Instant Genius - The world’s ageing population and the ticking demographic time bomb, with Prof Jane Falkingham

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

It was recently reported that China has entered an era of negative population growth, after demographic statistics revealed a drop in numbers for the first time since 1961. And they are not alone, many other countries across the world are also experiencing dramatic falls in birth rates. This had led some researchers to suggest that many countries are facing a so-called demographic time bomb that will leave them with an ageing population and a shortfall of people of working age. We speak to Prof Jane Falkingham of the University of Southampton’s Centre for Research on Ageing. She tells us more about the world’s ageing population, how we have reached this point and what we can do to lessen its impact. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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delivering digital precision with analogue warmth, so you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus magazine. It was recently reported that China has entered an era of negative population growth after demographic statistics revealed a drop-in number for the first time since 1961. And they're not alone.

Many other countries across the world are also experiencing dramatic falls in birth rates. This has led some researchers to suggest that many countries are facing a so-called demographic time bomb that will leave them with an ageing population and a shortfall of people of working age. We speak to Professor Jane Falkingham of the University of Southampton's Centre for Research on Aging. She tells us more about the world's ageing population, how we've reached this point, and what we can do to lessen its impact. So China's now entered the period of negative population growth for the first time in 60 years. and this has led to many commentators saying that they're facing something called a demographic time bomb.

So you hear this term quite a lot, but let's start with saying, what exactly does that mean? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. People have used the demographic time bomb to talk about the aging of the population. So the aging of the population has come about really because of fantastic human successes. So we've seen rising life expectancy and falling fertility rates. Fertility rates means the number of children that people have. And what this means is that during the time period where we're moving from having low life expectancy and high numbers of children to having high life expectancy and low numbers of children, we're seeing a change in the shape of our populations in terms of. of the age structure, which means we're having more older people in the population and fewer

people of working age. So the term demographic time bomb has really emerged over the last 20 to 30 years when people have been looking at the ratio of old people to young people in populations. And of course, it's not just China that that's happening. It's happening everywhere in the world, but China is an extreme version of population aging. Yeah, so you mentioned that, that obviously China's got a kind of deep history with this sort of thing, because they had the not so long ago, I think less than 10 years ago, they stopped the one child policy. Now they're trying to have more children, yes, which is kind of crazy. Well, that's really why China is going through this.

They're going through what we call the demographic transition really, really rapidly. demography or study of populations. I'm a professor of demography. We look at how things like changes in the death rate and changes in the birth rate impact on populations. And all countries in the world are actually going through this demographic transition at the moment. But it happened in China much, much faster than anywhere else, precisely because of their very draconian family planning policies. So in the late 1970s, they had a policy called fewer, later, longer, which meant have fewer children, have them later, and leave a longer interval in between the children you have. And then in 1980, they actually shifted to the one-child policy. Now, if you think about two adults, and they

only have one child and then that one child marries a one child and they have one child that eventually means that that one child has two parents and four grandparents but they also have no cousins and no aunts and uncles so it's a real it means that you've you've moved very dramatically to a change in your family structure and interestingly enough i did some research in the 19th 80s and sat down with some Chinese demographers and said to them, if you carry on with this policy, this is what's going to happen. At the time, I think the political expediency in the country was they wanted to reduce their population growth rate. And of course, at global level, we've also been looking at global population growth and saying, oh, can we afford to feed a world of 10 billion,

12 billion. And so we've been kind of looking at ways to slow down, well, population growth. And China did it, but they did it in a very dramatic way without thinking about the medium to long-term consequences. And now they're trying to encourage their population to have more children. But of course, the world's moved on, very high rents. Shanghai is very crowded. Rents are high. And rents are high. people don't really want to have lots of children. Yeah, so it's weird, Luke, because running contrary to this fact is we've recently just passed 8 billion inhabitants on planet Earth, you know, so what's the situation globally, you know, birth rates are going down here and there, they're going up there, you know,

what's the global situation? Can we even say anything about that? Yeah, no, absolutely. So the United Nations actually does really good population forecasts, and they suggested that we reached the 8 billion citizen, I think towards the end of November last year. But if you unpack that and look at trends across the globe, I mean, it's not just China, which has a reducing population. Many countries in Europe also have a declining population. And I think that the United Nations forecast that we will probably end up

at the end of this century with about, 10, 10 and a half billion people, but then we'll start to have a population decline globally. But of course, whilst that's all happening, you're absolutely right. It's different in different parts of the world. Really, the two main areas of the world, which have still rapidly growing populations, are the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. So most other areas of the world now actually either have slowing down population growth or even negative population growth. So in order for us to reproduce ourselves, a man and a woman need to have, on average, 2.1 children. You need the extra 0.1 to make sure you get to adulthood yourself.

