Low fertility affects populations, but slowly, because people live for 80 years or so. Cuba doesn’t have a fertility problem, it has a “I don’t want to live here any more” problem. There can be a snowball effect – the more of your relatives have fled to Florida, the more appealing it becomes to go …
Category Archives: Countries
Russia goes Authoritative / Next Level on Fertility
It has been clear over the last few years that incentives and positive reinforcement are not helping stem reduced fertility levels in countries globally. At best they are making the decline less bad, but not stopping it. For counties with an iron grip over their citizens, unimaginable responses might occur. Keep in mind China’s historical, …
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11 Million Empty Homes in Japan
Japan has millions of abandoned rural houses for sale. The glut delights foreigners, who’ve been able to buy one for as little as US$23,000. But underlying the surplus are meaningful shifts in Japan’s culture. Demographic and economic patterns – including a shrinking population and migration from the countryside to cities – are combining to create a …
When Will Population Peak in Your Country
This graph from Statista accounts for fertility decline and current rates of immigration, to come up when actual population will start to decline in some countries
Tokyo Dating App – Another Weak Response
When one of the globe’s largest economies is facing a demographic crisis, throwing $3M at an app won’t help, especially when it is run by the Tokyo government. Absurdly: Japanese media reports that said the app will require a confirmation of identity, such as a driver’s license, your tax records to prove income and a …
Hong Kong – Cash Bonus for Babies
Every advanced economy except the US is suffering from a fertility rate that is too low. While immigration can offset that, not many people are keen at present to move to Hong Kong, given all of its recent problems. People have been leaving, of course. The number of children being born in Hong Kong each …
Korea’s Economy & Population Decline
When researching degrowth, I find that nobody ever advocates for or predicts actual degrowth. They end up discussing no-growth, which of course is impossible to keep at precisely not going up or down. So sometimes instead of degrowth they advocate for very low growth, below 1%. But actual economic degrowth is too hard to discuss …
Japan: Drink More Alcohol
One of the reasons given is that they want more revenue from liquor tax, because in 2020 it declined by 10% ($813M). However, considering that it is a “sin tax”, intended to moderate consumption, that is hard to accept. The real reason is what everyone knows, young people are more likely to hook up if …
Japan Down 0.51% in One Year
That doesn’t sound like a lot, but there were 644,000 more deaths than births (assuming an immigration rate of zero). Every prefecture on mainland Japan saw a decline, so even internal migration was not a help anywhere. Elon Musk saw this news and his saying that Japan will disappear was widely spread. He seems to …
Bulgaria is Fading Fast
Nobody wants to be the poster child for population decline. Losing 11% in 10 years is serious. Enough for people to extrapolate that to think they could lose 100% in a century. Bulgaria’s population shrunk more than 11 percent over the past decade, according to its latest census, as the Eastern European country struggles to …