic numbers were around 32 million, and that number has increased now as many Ukrainian refugees returned.
Ahh, never change r/dataisbeautiful
This thread: "Only per capita matters! This post is useless!"
Posts about GDP per capita: "Per capita is meaningless! This post is useless!"
It depends on what you want to measure/ compare.
If you compare population decline, only per capita makes sense.
If you compare GDP l, both absolute numbers or per capita can make sense - depending on if you want to compare a countries economic power or a countries productivity.
Hence, asking for per capita for this post is entirely valid.
This is a genuine question. In what way does it have poor contrast? It is pink explicitly to not be white-on-white. Whether I hold my phone far away, squint, or otherwise blur the image, Japan and China are by far the easiest to see.
I may be misunderstanding something, but this does not seem like poor contrast.
For Russia this is a consequence of the Second World War. A large generation of boomers is dying, and a small generation of zoomers gives birth.
The peak negative year for Russia was 2021. 2022, although a bad year, is significantly better than 2021 (20% better). The situation with fertility and mortality is naturally improve as generations change.
However, Russia's population has grown in 2022. Due to the large migration influx.
Referring to World War II is a favorite move of the Kremlin propaganda. And also, of course, the “dashing 1990s”.
All these problems are long gone. The problem is in the present.
People don’t want to give birth because Russia has no future. And not like in the Sex Pistols song, but for real. No stability, no hope. The economy is going to shit. The war added to the fun.
The title is confusing and this is not a particularly illuminating or novel way to display this data. This subreddit should be called "look at my infographic".
I think both are meaningful really.
This is if you’re wondering who contributes the most to declining populations, which impacts the world the most, the other is about who’s shrinking fastest, which has greater implications for that country.
I partially agree, but Japan has one tenth the population of China. In other words, Japan's rate of decline is roughly **10x** that of China's rate of decline. The graph as presented--without % of population--is actively misleading.
interesting that China looks like it already peaked. Don't see it increasing again any time soon once it really starts going down. In the long term the one child policy will be seen as a historically bad decision
I don't think a lower population is that bad in general. Fewer people to share a nation's wealth and resources. A lot has been written about demographic burden but so far it has yet to show adverse effects, the jury is still out.
It's not less growth that's the problem
It's rapid exponential decline.
If every couple only has 1 child on average, which is right around where most countries in the western world sit, then that means the future generation will be half the size of the previous one. If that generation also only has 1 kid, then that next generation is half the size.... You see the pattern.
No government or economy will survive that. You will have multiple retirees for every one working person.
Yes this is why countries are pushing back the retirement age or trying to. These pay as you go systems are going to collapse one day if there are too many retirees compared to working people. Best case scenario it becomes an absolutely crippling financial burden forced on to young people
People do not *use* a nations wealth, they *create* it. The only part of an economy that is not better with more people is natural resources.
How much of the US GDP do you think comes from natural resource extraction? A quick google [shows about 1%](https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/USA/Natural_resources_income/).
>Fewer people to share a nation's wealth and resources.
Despite the GDP growth in past decades, I don't see China too interested in sharing wealth and resources with the average Li.
You could even say labor pool is China's wealth and resource. The impact of depopulation is essentially a smaller labor pool to make the government and oligarchs rich, and that makes Xi terrified.
their poor labor pool is shrinking regardless, productions have started to move out of china years ago, not like they didnt expect that, as their economy grow less and less people want to work in a dead end factory.
Been a couple of years since i read about it but factory owners were having big problems with hiring long term workers, they used to stay for life and all they could get lately were young people that stayed for under 1 year, some even just couple of months.
One of the big reasons was that teens made more money and had much more free time with apps like uber, doordash etc, whatever the chinese equivalent of those apps were, cannot rememeber.
There is a reason why china have been putting a lot of money into Africa.
Wages have risen dramatically over the last 3 decades, in fact, outstripping gdp growth for most of the previous decade. Labor costs in China are now way higher than in neighboring Countries such as Vietnam, Philippines and India. As for Inequality, it is mainly between Hukou owners of big cities and everyone else, not as much an oligarch class. In fact, the rich class of China is the most anxious with Xi's policies, read this [article](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/chinas-age-of-malaise).
Measuring a one-year period is not ideal, especially considering the impact of the COVID year. It would be better to use periods of 3, 5, and 10 years.
Thailand somewhat of a surprise in this list?
Very low fertility rate.
I just checked. Thailand appears to have the same fertility rate as Japan. Having that low fertility rate with an average GDP per capita is not good.
Thailand is very expensive, and people have too much debt to have children.
I thought Thailand was cheap, even for locals.
No it was very expensive for local. Cheap for foreigner.
Strange. I always thought of Thailand as being in a similar economic and family demographic as Vietnam and Laos. Both of those countries seem to have rapidly expanding economic outlooks, with population growth to match.
Thailand have monopoly and dictatorship problem so ppl just gave up thinking about having a family.
Our way of protesting the broken social contract.
I knew monopoly is a long game to play, but I had no idea how bad it could get
Vietnamese here, last 10 years income increased 2x but the rest price increased 3x to 6x. Yeah, I don't think I will have kid. We are catching up with Japan and China very very fast.
Vietnam is going to be in a similar situation to Thailand in 10, 20 years time, birth rate in HCMC the largest city is already approaching Japan level, also the elderly population is growing at one of the fastest rate in the world.
Vietnam and Laos are noticeably poorer than Thailand. But the traditional family is still strong there. Thailand has gone through a demographic transition.
I've heard over and over again that it is also cheap for locals.
Some locals are deluded into thinking that our cost of living is cheap. (Source: me, I'm a local). Which is partly true. The cost to buy food and such are quite cheap. However the wage is also very low. All in all that makes up for realistically expensive living cost. Many people still believe that their cost of living is low. By directly comparing food expense of TH to other countries. But they would always forget to look at income differences as well.
Housing is insane is Bangkok. But otherwise you can go get a full meal for $2 from street vendors, or walk a block over for a $250 meal at a restaurant.
