This time last year I wrote a column to celebrate the decline of the Japanese population.
I wanted to debunk the idea that countries with falling numbers of inhabitants were heading inexorably towards social and fiscal disaster or even extinction. I pointed to the many advantages – for the world and for individual nation – of having fewer people.
Even if one accepts the economic need to boost a country’s workforce, increasing the entire local population is a crude way to do it. In Japan- where the population is shrinking , remember – the labour force has been rising this year as older people rejoin the workforce and more women take jobs。Robots and immigrants ( even the insular Japanese anticipate the need for more immigration) will also help to keep the economy growing.
The truth is that nations with small ,stagnant or falling populations can produce strong economic growth for the benefit of national power and individual prosperity.
Sharmila Whelan , economist at investment bank at CLSA concludes in a recent report on demographics and Japan’s economy that since the rise of Venice in the 11th century there has been little connection between economic growth and population size or increase. Innovation and specialization are more important. She dismisses as “nonsense” predictions that Japan’s economy will contract in line with its shrinking population.
It is no coincidence that some of the richest and most crowded places on earth – Tokyo and Hong Kong, for instance – have some of the lowest birth rates.
The point is not that increased population creates wealth ; it is that wealth creation leads ultimately to static or falling population. There is no reason to fight something that is both inevitable and good.