1 00:00:00,330 --> 00:00:08,220 So what I want to talk to you today about is population decline in the contemporary world, particularly in the developed world, 2 00:00:08,220 --> 00:00:20,340 about how it comes about what its consequences are and what, if anything, we ought to do about. 3 00:00:20,340 --> 00:00:26,370 For quite a long time, we haven't been worrying about population decline or even thinking about it, 4 00:00:26,370 --> 00:00:33,240 as you know, for the last 200 years or so, it's been two centuries of population growth. 5 00:00:33,240 --> 00:00:37,200 We've become accustomed to the idea that population growth is the norm. 6 00:00:37,200 --> 00:00:43,770 The population growth is the natural state of affairs in inhuman or indeed any other kinds of populations. 7 00:00:43,770 --> 00:00:53,670 And that we therefore should should construct our ideas about population in the context of constantly increasing numbers. 8 00:00:53,670 --> 00:01:02,280 In fact, this is this is a rather unusual era in the long history of human populations for quite a long period of time in the past. 9 00:01:02,280 --> 00:01:08,520 Population growth was on average anyway, so small as to be hardly perceptible in the 18th century. 10 00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:14,190 There was a considerable controversy amongst educated people in in Britain and elsewhere as well. 11 00:01:14,190 --> 00:01:24,150 The population was growing over. Instead, as many wise people believed it was in a state of constant decline from a previous kind of golden age. 12 00:01:24,150 --> 00:01:30,180 And then meagre data could not conclusively establish one way or the other what the truth of the matter was. 13 00:01:30,180 --> 00:01:31,110 We now know, of course, 14 00:01:31,110 --> 00:01:39,840 that the 18th century was a period when population growth was starting to accelerate from faltering beginnings through the demographic transition, 15 00:01:39,840 --> 00:01:47,890 the mild but constant and substantial population growth in the developed world, and into the so-called population explosion of the Third World. 16 00:01:47,890 --> 00:01:53,670 But these are transient processes that they are already coming to an end in some parts of the world, 17 00:01:53,670 --> 00:01:58,830 in increasingly large parts of the world, they have already come to an end and have been reversed. 18 00:01:58,830 --> 00:02:04,580 And this is an attempt to try and put all this in a historical context. 19 00:02:04,580 --> 00:02:12,980 Concern about population decline started back in the 1930s, when, for the first time, 20 00:02:12,980 --> 00:02:22,430 fertility rates started to decline from their previous natural uncontrol levels within marriage and were techniques of 21 00:02:22,430 --> 00:02:31,280 population projection enabled the consequences of this decline to be worked out numerically and they were not very attractive. 22 00:02:31,280 --> 00:02:37,670 So now population declines back on the agenda after a short absence and we have to start thinking about it. 23 00:02:37,670 --> 00:02:43,190 This has revived all kinds of issues which were written about a great deal, 1930s quite sensibly. 24 00:02:43,190 --> 00:02:51,050 Keynes, the great economist, concerned himself, although a muddled way must be said with population decline and its economic consequences. 25 00:02:51,050 --> 00:02:57,410 Read away, discuss it in more measured fashion, in a more regular fashion. 26 00:02:57,410 --> 00:03:00,740 And his work in 1938 is still worth reading. 27 00:03:00,740 --> 00:03:07,730 Although, of course, the economic context of industrial society has moved on quite a bit from the numbers. 28 00:03:07,730 --> 00:03:14,840 Those were relatively new concerns, but they revived ancient ones for almost as long as there have been states, 29 00:03:14,840 --> 00:03:16,740 for almost as long as there have been rulers. 30 00:03:16,740 --> 00:03:25,340 As I pointed out in the very first lecture back at the beginning of last term, rulers and countries have been concerned about population size, 31 00:03:25,340 --> 00:03:32,670 especially in the past, at a time when it was almost impossible to improve productivity per person. 32 00:03:32,670 --> 00:03:37,820 The only way in which the output of a realm of an empire in economic terms could be 33 00:03:37,820 --> 00:03:42,650 maintained or increased was by maintaining or increasing the number of people who are then, 34 00:03:42,650 --> 00:03:49,160 as I said, are of course a very important factor of production. But then they were much more predominant element of production. 35 00:03:49,160 --> 00:03:56,270 The more people who had, the more wealth you had, the more tax you could gather, the bigger armies you could you could support of the bigger projects, 36 00:03:56,270 --> 00:04:01,550 canals, pyramids, whatever you wanted to do, you could maintain with a large workforce. 