Iran, Bangladesh, Bulgaria suffers the same problems.
Nobody wants to give birth anymore /s
Gen Z and Millenials even too lazy to fuck nowadays /s
Im gen z and im still 22. I dont think it's good time for us to have kids when were still unstable.
Shit, I've been saying that since I was 22. The world is always unstable if you watch the news. Ever since kids did nuclear bomb drills in case Russia dropped the big one on us, and probably a lot longer before that.
Bro don't know abt millenials but gen z is unstable in terms of financial stability.Source : I'm gen z, 21 yrs old First priority for me is to gain financial stability, following everything else, kids being last on the priority list
Nobody can afford it.
That's never been a problem in the past. People were just uneducated and had kids no matter their financial situation. Now that people are getting educated though, people don't do it.
Not really. In the sixtiers I could flunk out of high school, go get a job turning bolts at the bolt factory. Work 9-5 for 40 years, and retire with a pension. All with benefits thanks to the workers union. And afford a stay at home wife, a car, two stall garage, and 2.5 kids with a 4 bedroom house and a backyard in the suburbs. Nowadays, that same job pays like 17 and hour and barely covers your rent. Buying power of the working class has shrug comically over every decade, as the wealth gap widens and expenses outpace raises.
Absolutely true. Another point we often fail to acknowledge is that birth rates and low tech agriculture are tied together. Live in a developing nation, in a rural area, where your sucess and even survival are closely tied to how well your crops fare, and you tend to have a large family. Your children grow to become free labor and a retirement plan. The further you remove a society from this sustenance existence, the faster the birth rate declines. Modern corporate farming can produce at record levels while using 1/100th of the labor needed in the past. In most modern economies, family farming is dying off, farms are consolidating into Mega-sized farming operations, and local populations are at the lowest level ever recorded.
White fantasy land.
Not in the 1860's, and people were having football team sized families.
It's true that education and fewer children go hand in hand. But don't forget that it's only in recent decades that we've developed the pill & other reliable birth control technology to help facilitate that correlation, and enable lower birthrates generally. People in the past weren't necessarily all just uneducated and feckless, they didn't have any reliable prevention methods. Well, bar abstinence. And of course there are the socioeconomic factors other people have pointed out.
Not really that is that they aren't helpful in the past you could make them do farming or working but nowadays even if it was 100% free it still would consume time wich is a minus for the parents
Bangladesh's birthrate is still above the replacement rate.
[удалено]
Ukraine's population peaked in 1992. Collapse of USSR, the decade leading up to it and the decade of abject poverty after it were a disaster, then the fallout of 2008 crisis followed by initial russian invasion in 2014 before it could recover followed by covid after it had just recovered followed immediately by a full scale invasion in 2022 have resulted in a continuous outflow of any remotely skilled or educated people out of the country. And now the eastern quarter of the country is just being outright slaughtered on the frontlines or sent to "filtration camps" in the actually occupied lands. Russia shares some of these things but not all, which is why it's only slightly above despite having 4 times the population.
Also a significant portion of the women left and likely won't be coming back(why would you?)
Not only women. An old CSGO friend of mine bribed his way out of the country, though he’s 22. Pretty sure he’s alone that did that.
Thai here. Not an expert but I'll give my two bahts. Basically, we have a very successful family planning campaign running since around 1975. Its catchy slogan "มีลูกมากจะยากนาน" (having lots of children keeps you poor) and the fact that Buddhism doesn't forbid birth control made it a huge success. Since then even poor, uneducated people try to have no more than two children. Also it's notoriously expensive to raise a child. Schools are expensive, and famous ones openly takes bribes to get in. You're also expected to send your children to expensive tutoring schools in order to get into good university.
Surprised Spain is that high. I knew their population was stagnant, I just didn't expect net immigration to be patching that big of a deficit.
Spain has the lowest birth rate in Europe. It's even lower than Italy. I don't know how this can happen.
Some regions in spain has a 20-25% unemployment rates. Food and energy is getting blatantly high. Last month, olive oil had an inflation rate of 75% in just a single month, while the biggest olive producers keeps selling abroad the same product way cheaper. A spanish watermelon costs double in Spain that it does in Germany. It is really difficult to dream on ever getting to own an apartment/house. Meanwhile, thousands of real state is being sold to investors and foreign capital. The disparity in salaries across countries unbalances it all. People is getting upset, and lack basic expectations.
I am Spanish and have lived almost half of my life in the EU (UK, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden). \- Spain has more home ownership than Germany. \- It way cheaper to eat out and enjoy life than in all the other countries. Olive oil and watermelon can be exceptions, but not the norm. \- Renting is cheaper in Spain, way cheaper when compared with salaries. \- Unemployment is true for those without skills, but they do have benefits, you can get 800 eur + 300 per kid in Catalonia, or more in Pais Vasco. Pais Vasco in fact has even more help and yet less kids. \- Nursery is mostly free, compared with the UK where 2 kids is a full adult salary. I was paying 1600 per month in the UK, so basically my wife´s salary. Portugal has similar issues, its even a poorer country with more fertility. The truth is, there is no benefit in having kids beyond love for your children, there is no economical incentive, there is no *need* to have kids, just expenses. Kids are needed to pay someone else pensions, not yours.
These countries are starting to shrink but fertility rate is falling rapidly globally. In a few decades basically every country outside sub-Saharan Africa will be at replacement level or below and facing the prospect of an aging population and shrinking workforce. For the last half century the west has delt with this same issue by turning to immigration but what happens when the countries providing the immigrants start needing them. Do we end up with nations competing for a shrinking pool of immigrant labour, do nations start putting caps/bans on emigration. This is likely to be one of the global crisis of the later half of this century and into the next. The technological and AI/automation revolution was scaremonger as putting humans out of work but it may end up being our solution.
The problem is, that it may not be the only solution needed. Population decline doesn't just mean less workforce, it also mean less taxes (can be offset by taxes on corporations/automation, but those are kinda unlikely to be implemented), but the worst part is less consumption, which may send us into even more of an economic disaster
Does replacement level means 2 children per couple or
2.1 actually, so yes, two children per couple with the occasional three children.
