To count or not?

It is human nature to ignore very long term issues, so managing demographic change is a thankless task, wrties Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta.

Demographics are something which every government is worried about in various ways. In layman's terms, the demographics refer to the population characteristics in terms of age profiles, sex ratio, ethnic or religious ratios, distributions etc. That said, some governments are more worried about it than others and in different ways. Changes in demographics are very slow moving, and results of efforts to address these changes can also be very long term in nature. Given the facts that most governments these days are relatively short term in nature and are measured against short term results, the efforts frequently go against the grain of current thinking. It is human nature to ignore very long term issues, so managing demographic change is a thankless task. Let us explore the pressures that government are under and what they are doing about them.

As usual, various isolated events came together to form the basis of this column. The first was the annual diversity training course that we have to undergo within the firm I work for. Besides other aspects of cultural sensitivity, racism, discrimination, diversity and sexism, one of the major aspects that I was taught about, was the greying of the British population and how the old commonly held concepts of ageing workers being less valuable than younger workers is no longer valid. With a raft of anti-ageism laws in place, managers have to overturn long held concepts. The second event occurred when I read in the Financial Times of 24th August that it was the first time since records began that the number of deaths outnumbered the number of births in Japan. The third event was when I was discussing the demographic threat to Israel. Which made me think about the various ways demographics and demographic change is worrying governments across the world.

Broadly speaking, the demographic change can be divided into the following categories. The first is change in population (usually coupled with increase in life span, decrease in the death rate, later marriages, reduction in birth's per woman, etc.). The second category is the change in male-female ratio. The third category is the change in religious demographics, while the fourth is the change in ethnic demographics. I am not including explicit and forced changes and migrations such as the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindu's, Bosnian Muslims, Palestinians, Hutu's, etc. due to war or terrorism. I am also not including demographic change caused by AIDS or single diseases which are hollowing out the population by targeting the sexually active middle section of the population. These are different perspectives and beyond the scope of this missive.

The first factor is something which most of the developed nations (with the major exception of USA), China, Eastern Europe, Baltic nations and Russia face. The birth rates are falling because people are having less number of children per couple, and marrying later. It also relates to the better availability of contraception. On the other hand, the death rates are also falling because of improvements in diet, medical care and the environment. This has implications on the country's tax base, pension system, health care system, as well as changes in culture when there are less or no children to take care of the elderly etc. In certain countries, if current trends are extrapolated, then one may well see entire countries depopulated in a matter of decades such as Latvia or even Italy (According to a World Bank Report, in Italy with a total population of about 57.6 million, the annual population growth figures were 0.1% for 1999 and 0.0% for 2002 and dropped to -0.1 % in 2003. In Latvia with a total population of about 2.3 million, the annual population growth figures were -0.8% for 1999 and -0.9% for 2002 and -0.7 % in 2003). In the case of Japan, it is reported that the population may almost halve in less than a century if current trends persist. In one of the most extreme cases, the Parsi's of India will die out completely in a few decades, one of the living examples of an entire religion, civilisation and race dying out because of issues relating to birth rates.

Second factor of mismatched sex ratio is prevalent in countries like China and India. We have spoken about this earlier. http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2004/04/equality-is-value.html China's one child policy and cultural preference for boys meant that parents would carry out pre-natal screening-tests and if the embryo proved to be female, they would abort the foetus and try again till they have a boy. That meant that ratio of women to men is drastically falling. Compare that to India where the same cultural and religious preference for boys means the same happens, some regions are now heavily skewed in their ratios. (Check out : http://www.bartleby.com/151/fields/27.html). This issue is considered to be of lesser importance given the sheer population sizes of the two countries.

Third factor, which is the demographic change due to religious issues can be seen in China, India, Israel, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and to lesser extents in countries such as UK, France, and Netherlands, with issues arising from the Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim growth rates versus majority Hindu, Buddhist or Christian populations. Despite quite controversial statistics, it is an element of faith that the indigenous population is going to be swamped because of higher birth rates amongst Muslim or Hindu or Christian minorities. For example, in Northern Ireland, an oft quoted claim is that because of the higher birth rate amongst Catholics they are swamping the population and may already have made the previously majority Protestant into a minority. The same claim can be heard in various guises in the UK, Netherlands, Israel, India, Lebanon, Sri Lanka etc. that the Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. will be swamped by their respective counterparts' higher birth rates.

Fourth factor of change in cultural demographics can be seen in the USA with an increase in Hispanic and decreases in native American Indian populations, Australia with its increase in "Asian" population and decrease in the native European and aborigine population. Even in parts of India we can see the same, such as decrease of native Maharashtrian or North Indian states population compared to out of towners, etc. These issues can be highly emotive indeed and can cause significant ructions in the societal fabric.

How have the countries reacted to these factors? Well, obviously it depends upon the type of factor and what is the impact of it on the country as a whole? It also matters as to the political setup of the country concerned. As we know, the political right hates any kind of demographic change, while the political left welcomes it.

Some of the reverse effects can be seen for example in pre-war Germany and Iran where the leaders, wanting to increase their pool of soldiers basically pushed and prodded their young to produce more children. Some of the countries which have seen the most dramatic short term rise in population like Germany and Iran have simply stored up problems in the medium term when this large population bulge worked its way through the system (the pig in the snake syndrome). Once the pig has been digested, then the issues around the first factor kick in. So what do you do when you want more people? So then you have two options, either try to motivate women and families to have more children (which is very long term and very difficult as well as expensive to implement anyway), or open up for immigration. Opening up to immigration is a very explosive topic as we have seen in the UK, Netherlands, USA, Italy etc.

The second factor is exacerbated by the first, if people are just having one child or none, then the sex ratio is further distorted. But to resolve it, governments are trying to impose laws against pre-natal screening-tests, but that is very difficult to implement given the lethargic legal systems and massive corruption in countries such as India and China. We faced it in the UK, when the local hospital refused to let us know the sex of our baby and said, this was against hospital policy. If I was in another county, we could have known the sex of our baby. All this because where I live is considered to be "Asian" territory and the reason for this policy is that apparently Asian couples abort girl children. Go figure! But this is cultural in nature and is going to be extremely difficult to change. The downside is, if you do get this to be changed, the danger then is that the people will simply choose not to have more children and drop into the first factor.

The third factor is most explosive (and also the fourth to a lesser degree) in the short term and can seriously rattle public peace and security as we have mentioned above. Samuel Huntington (of Clash of Civilisation fame) has written a much discussed paper discussing the impact of this issue in the USA (www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2495). Unfortunately, the protagonists usually seem to be religiously or culturally based. So if any political arrangement is to be made, then it means that it will be religiously or culturally driven. This means that the roots of this issue keep on being embedded. As we know, the solution to this problem is to break the link between the state and the religion/culture. When people become citizens rather than cultural/religious minorities, this issue goes away, but this is easier said than done.

I wish I could point to simple solutions, but this isn't a simple solution at all. Demographic changes happen slowly, solutions are even slower, and since the changes hit people in their "identity" and "citizen frameworks", the solutions are highly emotive. Oh! For Mr. Spock and his logical, unemotional viewpoint on life and living!

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

(The opinion expressed herein are strictly the author's and do not reflect the positions, official or otherwise, of any firm or organisation, that the author is associated with at the present or has been in the past or may be in future. Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta, currently lives in the City of London and works there in various capacities in the Banking Sector.)