37 00:04:01,550 --> 00:04:10,100 All this makes perfectly economic sense. Is not folly to be in favour of large populations, especially if you are a monarch or a government. 38 00:04:10,100 --> 00:04:16,850 So these are very ancient concerns about security, particularly in the mercantilist context of old fashioned economics, 39 00:04:16,850 --> 00:04:23,600 where where the economy was essentially a zero sum game and then someone gained you lost. 40 00:04:23,600 --> 00:04:31,970 One of the reasons why population decline is makes governments and individuals uncomfortable is, of course, because it means that other people, 41 00:04:31,970 --> 00:04:37,880 other populations who are not experiencing this decline or not in the same degree are going to get 42 00:04:37,880 --> 00:04:42,920 relatively bigger and more important on the international scene than you are more important economically, 43 00:04:42,920 --> 00:04:50,390 more powerful militarily, more effective diplomatically. And relative population decline is, of course, 44 00:04:50,390 --> 00:04:57,020 one of the chief element of concern about Europe's decline from about 20 percent 45 00:04:57,020 --> 00:05:01,730 of world population in recent historical passed down to about seven percent, 46 00:05:01,730 --> 00:05:06,350 which is an almost inevitable development arising out of the growth of Third 47 00:05:06,350 --> 00:05:14,420 World populations and the failure of growth in much of the industrial world. 48 00:05:14,420 --> 00:05:24,080 So we have all sorts of questions arising. Is global population decline likely to take place before the end of the century, as as many people observe? 49 00:05:24,080 --> 00:05:27,110 Our esteemed colleague Sarah Harper is ageing, 50 00:05:27,110 --> 00:05:33,200 is giving a great lecture in London next month about this century being the century of the end of youth. 51 00:05:33,200 --> 00:05:38,840 Essentially at the end of youth means, of course, that is also a century of ageing, but it also may bring in its train. 52 00:05:38,840 --> 00:05:45,920 The fact is going to be a century of global population decline for the first time for a very, very long period. 53 00:05:45,920 --> 00:05:55,250 This is unacceptable to many too many economists who axiomatically feel that growth is good for environmental purposes. 54 00:05:55,250 --> 00:06:03,650 It may be a much more attractive for me in the end be desirable and essential as global climate change reduces the whole world's carrying capacity, 55 00:06:03,650 --> 00:06:07,580 which may well happen according to the more pessimistic scenarios. 56 00:06:07,580 --> 00:06:16,850 So let's first of all, think about some of the categories of population change to avoid muddling myself. 57 00:06:16,850 --> 00:06:22,580 There is, I think, a distinction between getting smaller as a population and being small, 58 00:06:22,580 --> 00:06:26,990 which I hope will be a constant recurring theme of the next 40 minutes or so. 59 00:06:26,990 --> 00:06:33,980 Becoming smaller probably brings problems of a psychological kind of an adjustment kind. 60 00:06:33,980 --> 00:06:39,470 The result, though, of being small or being small, if you have a group in the first place, may well be beneficial. 61 00:06:39,470 --> 00:06:45,410 There appear to be, if you look across the international scene, no particular problems about being small at least. 62 00:06:45,410 --> 00:06:50,750 And in times of peace, in times of conflict, that's a bit different. 63 00:06:50,750 --> 00:06:57,560 There are also different processes behind population decline, which we can see happening in the modern world. 64 00:06:57,560 --> 00:07:03,710 At the present time. Some processes decline are the result of of events and developments which are clearly part of. 65 00:07:03,710 --> 00:07:11,300 Illogical and undesirable, the failure of survival to improve in the in many of the East Bloc countries, 66 00:07:11,300 --> 00:07:15,680 the persistent high death rates in Russia, Ukraine, 67 00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:20,310 Belarus, to some extent, Bulgaria, which contributes, amongst other factors, 68 00:07:20,310 --> 00:07:27,050 to their to their failure of population growth and their population decline. Large scale emigration from countries like Bulgaria, 69 00:07:27,050 --> 00:07:32,240 indicating the profound dissatisfaction amongst many members of the population with conditions in that country, 70 00:07:32,240 --> 00:07:37,190 are clearly pathological, ultra low birth rates, which persist as being ultra low birth rates, 71 00:07:37,190 --> 00:07:43,820 indicating a lack of confidence by by women and by couples in the future of the economy and the stability of society, 72 00:07:43,820 --> 00:07:46,760 which is apparent in many parts of the world. 