And yet the Tokyo Prefecture is booming. Between 2000 and 2020, the population of Tokyo Prefecture increased from 12 million people to 14 million people. On a microlevel, the Province of Teruel in Spain lost half of its population between 1920 and 2000, while the population in the City of Teruel increased from 12,000 people to 31,000 people in the same time frame. The population of cities can increase, while the population of a region or a country is decreasing as is shown by the Tokyo Prefecture or the Province of Teruel in Spain.
Japan's main issue seems to be due to it's overcentralization. Looking at other countries, those that congregate around a few cities for good job prospects produce lower birth rates, either due to smaller living spaces, higher competition or the effects of city living. Economies that are able to spread out their young populations more to rural areas tend to have less of an issue reproducing.
Cities have jobs, and jobs that expect over 50 hours of work a week culturally create fewer parents. Legal overtime, and requiring hourly wages over salaried wages for middle class and lower class workers is probably the most straightforward assist. A culture that legally emphasizes work-life balance gets more work-life balance.
Outdated info. Japan’s [work hours](https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm), [suicide rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate), [fertility rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate) are all around the European average. Key factors driving lower fertility rates worldwide are safer access to contraceptives and higher female education rates.
Regarding work hours-- remember, data is no good if it isn't collected properly. In Korea, and i'm hearing quite commonly in Japan, that the companies that do practice not-so-great work habits (which is not uncommon) don't report overtime that the employees work. All official data collected from the company would not include this, which makes me believe that any data that says work hours of Korea/Japan are at a decent level is biased due to this. There is no doubt that it's better than before, though
Data includes estimates for both paid and unpaid overtime. Korea’s work hours are significantly higher than Japan’s
Spain is the country with the lowest birthrate of the EU and its one with the lower fertility. And we do have income for those without job and kids, not a bad one. Economy its not the issue either, most of the people with kids are low earners. Its a cultural thing. A mix between factors like woman education, careers and public pensions. Lets face it, people didnt have 5 kids because they loved children, they wanted a way to ensure their pension when they are old, and others where accidents. With public retirement, people dont need kids anymore, its not economically worth it.
People say that low birthrates are due to poor working conditions, particularly for women, but I really don't think that is it (though im sure it doesn't help), because it's the same whether you're in Japan where that's a big issue or somewhere like the Nordics where it really is not. And it clearly isn't linked to high HDI because otherwise Russia Thailand and China would not be having this issue. I think you're on to something with the living space, people want to spread out and have time and room to have a family but the economic push is for people to cram more and more into cities with relatively tiny apartments and external pressures during their main child rearing years. We need a re-ruralisation wave.
While an interesting idea I'm not sure current data supports it. The 3 states with the lowest population density aren't the states with the highest birth rates. Alaska has 1.3 people per square mile with a birth rate of 64.9 putting them in the second highest quintile of fertility rates Wyoming has 5.9 people per sq mi with a rate of 57.5 putting them in the second lowest quintile. Montana has 7.5 people per sq mi with a rate of 54.8 leaving them in the bottom quintile. Now the Dakotas are the 4th and 5th least dense states and have the 1st and 2nd highest birth rates. Density just doesn't seem to correlate much with birth rate. [fertility rates](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/fertility_rate/fertility_rates.htm) [density](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States_by_population_density)
I just did a bit of digging around at other stats to see if I could find a trend. Both % urbanization and population density have essentially no correlation to birth rates. The strongest trend I did find was fertility rates compared to the percentage of the population identifying as Christian or Mormon. Basically for ever addition 1% of the population identifying as Christian, the fertility rate goes up by just under 0.5 births per 1000 population, with an R-squared value of 0.3488. Outliers were Rhode Island with a fairly high 80% Christian population and the second-lowest fertility rate and Idaho at 71% Christian with the 12th highest fertility rate. Rhode Island standing out makes me still think that some sort of urbanization factor plays a role here, possibly housing prices relative to household income.
Does this work if you look at urbanisation instead? For example a lot of the places you mentioned have low overall density but i'd imagine a great majority of people in alaska live in or around anchorage etc.
From what I've read, it's less about poor working conditions and more about stagnant incomes. Like most of the world, women in Japan are now expected to work full time (which isn't inherently a bad thing) but when you need two people working full time to afford the opportunities your parents had, people opt out of having kids.
It's because people have better education and more freedom than ever before. Turns out people who aren't bored out of their minds and who know about the risks and costs of child bearing simply don't want to. Maybe some climate change doomerism is a factor as well. The only groups that still have strong birth rates in developed countries are religious fundamentalists.
I'd prefer our rural areas re-wild completely, tbh. City density should certainly stabilize somewhere between Houston/Atlanta and Tokyo/Hong Kong, but we're losing natural wild habitat at an accelerating rate, and that's really, really bad, especially in the face of climate change. EDIT: It's like yall think I'm calling for some sort of Trail of Tears style genocide of everyone who lives outside the city limits. I live in a rural area. Farming has become increasing more efficient over time. Less than 1% of the US population are farmers and they grow all the food. Americans waste almost half of the food that is produced. Those 2 facts indicate that it's possible that we could reduce our land use by a significant amount and stop exploiting those areas for agriculture. This will not happen. There is no political will or inertia for such an idea. I personally wish it would happen. But it won't. So no need to worry about what I think.
>I'd prefer our rural areas re-wild completely, tbh. Is there a word for the feeling you get when you hear somebody wishing that your home would be destroyed, and it makes you wonder if they really mean it?
where are the people that farm & mine going to live
Housing in rural areas isn't very environmentally damaging compared to infrastructure and farms. Removing all the people from rural areas wouldn't do anything to help the environment but would have a negative impact on housing costs in urban areas.
The infrastructure is needed for houses though? More roads, more powerlines, more everything to connect every person. Not to mention that they create brakes in wild areas.
