Despite all the incredible technological innovation that has taken place in the United States, Europe, Japan, and South Korea since 1980 (from cell phones and laptop computers to commercial solar and wind power and reusable space rockets), the largest portion of global economic growth came from the increasing volume and productivity of workers in an initially much poorer and technologically backwa. [...] With total fertility rates ranging from 1.0 to 1.3 in East Asia, from 1.5 to 1.7 in the United States and Europe, and averaging 1.9 in Latin America, there is virtually no region of the world in which a declining youth population and rapid aging will not be the dominant feature. [...] As the shrinking labor force in Europe, China, and the rest entered an era in which of East Asia offsets growth elsewhere, we have already entered African youth will an era in which African youth will account for 96% of all the net labor force growth in the world. [...] One of the biggest problems for the rich world, both in terms of fiscal burdens on government and overall quality of life, is how to provide housing, health care, and pensions for their exploding number of older citizens in a time of shrinking workforces. [...] A moderate flow of work migrants from Africa to the developed world will be necessary to help meet demands for labor but uncontrolled surges of refugees (like those from Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan to Europe in the 2010s in the wake of civil wars, or from Ukraine today) can undermine trust in government and generate nationalist xenophobia.
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- 21
- Published in
- Canada