73 00:07:46,760 --> 00:07:53,930 Another reason why why population decline is a symptom of undesirable developments in the country concerned elsewhere, 74 00:07:53,930 --> 00:07:59,240 of course, population decline is occurring in countries of of greater and increasing prosperity, 75 00:07:59,240 --> 00:08:05,090 of continually improving levels of survival and standards of living like like Japan, 76 00:08:05,090 --> 00:08:08,510 like Germany, like one or two others which are tipping into decline. 77 00:08:08,510 --> 00:08:13,850 Italy is another example where the position is rather more subtle, 78 00:08:13,850 --> 00:08:17,960 is not a consequence of crisis, is not a consequence of any kind of social pathology. 79 00:08:17,960 --> 00:08:26,210 It's something which is more more interesting in many ways precisely because it is not problematic in its causation. 80 00:08:26,210 --> 00:08:31,310 We also have to try to distinguish between population decline at the national level, 81 00:08:31,310 --> 00:08:35,600 which is what I'm most going to be talking about, and population decline at the subnational level. 82 00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:42,470 Throughout history, it's been normal for cities to grow and other cities to decline merely because the locational advantages 83 00:08:42,470 --> 00:08:49,970 which caused cities to grow in one place one particular time ceased to be operational as circumstances, 84 00:08:49,970 --> 00:08:58,490 economic, geographical trade change, trade routes, change in cities depended upon trade routes may grow or decline correspondingly. 85 00:08:58,490 --> 00:09:03,410 Modes of production changed cities which were once located close to sources of water. 86 00:09:03,410 --> 00:09:10,970 Power for watermills no longer need that and could be located elsewhere is the activity changes because the nature of power changes. 87 00:09:10,970 --> 00:09:18,370 Likewise, one time cities were conveniently grew up in areas where coal resources were were 88 00:09:18,370 --> 00:09:23,030 were abundant for four blast furnaces and other kinds of industrial production. 89 00:09:23,030 --> 00:09:28,790 Likewise, steel factories, steel mills were located in the areas of iron ore. 90 00:09:28,790 --> 00:09:34,010 Other cities are located in other areas of essential rocks and minerals for their processes. 91 00:09:34,010 --> 00:09:39,410 These things change. The economy moves on, the cities decline. Others of a more modern can't grow up. 92 00:09:39,410 --> 00:09:43,910 So it's not necessarily a disaster in the long term. 93 00:09:43,910 --> 00:09:47,930 Anyway, the some cities decline. Liverpool is one example of that. 94 00:09:47,930 --> 00:09:52,820 Often said there is no room in the northwest of Italy to Conservation's Liverpool and Manchester. 95 00:09:52,820 --> 00:09:58,220 The transatlantic trade on which Liverpool flourished is much diminished compared to what it used to be. 96 00:09:58,220 --> 00:10:05,510 It's move to Rotterdam and elsewhere. It would be unreasonable to expect Liverpool to be the same population size as it was fifty years ago, 97 00:10:05,510 --> 00:10:09,890 in exactly the same way as it would be absurd to imagine that Kings Lynn and Norwich, 98 00:10:09,890 --> 00:10:15,620 once premio towns in England, should should maintain their current then rank order. 99 00:10:15,620 --> 00:10:19,850 If they had then kings in Norwich, we now have populations of well over a million. 100 00:10:19,850 --> 00:10:24,380 If they occupy the same rank order as it did say fifteen hundred, that would be absurd. 101 00:10:24,380 --> 00:10:30,800 There's no reason why that should be the case. There's also the question of regional population decline. 102 00:10:30,800 --> 00:10:34,790 Sometimes this is because whole areas lose their economic viability. 103 00:10:34,790 --> 00:10:40,280 The so-called rust belts of of the northeastern United States of northern Britain, 104 00:10:40,280 --> 00:10:44,300 where whole ranges of towns and cities once depended upon coal mining, 105 00:10:44,300 --> 00:10:53,840 steel making, cotton spinning and textile manufacturer have lost their markets to other countries or by the economic activity, 106 00:10:53,840 --> 00:10:55,670 has moved on to more modern processes. 107 00:10:55,670 --> 00:11:03,230 It's tragic for the few populations who live there, but that is something which is bound to happen because of economic development. 108 00:11:03,230 --> 00:11:11,150 And people do move people to find other jobs elsewhere and have done so in large numbers in this country over the last hundred years or so. 109 00:11:11,150 --> 00:11:16,880 First of all, moving up to those areas back in the nineteenth century when there was movement from the south to South Wales, 110 00:11:16,880 --> 00:11:24,260 from the south up north to where the jobs were and now since the Second World War in reverse. 