The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Aging Populations and Which Countries Look the Worst || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Note: This video was recorded during Peter's hiking trip in 2024Many countries are on the brink of crisis. No, I'm not talking about political issues or potential wars. Instead, I'm looking at the aging population crisis facing a number of countries around the globe. Let's start with Japan.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/aging-populations-and-which-countries-look-the-worst

Hey, everybody. Hello from Lois Creek. Today we're going to talk about demographics, specifically old people. The stereotypical case is Japan, where today 10% of the population is over 80 and fully one quarter of the population is either retired or qualifies for retirement. They're by far the oldest country in the world. However, they saw this coming back in the 1980s after having a break. birth rate that had been really low for nearly a century. And so they started extending working lives, better health care to make people keep their minds

rather than fall into dementia, better child care, so that people who do want to have kids can try. And above all, ways to keep older folks at least engaged part-time within the workforce. All of that has allowed them to extend the useful working life of your average citizen, while also increasing the birth rate to a degree that they are no longer the fastest aging society in the world.

There are now like 20 other countries that are aging faster, including Thailand, Korea, China, Italy, Germany, Spain, Poland. It's not that these countries are past the point of no return, but it's time for them to start thinking about what happens next, because while they may have seen this coming decades ago, they haven't done squat about it. A couple of countries to keep your eyes on. Number one, Italy. Here's a large country with an ancient population that's getting older by the second, the oldest in Europe, and they're in a monetary union with the rest of the Europeans. At some point, the additional outlays that are required to maintain an elderly population

are going to crack the European system apart. Germany is just a couple of years behind Italy, so we're going to see the Germans go from a net payer, Europe to a net payee. That changes everything about what makes Europe work. Another country to watch is China. Every time they update their data, it gets worse, and they may well now have a demographic structure that's not too far behind Italy. And this is a country that doesn't have a social security or a pension system worth knowing, or a decent health care system. So when this goes, you basically have the Chinese lose their entire workforce in a very short period of time. I would

expect that to be a civilization crashing event. And then finally there's Korea, which is also aging it very, very quickly, maybe even just a touch faster than Italy. The reason I would say watch Korea is if any country can figure out how to adapt to this, it's the Koreans. This is the country that when they decided to get into the supertanker business didn't bother building a supertanker dry dock first. They built the supertanker in two halves and two different drydocks and then well it together. The Koreans have a habit of defying physics to make things happen, and if anyone can find a path out of this, it's them.