Guns or canes

As you know, demography is changing our world. Birth rate has been under replacement rate (2.1 births per woman average) in many places for years, but is still over replacement rate in others, mainly Africa and the Middle East (see Demography label).

With China's one child policy in place for decades, their population will eventually decline and their whole society will feel it. Just last year its armed forces were reduced in number by 300,000 men.

Today there's almost 5 workers for every retiree who's out of the work force. By 2040 it's projected that there will be only 1.6 workers per retiree. What will that be like? Over one-third of all Chinese people will be retired: one or more of every three people will be elderly.

This author says the government will have to set priorities, guns or canes.

(cont'd tomorrow)