On Sunday, Itxu Díaz wrote that “The World Will Belong to the Old.” The piece gave me a good laugh, especially for its title. Yes, we’re turning old and decrepit in the West, but that says nothing about the rest.
India’s population, for instance, is 1.4 billion and growing at breakneck speed. With a fertility rate still at 2.3 births per mother, it’s already closed the gap with China — the world’s most populous for many years — and will surpass it by 2024. Nearly two-thirds of this population is under 35 years old, and a full 55 percent are under the age of 25. The summer of love, as Díaz writes, has been raging in India for the last 75 years.
These millions of under-25s will only be too happy to procreate, when their time comes. I need not meditate on the enormous significance of this demographic dividend but, suffice it to say, some estimates of their combined economic impact run as high as $40 trillion. Even as Europe’s OAPs and the tufted patricians in America find a “silver economy” to drive them through old age, India’s engine will be running fast — hot, cantankerous, and spluttering fuel at full steam ahead.
Then, there’s China. For a while, procreation was a true cardinal sin under the one-child policy, which set back population growth by 400 million over 40 years. Now, however, even Father Xi has realized the folly of this approach. The CCP has now adopted a “three-child policy,” up from two, to boost the birth rate. They’d be wise to get rid of caps altogether. Still, China and India are better positioned than the West in the demographics department.
Next we have Africa. Even though the entire continent’s population is on par with India’s or China’s, they still have plenty to boast about. Across a billion people continent-wide — which is expected to double by 2050 — the median age is 19.7. This, of course, is the flip side of societies where people don’t live as long. Unlike the West, Africa doesn’t need “home-care systems” for its elderly, as Díaz writes; it needs homes for its youth.
All this is to say that Díaz’s point is valid but leaves out one important fact: As the West is aging, the rest are not. The growing populations in India, China, and Africa are drawing gravity away from the West. It could be a third-world order if we don’t get down to business.