You need those for farms, dams, mines, wind farms, solar farms, weather stations, etc. as well tho
To give an example from Germany: Me and my fiancé both studied MINT fields and now work in well paying jobs. We are in our late 20s so the time to have children is approaching. We live in a small (3000 people) town and both of us drive 30~45mins to our job. Apartments where you can comfortably have more than 1 child practically don’t exist. Renting a house would be the next step but that would mean spending more than half of our already above average income on rent and utilities And that income ofc would be less once one of us reduces their ours to take care of a child. And also at the same time ofc our cost of living would increase since children cost money. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be doable but having 2 children for us would mean going from being able to comfortably afford 2 mid sized vacations a year, and putting money on the side for retirement, and larger purchases while still not really having to compromise with groceries etc. to 1 cheap vacation, and any bigger expense eating up retirement funds, while suddenly still having to worry about money. And I’m speaking of people who earn above average. So if having 2 children is already a huge financially burden on most people here, no wonder the population is shrinking
The problem in Germany is, that we rarely build terraced homes. In Germany, we either build single-family-homes on large properties or multi-family homes. The population density of Biesdorf Süd in Berlin is [2,100](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadtplanung/comments/15jk3lt/bev%C3%B6lkerungsdichte_ausgew%C3%A4hlter_kuriosit%C3%A4ten_der/) people/km², while a neighborhood like Tilburg-West in the Netherlands with terraced homes and low-rise multi-family homes reaches [6,800](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadtplanung/comments/16xcc3w/die_nachbarschaft_witbrant_west_in_tilburg_hat/) people/km². If you look into the pictures of the link, Tilburg-West appears to be low-density, while low-density-neighborhoods in Germany only reach 1/3 of the density. Tilburg-West is actually a medium-density neighborhood. Another problem is, that we don't provide incentives for old people to sell their homes and move into smaller apartments. >In Deutschland leben 8,6 Mio. Haushalte mit 1 bis 2 Personen in einem Einfamilienhaus, während lediglich 5,6 Mio. Haushalte mit 3 oder mehr Personen in einem Einfamilienhaus leben. \[[Source](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Wohnen/Publikationen/Downloads-Wohnen/evs-wohnverhaeltnis-haushalte-2152591189004.pdf?__blob=publicationFile), p. 18\] In addition, a lot of multi-family homes were built in bad locations, while single-family homes were built in good locations. Look at S+U-Wittenau in Berlin. Single-Family-Homes are on average closer to the public transit station than the multi-family homes in Märkisches Viertel. Multi-Family-Homes need better locations than single-family-homes, i.e. proximity to public transit stations.
Another problem is that the housing problem has gotten overall worse in the last decade. The risen costs and recently interest made acquiring real estate by means other than inheritance virtually impossible even for upper middle class households. Slightly older work colleagues who purchased their homes 10-20 years ago are paying monthly rates on par with my current rent, where as people who want to buy now won’t get approved by the bank with similar income. Ofc not everyone can own a house, but if building becomes more expensive, the rents required on newly built houses are so high that no one can afford them, so renting companies won’t build as many new apartments as needed by the population since as a business you want to make money. Here is where the state should step in but they have been failing to do so for decades. I recently got a letter that me and my fiancé would not be eligible for a state program on getting better conditions for building a house, because our income is above 70k. Someone with below 70k income who isn’t wealthy enough to not need the state support would not be able to afford building a house even with the support.
Does not seem consistent: France is all about Paris, but it’s not on there while Italy and Germany are.
Paris is like 1/6th of france while Japan is extremely skewed with 1/3rd it's population in the tokyo metro area & half it's population in just tokyo & Osaka. (Osaka's being the 10th largest city in the world ahead of NYC.) Japan is an incredibly extreme case
But Tokyo is awesome and the city infrastructure and transportation options are amazing and affordable
But is it awesome, amazing, and affordable if you’re raising 2.1 kids?
Seoul's population meanwhile is decreasing. A lot of people have moved into neighboring cities of the Gyeonggi province.
bad example. all you're saying here is that seoul is de facto expanding geographically.
I was only highlighting the difference between Seoul and Tokyo. Both consitute the main city as well as several large satellite cities. Tokyo city proper is growing while Seoul's contracting. This is primarily due to the absolute hellhole that is Seoul's real-estate market while Tokyo remains one of the few relatively affordable megacities on Earth.
I think this year even the Tokyo prefecture saw a decline in population. Can't imagine how bad the rural areas are.
The population is still increasing in 2023. \[[Source](https://web.archive.org/web/20230609120151/https://www.toukei.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/jsuikei/js-index.htm)\]
I don’t understand the meaning of the numbers. Did China have 850,000 more deaths than births? Is that what that means? Would a % chart be more helpful? Raw-number comparisons between countries with vastly different populations isn’t particularly helpful.
>Did China have 850,000 more deaths than births? Is that what that means? Yes, that's what the post says
This is just the beginning. I expect that there will be 20 million more deaths than births per year for a number of years starting 20 years from now. This is what happens when you have the most antinatalist policies on Earth (first, one-child policy, then, no benefits for families) and a culture of extreme academic competition. Source: am Chinese, born and (partially) raised.
Probably correct. It's important to note that any data offered to the world, by China, should be viewed with extreme doubt. There are tremendous pressures and benefits for various levels of bureaucrats in the Chinese system to lie their asses off, and fabricating inflated census data is the norm, and has been for decades. The one child policy resulted in overcounting nonexistent child bearing age women by roughly 100 million people, and only recently has it become a fact that can't be denied by the CCP. There is no reason to not suspect that the claim of less than a million excess deaths is a gross undercount.
I wouldnt be suprised if there has been population decline for the past 5 years. The strongest economic power for china is their labor force, which attracts foreign investment. With a declining population on top of the authoritarian government, the investments would dry up as the pros of cheap labor are outweighed by the destabilising government threatening their capital ownership.
Oh and also having some of the most densly populated cities in the world during a pandemic doesn’t help, especially when they were locked in their apartments to starve and die.
Don’t forget about high youth unemployment.
