A world of demographic booms and busts

world with this problem. France’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 is a desperate move to ease the economic impact of its aging population.

The major economies have no option but to confront this question. Where to get the fresh blood that would prevent their societies from atrophying and keep the engines of their economies churning. There are two classic answers to sterile population growths. Place birth rates on the fast track which neither legislation nor executive fiats can do. Or, open up the borders to desired types of immigrants. Of the major economies, only Canada has decisively found the solution: opening up the country some more to skilled immigrants. Filipinos and immigrants from Asia and Africa can now be found in Canada’s cosmopolitan centers such as Vancouver and Toronto, and the canola fields of Saskatchewan and Nunavut in the Arctic region. The current trend among young professionals is to secure visas for masteral degrees to enable the entire family to relocate. The data on this type of immigration to Canada would be interesting.

Demographers have all but answered the question on where the fresh, warm bodies needed by atrophying and graying economies will come from. The African continent is one. The Philippines is another. The Philippines and several countries in Africa have been identified as the next major sources of population growth. In much of the African continent, half of the population is 17 years or younger. Nigeria is a prime example. A country the size of two US states — Texas and Oklahoma — Nigeria has a population of over 240 million, mostly of the prime working age. By 2050, Africa’s population is expected to exceed 2.5 billion.

This early, there are discussions on what kind of impact an African diaspora would have on the broader world. The inevitability of massive African migration to graying nations that need massive injections of fresh and warm bodies is a certainty, according to experts and futurists. How would it reshape the world is the oft-repeated question.

Opponents of birth control in the Philippines, bannered, ironically, by Opus Dei celibates, boast that the most potent asset of the Philippine economy is a socalled demographic sweet spot, meaning massive pools of young men and women of prime working age ready for deployment/employment domestically and globally. Indeed, the 110 million or so total population possesses an impressive mass in the 20 to 40 age bracket.

But some context is required. First and foremost, the skills level of that critical mass.

Can they code? What percentage of that critical mass has engineering talent? Can they untangle simple mathematical equations? Can they do research and development work? Do they have basic writing and communications skills? Can they compete with the Wall Street quants which is now a cast of multinational talent?

Or, are they predominantly ready for underwhelming bagging jobs at supermarkets or fast-food servers?

The Opus Dei celibates should realize that the demographic sweet spot can only be a true national asset if possessed of skills and talent required by the graying economies cursed by demographic busts. Given the mediocre state of Philippine education and its hopeless state within the next several years, carving a niche place for our young men and women of working age in the globalized economy may be a tough nut to crack.