How shrinking population groups sow division in politics
In the 2000 film “Almost Famous,” Cameron Crowe's comedy-drama about rock musicians in the 1970s, the character played by Zooey Deschanel at one point gives her younger brother some advice. “Listen to 'Tommy' with a candle burning, and you'll see your whole future,” she says.
I'm going to adopt that thought for today's newsletter: Stare at this annotated map with – or without – a lit candle, and you will see your entire future.
The graph, created by my colleague Lauren Leatherby, a Times visual journalist who has covered the world's demographic shifts, shows how the number of working-age people around the world is expected to change by 2050.
The European working population will shrink. This also applies to Brazil, China, Chile, Japan and Russia, among others. And that change, without mitigation, could have extremely negative consequences for those societies.
“Working age population” can sound technical and abstract. But these are the people who staff our offices and factories, work on farms, treat the sick, care for the very old and the very young. They are the ones who have and raise children; who build new things and repair old ones.
When that population shrinks, those activities become more difficult, expensive and less frequent. The economy is slowing down. Fewer workers getting paid generate less tax revenue. As the population ages, more and more people rely on government welfare programs to fund their pensions and health care, putting further pressure on these vital programs.
The baby riddle
This is primarily a story about birth rates. As countries get richer, people have fewer children; and it turns out that once birth rates drop, it's very difficult to get them back up. Although a number of countries have tried to increase fertility through tax breaks, cash bonuses, and even heroism rewards given to women who have many children, none of these programs have made more than a marginal difference.
But if you look at the map a little longer, you'll see the phenomenon that has allowed a few wealthy countries to cushion the blow of demographic change: immigration.
Australia, Canada and the United States have small green dots, indicating modest growth in the labor force. This is largely because those countries absorb relatively large numbers of immigrants, who not only immediately increase population numbers when they arrive, but also tend to have more children than the native population. In the United States, for example, the increase in births since the 1970s has been modest fully driven by births to immigrant mothers. According to Canada, immigration is the only driver of population growth government statistics.
To be clear, immigration can only be a partial solution to this demographic shift. To put the figures in perspective, to remain at the same level in 2050, Europe would have to absorb about half of the entire labor force growth in India, the most populous country in the world. China, which faces an even bigger deficit, could absorb all of Pakistan's growth And that of Nigeria – Africa's most populous country – and is still two million less than where it stands today.
At the same time, this map strongly suggests that the ability to attract and integrate large numbers of immigrants will be a key competitive advantage for countries in the coming decades.
However, to achieve this, political barriers will have to be overcome that partly arise from the same demographic shifts.
The political doom loop
Rafaela Dancygier, a political scientist at Princeton University, studies the politics of immigration and integration, including what fuels the rise of anti-immigrant far-right parties. She has found that many of the areas in Europe where anti-immigration policies are on the rise share certain characteristics: they have an aging population, fewer workers and fewer children.
“When people talk about population aging in general, they call this a national phenomenon,” she said in an interview. “And that is of course true. But there are also areas in countries, often outside cities, where this is already extremely pronounced. Because the young people are leaving, the working-age people are also leaving.”
Young people are moving to cities and wealthier regions to find work, while older generations are left behind in depopulating cities and regions, making such areas a microcosm of what the aging future could look like. (My colleague Jason Horowitz recently wrote about such a city in Italy.)
This shift is not necessarily inevitable. In Canada, the government is pursuing policies to achieve this increase immigration levels now to cope with some of the demographic decline.
But Europe's aging towns and cities and declining former industrial regions offer insight into why many countries have been slow to follow the lead of countries like Canada. Dancygier and others have found that areas undergoing depopulation are particularly receptive to far-right politics, putting policies to increase immigration further out of reach politically, even as they become more economically necessary.
The process, she said, goes something like this: As areas depopulate, the state tends to withdraw its services from the region. Schools close because there are fewer children. Train and bus lines are canceled or run less frequently. Hospitals closed. It's a local version of the kind of tension that aging countries will face at the national level when there are fewer workers to support more retirees.
That makes life more difficult in practice, she said, but there is also a psychological effect: people feel neglected and undervalued by the political elite.
Far-right parties “are very good at identifying the problem and addressing the grievances of voters living in these areas,” she said. But these parties do not offer realistic solutions to the problems of demographic decline. Instead, they scapegoat immigrants and blame asylum seekers and other foreigners for the region's problems.
That creates a vicious cycle in which the problems of depopulation ultimately fuel political parties whose policies actually make it harder to combat depopulation—a loop of doom from which it can be difficult to escape.
There are changes that can help. Large-scale immigration without investment in housing and public services is a problem; policy aimed at it help integration of immigrants can build connections between locals and newcomers, reducing prejudice and fear. Publicizing these successes and the benefits immigrants bring to their communities and the broader economy can counter political narratives about uncontrolled borders.
In the future, as the economic opportunity gap between continents narrows, recruiting immigrants may become more difficult. Countries that are currently relatively poor but whose populations will grow rapidly, including much of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, may be able to take advantage of their 'demographic dividend' to grow their economies rapidly. Because workers have better options at home, they will be less interested in emigrating elsewhere.
Take the example of Mexico. Although it was once the largest source of immigrants to the United States, net immigration remains so essentially zero since about 2009. (Many immigrants from other countries have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during that time, but that's another issue.) The decline in the net rate from Mexico is partly due to the fact that the United States has less have become hospitable to Mexicans, especially Mexicans. those who were undocumented. But it is also because the Mexican economy has improved. Workers who once came to the United States seeking opportunities can now find them at home.
Currently, political disputes over the extent to which borders should be closed and migrants kept out dominate public debate in many countries. But another conversation is too late. The reality of regions that are already depopulating, represented by the ever-expanding orange circles on the map, offers a glimpse into the future of the rich countries: an aging population and fewer workers and children, a trend that creates political divisions that make it difficult makes to change course. It is a challenge that policymakers will have to face sooner or later.