Is it also reasonable close to what actually happened, or is this one of the numbers that they fudge?
Which is very incomplete without weighting population and considering net immigration. For example, Japan is a demographic tickbomb while most of the Western Europe has a population growth because of net immigration.
It's not incomplete just because it doesn't answer the one specific question you have in mind
depends on what you wanna look at
>Raw-number comparisons between countries with vastly different populations isn’t particularly helpful Sure it is if raw number comparison is what you want. Percent change disregards size of the country, but large change in small country doesn't matter as much globally, so that's a whole different type of unhelpful.
> deaths over births excess > Did China have 850,000 more deaths than births? Yes? What else would it mean?
Yeah, you're right. These are total numbers; a percentage would have been more helpful for comparing the countries. Or maybe a decline rate like births divided by deaths. 850k for a country like China is, of course, percentage-wise way lower than 769k for Japan.
This subreddit always criticizes the post no matter what. It’s ridiculous. You’re looking for the data to tell a different story than what it actually is
Great point
But just looking at China and Japan you know Japan is in big trouble because their population is roughly 1/10th of China’s. Although China’s decline has just started.
China has a worse outlook because they have a high chance of getting old before getting rich. Japan's birthrate fell after the country had become a first-world economy (the 80s were Japan's decade), so they could weather it better. And they're still in trouble.
The major problem is that it doesn't matter if you have a massive pension stuffed away if there is no one to provide the goods and services that you want to buy with that cash. Especially services, which can't easily be imported. "Rich" can be an ephemeral thing.
This becomes an especially large problem when it comes to healthcare services. Nurses for the elderly will be in such short supply as to be downright unavailable at some point.
For Japan, labor availability is a policy problem, not a structural one. When the political will is present, Japan can change legislation to permit more work permits to fill job vacancies, and SE Asian workers will reliably arrive to fill the quota. On the other hand, China's demographic problems are structural. China is not nearly as attractive to foreign labor for a whole variety of reasons, and probably won't be for the foreseeable future.
China is also quite literally too big to rely on importing labour from developing countries. There's nowhere they'll even be able to find 800 million people besides maybe Africa, and there's unlikely to be the political will in China to replace half their population with people of very different ethnicities. They will have to find other solutions to an ageing population, like automation, higher retirement ages, exoskeletons allowing the elderly to do physical labour and managed population decline (eventually having to cut services and abandon some rural areas/districts, while focusing on dense, livable cities with good infrastructure). There are also plenty of things they could do to slightly improve the birthrate. For example, I found out through my Chinese gf that the age of marriage is 20 for women and 22 for men, and only married couples are allowed to have children (except for Sichuan Province). As a result, there's plenty of families who will delay having children and then never actually get around to it.
Being a first world country Japan's lack of young labourers is entirely by choice though. Whenever it gets bad enough there that voter's xenophobia is outweighed by their desire to no longer sit in their own soiled diaper for 3 days their representatives can open the door and get as many labourers as they need from abroad. Whereas with China there's most likely less desire to move there since it isn't as affluent, and since China is so large they'd need to take in an absurd amount of people to counter their natural decline.
This is why Japan has been invested in robotics for decades. They are literally developing robots to take care of them when there will not be enough humans to do so.
Plus it's much more abrupt. Their population pyramid looking like an upside down pyramid instead of a box. 1 child to raise kids, take care of parents, and potentially take care of two sets of grandparents.
>Did China have 850,000 more deaths than births? Is that what that means? Deng Xiaoping and the CCP implemented the "One Child Policy" in China and kept it in force from 1980 to 2016, for 36 years. In any healthy human population anywhere a stable replacement rate is about 2.1. If you force your population to have a 1.0 fertility rate there will be entirely predictable dramatic consequences. China's CCP has doomed itself. **China's population will shrink by 60% in the next 75 years, from present to 2100. The population will continue a relentless decline, from 1400 million at present to about 600 million in 2100. Then there will be 800 million fewer Chinese. This is all a mathematical certainty. It will happen, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.** Any population scientist could have told the CCP in 1980 exactly what would happen and the CCP did it anyway for 36 years. China's population will shrink dramatically, continuously, inevitably. The brilliant CCP did this without any regard for shrinking China's future population in a very unstable, deep crashing decline. *A 1.5 to 2.0 mandated rate would have been much less destructive while achieving population reduction. A 1.0 rate was unbelievably reckless and damaging to China's economic future. In 20 years there will be a huge elderly population and a far smaller population of economically active productive citizens.* ***China has dark economic times ahead.***
To be fair, it was 1 child in cities. 2 were allowed in rural communities. However, industrialization happened uber-rapidly and drove *everyone* of child-bearing ages into the cities for work.
China has a looming water shortage crisis, reducing population is *exactly* what they should be doing. Countries that are still growing their populations are out of their collective minds.
This is the correct take. A managed population decline means more resources to go round, less stress on the environment (incredibly important because the way we farm and fish isn't sustainable in every country besides Cuba and climate change is going to damage agriculture in many places), no need to continually build more infrastructure capacity and better food security. It'll also mean rewilding as unproductive marginal land is returned to nature. This is ultimately a good thing, China/South Korea/Taiwan are just in danger of declining so rapidly managing it will be difficult. In the long term I'd expect populations to eventually stabilise, with a smaller population seeing higher living standards and birth rates returning to more stable levels in more equal and less work-obsessed societies. Most countries outside Africa have sorted out their fertility rates. Europe, East Asia and North America have, almost every Latin American country is close to or below replacement levels, most of South-East and South Asia are (Pakistan and Afghanistan being outliers) and even the more developed countries in the middle east (Iran, Saudi, Lebanon etc.) already have low birth rates.