And in the UK, we've been having our total fertility rate, which is the average number of children that a woman would give birth to if she gave birth according to the average. Our total fertility rates be much lower than 2.1 since the 1960s. So currently we have at 1.8, around 1.8 children. Yeah, so, yeah, that's something I didn't know. But how about you mentioned there about population growth. So a lot of people are saying that the populace of India is going to overtake China in the next couple of decades to be.

become the most populated country in the world? Yeah, not the next couple of decades. I think it's the next couple of years, actually, and it may well already have done so. But at the moment, the populations of India and China are very close, and it's likely that India will overtake China in the next couple of years. And interestingly, though, again, life expectancy in India is improving, and fertility is falling,

but there are differences between the north and south. Right. So this comes to the question of longevity and of developing countries. Like, is it inevitable once a country reaches a certain degree of development that the population begins to age and then eventually that begins to decline?

I know that's a complicated question. Yeah, yeah, no. Well, it's precisely. see exactly the sort of thing that we're looking at now. And I think, yes, I think that as you reach a certain level of development, then things like public health and nutrition improve and life expectancy rises, the things that determine whether people have children are slightly more complicated. And so actually you can see in parts of Africa now, which are starting to develop,

they still are having large numbers of children. But as you, the society begins to think about education and the costs of children start to rise, then people start to adjust their childbearing behaviour. And of course, if more children are living to adulthood, then you'll slowly adjust. If a country has high infant mortality, then people have a lot of children because they want some of them to survive. So they go hand in hand with each other. It's not necessarily the case that we think that the world population will decline. I think rather it will level out.

So we happen to be alive at an amazing time, really, in human history, where we're going through this transition. And by the 22nd century or 23rd century, we'd be very much used to having populations where you've got quite a lot of old people and less young people. But of course, young people become old people. So we're moving from populations

where the age structure looks like a pyramid, where there's more people of young ages and fewer people of older ages, to an age structure where it looks more like a tower block. So we're moving from a world of a population pyramid, which I think people who studied geography, often heard about these population pyramids, to more of a rectangular shape.

And this is just a transition, but we've got to find a way as a society to adapt to that transition. So is it a time bomb? Probably not, but it's definitely going to cause a disruption to the way we do things. So we have to think about if we're all living longer,

maybe we organise our life course a bit differently, you know, and we work a bit longer, but maybe not full-time, maybe in different ways. It's quite thought-provoking what the world's going to look like at the end of this century and how the life course is going to change. Yeah, certainly. I've really liked your Tower Block versus Pyramid analogy, because, you know, in reading this, I think the UN have said that, in that sometime in the 2080s, the population of the earth is actually going to start declining. You don't think so? Well, I think it will probably take until the end of this century. I think a lot depends. A lot depends on what happens to fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa.

That's the big question. So what do we know about that? Like sub-Saharan Africa, but everyone here is saying, like we're having fewer children, our physical fatality rate, not the statistical one, the physical one, is declining in the Western world. We're less able to make children less willing. Yeah, and some people actually are making a decision not to have children, either for economic reasons or actually for ideological reasons in terms of climate change, for example. In Africa, as I said earlier, it's a complicated picture.

I mean, there are parts of Africa which still have relatively high infant mortality rates, so we have to take that into account. And I think there are also social and cultural differences in how children are valued and the meaning of children. So, for example, according to the latest UN data, Uganda, for example, they're still having five children per woman, but in Kenya, the fertility rate is now falling, and it's about three and a half. So, as I say, I think it's one of them interesting questions as to what's going to happen. And of course, with high fertility rates, and if mortality continues to improve, that means that the population of countries such as Nigeria and Uganda are going to be growing quite rapidly. which then does link to climate change

because these are countries in the world which are being more affected by climate change than perhaps we are in the UK. So where are these people going to live? And there are going to be some interesting population movements, I think, in the next 50 years. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft.

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with birth rates, we also have life expectancy going up because of better medicine, better health care and things. So what are we going to do? Because we're all getting older, obviously, but our population is, seems to me, I don't know if I'm wrong, seems to be skewing to be older. Like as the birth rate falls, there are more older people. So this is another thing that we have to consider, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the critical things is, whether we're aging healthily or not. And there is evidence that we are pushing up the age at which chronic diseases kick in and whether there is a high risk of mortality.

But of course, that's not – I'm talking in general terms rather than in specific terms because different groups of people suffer from different chronic diseases. But that's one of the key things is are we aging healthy? And if we are, then perhaps we should be thinking about the divisions between work and retirement and other things. I think there was an interesting paper from the Resolution Foundation last week looking at whether we should have different retirement ages in different parts of the UK, reflecting differences in life expectancy. So there's lots, there's lots to think about. But in general, I would say the challenge for all of us is we are living in an aging society. So we, and we can't change it.

It's inevitable consequence of the demographic changes that we're seeing. So we have to think about how we adapt society to take that into account. And when I say society, I mean all aspects work. home, leisure. I mean, I think this is the fascinating and most interesting and most personal thing that people are going to think about. So, for example, some provinces in China have been offering, for example, financial incentives to couples, to have a second, third child, despite their previous history. I mean, that seems a bit crazy. I mean, is there any evidence of that kind of policy working? I think that the evidence is very mixed and pretty weak, actually, that people don't

tend to have children for financial reasons. So I think that there may be at the margins, some people who will go on, if they've wanted to have a second child anyway, then it might bring it forward, might encourage them to do so. But I think the evidence, certainly the evidence from China that I've seen recently is that it's not having a very big impact. So there was recently, I can't remember who it was, but some, let's say, politician said them taxing the childless and the UK could help. What are your opinions on that? Yeah, so we're jumping now from China to the UK.

