Australia’s treasurer, Jim Chalmers, may be handing out the treats in this week’s budget, but the man is not Santa: he’s asked for something in return. Babies.
Last week, he told Australians it’d “be better if birth rates were higher”.
The rate of local population growth is declining. There’s been a 20% drop in the fertility rate since 2008. Dr Jim’s plea is not so the lights of wonder can shine in more new eyes or puppies have more itsy-bitsy hands to hold them.
It’s because the economy depends on ever-expanding markets for stuff and – surprise! – markets turn out to be people. Migration has been pumping those local markets for years.
Meanwhile – as Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan are finding out – more old people than young means more work to do and less people to do it. Jonathan V Last points to the age structure in today’s Japan and asks: “Tell me how that under-30 group is supposed to financially support an over-65 group that’s close to double its size?” Social safety nets – pensions, welfare, state care – are “not sustainable in a sub-replacement environment”, Last writes.
Again, migration plumps local labour markets. If flow is interrupted, implications are dire. What could possibly go wrong? Uh, the Wall Street Journal cites figures this week that show “fertility is falling almost everywhere”. “Demographic winter” is a long-term planning challenge that no treasurer wants in the inbox.
We’ve been here before.
In high-income nations, fertility actually started falling beneath the........