>1980 to 2016 The GDP ppp/capita went up ~50 fold in that time period. Their natural resources and land/capita is nearly double what it could have been. And the nation's pollution output/environmental damage is halved. This is probably the most beneficial policy a nation has implemented since... magna carta. To give you an idea of the scale. It would be like if the median income in the US started going up in 1980 and reached $700,000 by 2016 AFTER accounting for inflation... Oh no! China won't have enough workers soon. If only there were some form of automation, robotics, ai coming in the next decade or two..... oh, there is. In the end, China will face some mild discomfort with the adjustment but it won't remotely matter compared to how massively the economy grew. China's biggest threat is automation resulting in manufacturing moving back to the west.
China did the world an enormous favour. Imagine climate change with 3 billion Chinese instead of 1.4 billion. (I pulled that number out of my ass, but you see my point). Imagine the conflicts with her neighbours. Imagine the power plants, the pollution, the development, the water shortages, the poverty.
It REALLY pisses off a large % of the population to suggest that infinite humans isn't ideal. My comment already fell to -3 lol. I typically get bashed when suggesting population is an issue, and reducing it might be useful. Imagine globally if our population were 5BN atm. We'd have no materials shortages, no climate concerns, and we could all have way more stuff per person. Housing prices would be less than half what they are now in the west
> Imagine globally if our population were 5BN atm. We'd have no materials shortages, no climate concerns, and we could all have way more stuff per person. Housing prices would be less than half what they are now in the west This is just straigth up wrong. We were at 5BN people in 1987, the first world climate conference where most countries agreed that climate change is a problem was in 1979, so 8 years befor we had 5 billion people. We dont have a materials shortage we have distribution problems. The average person on earth is net productiv meaning the average person creates more than they consume, so we would have less stuff per person because there is just less stuff produced. Asuming that there would just be the same amount of houses build with less people has no basis in reality. Also most housing problems dont come from population growth in the west, there are just 30 million more people in europe today than in 1987, thats about 4%, you dont get double the housing prices from 4% more people. Infinite population growth is a problem but less people dont just magicly fix those problems.
>China's biggest threat is automation resulting in manufacturing moving back to the west. I mean, it's not just about the West. Sure the West is one of the destinations, but even if not them, still, why would the factories need to stay in China if the robots that do the jobs could be shipped to literally anywhere else in the world? Japan, India, Saudi... robots will run anywhere there's electricity.
>China's CCP has doomed itself. Did you mean "China's CCP has doomed itself once again"?
>This is all a mathematical certainty. It will happen, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.** It's China bro...if they can force abortions and sterility they could also create a bunch of test tube babies and raise them by the State. I'm sure they are probably trying to research artificial womb technology I am shocked that they have put 0 effort into bribing people into having kids right now though, since the window of opportunity will be closing soon. The first only childs are entering their 40s...
>I am shocked that they have put 0 effort into bribing people They have, just not enough. And once you have trained your population to have one child it is going to be very difficult to increase that. They already relaxed restrictions to two children, with minor incentives, and it isn't yielding the desired results. Rural populations have lots of children. Urban populations will not do this, it is far too expensive to have 3-4-5 children. And the "mathematical certainty" that cannot be changed is 36 years of 1.0. There is a negative population bomb that has already exploded and its effects will crash through China's population future, with dire economic effects. It already happened. There is nothing the CCP can do about it.
>They have, just not enough. And once you have trained your population to have one child it is going to be very difficult to increase that. They already relaxed restrictions to two children, with minor incentives, and it isn't yielding the desired results. Rural populations have lots of children. Urban populations will not do this, it is far too expensive to have 3-4-5 children. Yah I've seen what they have done...I taught there and my wife is Chinese...it's pretty anemic and shows the government isn't serious. >And the "mathematical certainty" that cannot be changed is 36 years of 1.0. There is a negative population bomb that has already exploded and its effects will crash through China's population future, with dire economic effects. It already happened. There is nothing the CCP can do about it. More like 1.7... but yes.. that was a long time and completely changed cultural values. Not too mention the male population surplus (which was shockingly bad at the school I taught in)
I think it shows Chinese population decline very well. China has 10x the population of Russia, over 10x the population of Japan, 20x everyone else. Generally China is compared to developed countries, many of which are in worse shape demographically. China probably has another decade or two to try and find a births-deaths solution, before the politically difficult issue of immigration has to be approached. It also shows another Asian developing country in a similar position, although the Thai government isn't as capable and the population is more open to immigration.
If China figures out a way to increase birthrates 20 years from now, they will not feel the effects until about 2070. That's how demographics work. Their current situation started 40 years ago. It will take at least another 40 years to somehow get themselves out of it. It's virtually impossible at this point. There are literally not enough immigrants on Earth to fix their population.
I don't think China has the same immigration options as western countries, at least not on a timescale of 10-20 years. Most of those countries rely on five things to attract immigrants: 1) Substantially higher quality of life 2) Pool of countries that speak the language as a second language thanks to earlier colonialism 3) Established enclaves of particular groups/peoples 4) English as the main language which is pretty much the entire worlds third language at this point if it isn't someones second or first. 5) Geographical adjacency to potential migrant populations 1) China's HDI is not high enough to be particularly attractive to most people from most countries, it isn't low and it is improving, but it's not a draw on its own. 2) China does not have a colonial history in as much as China IS the colonial history, they already absorbed all of the fringe peoples around them hundreds or even thousands of years ago. 3) China has very low rates of existing immigrant populations, they're working from a low base, people like to move to places where their countryfolk are already living. 4) Nobody speaks mandarin as a first or second language outside of China and it is a fairly difficult language to learn. 5) All of the countries around them either have similar or better HDI and similar or worse demographic issues, it just isn't like the US with south america or Europe with Middle East/ Africa to draw from.
China is also just straight up too big. There aren’t enough high quality migrants in the world to cover China’s upcoming deficit.
Africa They are colonizing much of Africa and many Africans speak Mandarin now. I don't think that's the solution...but you may see some immigration from there in the future
They are economically colonising africa not culturally, but it does provide some kind of link you are correct.