And I do recall that interesting idea. And I think that that was in the context of long-term care. And of course, I would say that the taxes of the childless have gone to pay for the education of the children of people who've had children. So it's not as straightforward as that particular politician. So probably, and we know from some research that research that, some of our economist colleagues have done that the wages of women who don't have children are higher than the wages of women who do as a penalty to childbirth. So those childless women have already been paying higher taxes on their higher earnings. Interesting proposition,

probably not one that I would support without digging into it a little bit more. It's always more complicated. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. This sort of thing is it's such a such a thorny, like, problem. You know, it's so difficult. Thankfully, it's not for me to figure out. So do you think, like, just governments making more, what would you call them family-friendly policies, such as money to cover nurseries, you know,

I know from not me personally, but from my friends, I know that, you know, they've really struggled with finding the money to do that. Do you think that could help? There is evidence that countries which have family-friendly policies also have higher birth rates. And the classic example is actually some of the Scandinavian countries. So they have the highest fertility rates in Europe at the moment. And they also have the most family-friendly policies, both in terms of thinking around childcare, but also parental leave and shared parental leave.

between the father and the mother. I think all of these things do impact at the margins, yes. So if we think about the ageing population, one of the big questions comes up with this shortfall in the younger workforce. What's this going to look like? How are we going to solve this problem, do you think? Is technology going to help us, or is it policy or something? It's a classic academic answer.

It's always a little bit of everything, isn't it? But I think definitely technology will play a role in terms of changing the productivity per worker. So at the moment, we've actually seen productivity in the UK stalling, if not falling. And so we do need to really understand what is going on there and how we can reverse that and increased productivity. Thorny question in the UK, particularly in the context of Brexit, is thinking about at a national or at a regional level, of course, you can change the number of people you have at working age through migration policies.

You can't do that globally because globally we don't have people migrating from Mars yet. So globally, the number of workers. workers per older people in the world is, I mean, it is decreasing globally. So at the moment, I think we have around six people age 20 to 64 for every one person age 65. And by 2050, there'll be 3.5 people age 20 to 64 for every person age 65 globally. That's a big challenge. And then your toolkit has to start. thinking about, well, how many of those 20 to 64 are working? Can we bring more of them into the workforce, particularly women? So in a lot of the world, particularly outside of Europe, I'm thinking

classically right now, Afghanistan is banning its women from working. Well, you know, bring them into the workforce, make them economically active. But also, why do we stop working at 65 if we're going to live to 90. So I know the French are on strike at this, you know, trying to get the retirement age reduced. So all of these things I think are things we're going to have to think about as a society over the next 20 to 30 years. Yeah. Well, I think hasn't there been talked recently that the retirement age is going to be raised to 68 here in the UK? Like, how do you feel about that? Is that a good thing? I think it's it's probably something we need to do to recognise the changes in life expectancy and issues we've been talking about. And, you know, and our politicians have been on the front foot

with thinking this through because these population changes aren't a surprise. I mean, someone who's going to be 65 this year was born 65 years ago, so we can kind of work it out. But there are some issues that not everybody has benefited from the improvements in health equally. So we do still see big differences in life expectancy by different social groups, by different occupational groups, by different ethnic groups in the UK. So I think going forward, we might need to be a bit more nuanced about the changes in retirement age because not everybody is going to actually live to 68 or live a long time after it. Yeah, that's a raised a big question with the NHS and or healthcare globally. How do we take care if, you know, as people age, they get ill, how do we take care of them?

Yeah. Are we local or global? I think it's, Either way, I guess the challenges are still there. I mean, one of the key things, I think, is for us to be thinking much more proactively about informing people of how they can improve their own health and reduce their risks of ill health as they move through the life course. So thinking about prevention, first and foremost, public health, getting people to adapt more healthy behaviours. Reduce stringings. Yeah, so thinking about how we promote healthy living, get people moving more. That's the first thing. And then, of course, dealing with ill health.

We have had amazing medical breakthroughs over the last hundred years, and we probably still have some more going forward. So, like, by way of summing up, you know, what do you think? Are you optimistic that we're going to be able to cope with the issues that are caused by our ageing population? You know, we can get that? I think I have to be optimistic. I think the aging of the population has come about because of the advances in human society.

And I think we have, it's not going to be easy. We're going to have to have to think about how we rise to the challenge. It's going to probably mean changing the way we do things. So we're not all going to be able to, to consume quite as much as we used to. We're not all going to be able to retire as early as we want to. But then the life course is changing. So it's something to be celebrated that we're living longer.

We need to celebrate it and try and find a way to get through it. That was the University of Southampton's Professor Jane Falkenum. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. Brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus magazine. The current issue of BBC Science Focus is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download a digital copy from your preferred app store. You can of course also find us online at sciencefocus.com.

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