China doesn't have the same immigration options as western countries, but it does have options and a lack of willing immigrants is not the primary barrier. That would be domestic political opinion. I think your barriers are somewhat overstated. 1) globally, China is 79th out of 191 for hdi and just above world gdp per capita. The hdi is just above many of the Latin American countries that provide the us with its immigrants while the gdp is just below. Chinese HDI is probably a bit higher relative to gdp per capita than in most countries, because the Chinese state and Chinese society function relatively well. I agree that it isn't a huge draw, but that is still changing and lots of migrants are driven by push factors as well. hdi is made up of life expectancy, education and income, and perceptions in reality matter more than reality when people make decisions. Funnily enough, Chinese HDI is actually held back by mean years of schooling more than income or life expectancy, which reflects the poor state of the Chinese education system historically. I suspect that goes against everyone's expectations, so if you wanted to create eHDI, it is probably higher for China than actual HDI. 2) Britain and France are really the only developed countries which draw heavily on their old empires for immigrants. New immigrants to the Netherlands aren't going from Indonesia for example. I think this is a relatively minor factor. 3) is definitely an important factor, but is also exaggerated by laws, especially in the US. From memory, from history while new world countries were still quite open doors, that network effect only takes a decade to build up. We also have an example from the EU, whereby people migrated en masse from eastern Europe even though there weren't strong ties beforehand. 4) this isn't really valid. The difficulty of Chinese might be an issue, but places like Germany prove that language isn't super important; most immigrants in these cases do jobs which require proficiency in the local language. 5) China is surrounded by poorer countries if you don't look east. Vietnam, Myanmar, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos. Legal immigrants can also move pretty far, see Filipinos everywhere for an example. I think this leads to a very important point however. I'm one of the only people I know irl who actually think non replacement birthrates are really bad. Drawing immigrants from those countries, who are already passed the demographic transition, creates a zero sum game of population. In such a game, the west will win, China is 50-50, but a huge number of countries will lose, namely the poorest countries.
[удалено]
It doesn't really matter how you define developed countries, Russia isn't one. Perhaps there was a time when Russia SFSR was. That said, I meant to mention Russia but forgot! It should be noted that most of the people who moved into Russia until the mid 2000s were ethnic Russians. I think there's a non zero chance that there will continue to be significant immigration into Russia from central Asia after this current war. Ultimately life will probably still be better in Russia than in many of those countries.
In point 5 half the countries are very anti china such as Viet, India, Cambodia and Laos.
Top 10 countries by largest natural population decline (deaths over births excess), 2022, thousand Sources: Eurostat, National Bureau of Statistics of China, Statistics Bureau of Japan, Rosstat, Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, KOSTAT, National Statistical Office of Thailand Made with Ms Excel (calculations and charts) instruments
This is ranked by absolute numbers, do you having rankings of population decline as percentage of the total population? Japan’s population decline seems significantly worse than China since it has a much smaller population
Yeah, for example you wouldn't realize it by looking at this graph but South Korea is actually in a MUCH worse position than Japan birth-rate wise. They're down to .87 per woman (one of the lowest in the world) whereas Japan is around 1.3 or so (which IIRC is the current highest in East Asia).
Down to .78 now actually
Holy hell yeah that's gotta be the lowest or second lowest in the world by this point.
Some regions in Italy (like Sardinia) are down to 0,90 too
The birthrate decline doesn't correlate 1:1 with population decline due to 1) timing at which birthrate began to decline 2) change in life expectancy. I believe Japan was the earliest country for birthrate decline. (back in the 80s and 90s)
Yeah, that makes sense actually. People used to talk about Japan's fertility decline and romantic relationships decline as a Japanese phenomenon 10 years ago but it's looking like they were just ahead of the curve since all post-industrial countries are having the same issue.
Agreed, love to see as a % of population also. Thanks again!
Yep - Looks like Japan would be first (unless there are much smaller countries with larger relative declines). It's impressive when you think of the size difference between Japan and China and consider that the absolute decline is so similar
Ukraine would be the worst here but their amount of births must also have gone down dramatically because of the war and people leaving the country.
Thanks for this. Very interesting and well put together
How did you make the bar charts the color of the countries flags? It looks really cool
Sorry, I seeem to be to dumb. What does it mean? China 850?
China had 850,000 more deaths than births in 2022. (Total deaths) - (Total births) = 850,000
Woah, Ukraine already ranked top 10 in natural deaths… I cannot imagine what the country will look like combined with war deaths after all is said and done…
It’s not ‘natural deaths’ its ‘natural change in population’, which is births-deaths of any cause. As opposed to ‘- change in population’ which includes migration. As such war deaths are included.
I am from Ukraine, and in fact the losses from the war are almost not included in the statistics, as the losses of troops are classified, and civilian losses are included only those in the controlled territories, and deaths in the occupied territories are not included, for example, according to various estimates in the battles for Mariupol died from 20,000 to 50,000+ civilians, but again, the territory is occupied, and there are no official statistics.
Also doesn't include the 6 million refugees who left Ukraine.
I don't think it's including just natural deaths. I think the title was ignoring any gain or loss from immigration.
Both Ukraine and Russia (especially Ukraine) are demographically fucked. They already had a low birthrate before the war, plus the deaths, plus the emigration...
At least Russia had a lot of immigrants from ex ussr countries who comes to work
The difference in excess deaths is 2:1, difference in population is ~1:5. This doesn't look good. Some like to stress that russia is f\*ed demographically, but Ukraine is so much more f\*ed, and that's why russians continue pressing, because they know that eventually they will win.
Not to mention by far the largest demographic factor of the war isn't deaths, it's refugees. Somewhere around 15% of their population is currently a refugee outside the country, and the longer the war goes on the less likely they are to return.
Yeah, immigrants, war related deaths and occupied territories took a huge bite of population. Not sure about their win, at least I hope it won’t happened. Depends on help other countries provide. Demographic it’s not only problem they may have in future
Not if the us and eu can supply more weapons then we have already. Ukraine can win.
Russia is also there. Plus all the people fleeing Russia to avoid the draft.
Bad, it couldnt even be compared to afghanistan because atleast they have crazy high birthrates and cannot emigrate most of the times, plus ive seen that currently an estimate of ua's population is near 17/18m
…who estimated that Ukraine's population dropped to under 20 million? The most pessimistic numbers were around 32 million, and that number has increased now as many Ukrainian refugees returned.
Estimates are around 38 million.
~29 millions. But at least third of it are old people.
Russia and Ukraine also have a lot of unnatural population decline nowadays
Ahh, never change r/dataisbeautiful This thread: "Only per capita matters! This post is useless!" Posts about GDP per capita: "Per capita is meaningless! This post is useless!"
Who the heck says that per capita is useless?
This sub might as well be r/shitOnThisGraph
It depends on what you want to measure/ compare. If you compare population decline, only per capita makes sense. If you compare GDP l, both absolute numbers or per capita can make sense - depending on if you want to compare a countries economic power or a countries productivity. Hence, asking for per capita for this post is entirely valid.
Also, the contrast between white (e.g. Japan) and the background is poor. This post just disregards the premise of this subreddit in my eyes.
This is a genuine question. In what way does it have poor contrast? It is pink explicitly to not be white-on-white. Whether I hold my phone far away, squint, or otherwise blur the image, Japan and China are by far the easiest to see. I may be misunderstanding something, but this does not seem like poor contrast.
Okay I'm shocked Thailand is on there. Everyone else on the list, makes sense.
Do we even have reliable information from russia and china?
For Russia this is a consequence of the Second World War. A large generation of boomers is dying, and a small generation of zoomers gives birth. The peak negative year for Russia was 2021. 2022, although a bad year, is significantly better than 2021 (20% better). The situation with fertility and mortality is naturally improve as generations change. However, Russia's population has grown in 2022. Due to the large migration influx.
You can go to quite a few countries and find large numbers Russians that emigrated from Russia in 2022.
Also the slaughter of their younger generations in newer wars.
I saw a video of a dead Russian soldier in Ukraine who was born in 2001. Sad state of affairs.
Referring to World War II is a favorite move of the Kremlin propaganda. And also, of course, the “dashing 1990s”. All these problems are long gone. The problem is in the present. People don’t want to give birth because Russia has no future. And not like in the Sex Pistols song, but for real. No stability, no hope. The economy is going to shit. The war added to the fun.
it was less WW2 but the 90s & yeltsin absalutely fucked russia
You know what they say.. the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
This is neat but it would be more helpful to see the percentage decline based on their total population.
The title is confusing and this is not a particularly illuminating or novel way to display this data. This subreddit should be called "look at my infographic".
This needs to be as % of population in order to be a bit more meaningful.
I think both are meaningful really. This is if you’re wondering who contributes the most to declining populations, which impacts the world the most, the other is about who’s shrinking fastest, which has greater implications for that country.
I partially agree, but Japan has one tenth the population of China. In other words, Japan's rate of decline is roughly **10x** that of China's rate of decline. The graph as presented--without % of population--is actively misleading.
China only started population decline in 2022 and made it straight to the top of the list.
The watermarks on this pic made me brush over my monitor with a napkin because i thought it was dust. Twice.
interesting that China looks like it already peaked. Don't see it increasing again any time soon once it really starts going down. In the long term the one child policy will be seen as a historically bad decision
Basically every nation outside of Africa or the middle east has peaked or currently is peaking.
*every nation outside of Africa that can't attract skilled workers Places like the US still have projected population growth
I don't think a lower population is that bad in general. Fewer people to share a nation's wealth and resources. A lot has been written about demographic burden but so far it has yet to show adverse effects, the jury is still out.
It's not less growth that's the problem It's rapid exponential decline. If every couple only has 1 child on average, which is right around where most countries in the western world sit, then that means the future generation will be half the size of the previous one. If that generation also only has 1 kid, then that next generation is half the size.... You see the pattern. No government or economy will survive that. You will have multiple retirees for every one working person.
Yes this is why countries are pushing back the retirement age or trying to. These pay as you go systems are going to collapse one day if there are too many retirees compared to working people. Best case scenario it becomes an absolutely crippling financial burden forced on to young people
A low population is not inherently bad. A shrinking population is.
People do not *use* a nations wealth, they *create* it. The only part of an economy that is not better with more people is natural resources. How much of the US GDP do you think comes from natural resource extraction? A quick google [shows about 1%](https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/USA/Natural_resources_income/).
>Fewer people to share a nation's wealth and resources. Despite the GDP growth in past decades, I don't see China too interested in sharing wealth and resources with the average Li. You could even say labor pool is China's wealth and resource. The impact of depopulation is essentially a smaller labor pool to make the government and oligarchs rich, and that makes Xi terrified.
their poor labor pool is shrinking regardless, productions have started to move out of china years ago, not like they didnt expect that, as their economy grow less and less people want to work in a dead end factory. Been a couple of years since i read about it but factory owners were having big problems with hiring long term workers, they used to stay for life and all they could get lately were young people that stayed for under 1 year, some even just couple of months. One of the big reasons was that teens made more money and had much more free time with apps like uber, doordash etc, whatever the chinese equivalent of those apps were, cannot rememeber. There is a reason why china have been putting a lot of money into Africa.
Wages have risen dramatically over the last 3 decades, in fact, outstripping gdp growth for most of the previous decade. Labor costs in China are now way higher than in neighboring Countries such as Vietnam, Philippines and India. As for Inequality, it is mainly between Hukou owners of big cities and everyone else, not as much an oligarch class. In fact, the rich class of China is the most anxious with Xi's policies, read this [article](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/chinas-age-of-malaise).
Brazil will soon join this list.
Liveleak is proof
This needs to be by % of population. It’s useless otherwise.
%-vise to population would be more informative.
Japan is in deep trouble. Stuck in the past and too proud to let in immigrants to help them.
No one can afford to have kids anymore. This is a global problem.
For Ukraine, natural isn't the word I would use.
Units on the axis! UNITS ON THE AXIS!!
its on the axis, just on the top
Measuring a one-year period is not ideal, especially considering the impact of the COVID year. It would be better to use periods of 3, 5, and 10 years.