111 00:11:24,260 --> 00:11:36,690 So not necessarily a long term tragedy. I want to talk mostly about national populations, because the decline of cities and regions in a city, 112 00:11:36,690 --> 00:11:41,400 in a country can be counterbalanced by the growth of other cities with newer economies. 113 00:11:41,400 --> 00:11:51,030 Are the regions with your economies in the same country? What matters rather more, I think, in whole populations are declining the national level. 114 00:11:51,030 --> 00:11:55,650 This is the a couple of diagrams showing the beginning of this process of decline. 115 00:11:55,650 --> 00:11:59,400 This is the first evidence of a threat of population decline, 116 00:11:59,400 --> 00:12:06,840 of the actual reality of population decline taking place in Western Europe at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 117 00:12:06,840 --> 00:12:13,780 20th century when birth rates really started to go down in a continuous fashion as a consequence of the fertility transition. 118 00:12:13,780 --> 00:12:25,710 You see on the left the graph labelled a of the period fertility rate in France and below it the the thing irregular line enabled B, 119 00:12:25,710 --> 00:12:31,500 which is the cohort rate, as always, the cohort rate be more stable than that than the period fertility rate. 120 00:12:31,500 --> 00:12:38,910 And you can see it went right down to for about three and a half at the beginning of of the graph 1875, 121 00:12:38,910 --> 00:12:45,540 down to about two in cohort terms by the 1930s and down to about one and a half 122 00:12:45,540 --> 00:12:50,640 in imperial terms during the First World War of considerable cause for alarm. 123 00:12:50,640 --> 00:12:58,320 Because if that trend continued, as may well have been the case, according to contemporary observers at the time, 124 00:12:58,320 --> 00:13:05,670 if the trend a pattern that 25 continued and zero in due course, absurd to us, 125 00:13:05,670 --> 00:13:11,610 but that was a real fear because they did not understand why the birth rate was declining. 126 00:13:11,610 --> 00:13:24,420 So in the case in Germany, here's the total fertility in Germany, 1921 1931, two point three to about one point six here going around that time. 127 00:13:24,420 --> 00:13:32,010 That, of course, continued TFR one point six implies very substantial population decline as well as, of course, very substantial Asia. 128 00:13:32,010 --> 00:13:36,120 Likewise, the similarly low level in France, throughout Europe. 129 00:13:36,120 --> 00:13:41,820 Therefore, at that time, a whole raft of policies intended to encourage fertility, to encourage marriage, 130 00:13:41,820 --> 00:13:47,220 to make the costs of children more affordable by various kinds of subsidies were introduced. 131 00:13:47,220 --> 00:13:53,160 I'll go into that next week. But how far they were affected is unclear. 132 00:13:53,160 --> 00:14:02,650 The advent of the Nazis with their retirement programme and their policy of of encouraging marriage and childbearing may well have had some effect, 133 00:14:02,650 --> 00:14:05,790 as you can see from this graph. But it is controversial. 134 00:14:05,790 --> 00:14:15,120 And what is clear is that despite all the bumps and troughs of baby boomers, of recessions and so on, it's remain, as we all know, 135 00:14:15,120 --> 00:14:20,430 round about to ever since and is now considerably less than to both in both parts of 136 00:14:20,430 --> 00:14:25,920 Germany and France over the birth rate has remained more robust and has been is now, 137 00:14:25,920 --> 00:14:31,570 of course, still the highest in mainland Europe of any important state. 138 00:14:31,570 --> 00:14:36,400 This is some projections made in England and in Germany around that time to show the 139 00:14:36,400 --> 00:14:43,510 depth of the pessimism to which demographers and economists were then experiencing, 140 00:14:43,510 --> 00:14:57,970 this is millions in this scale here, his 10 his 20 or 30 years, 40 and 50, 60, 70 in relation to Germany's larger population. 141 00:14:57,970 --> 00:15:00,080 This is for the more optimistic of the graphs. 142 00:15:00,080 --> 00:15:07,660 This is what happens if the birth rate remained as it then was actually dropped in a child up at about 1935 with sub replacement, you see. 143 00:15:07,660 --> 00:15:14,410 So population growth, momentum, the population would decline and go on declining. 144 00:15:14,410 --> 00:15:18,610 This is if the rate of decline were the rate of decline that remained constant. 145 00:15:18,610 --> 00:15:21,010 And this is where to accelerate. 146 00:15:21,010 --> 00:15:27,880 According to that projection, you see, it would be down to about nine million population in England, Wales by this time. 147 00:15:27,880 --> 00:15:31,270 That has not come to pass, as you may have noticed in Germany, 148 00:15:31,270 --> 00:15:37,750 a similar kinds of projections of various degrees of pessimism, neither of which came to pass. 149 00:15:37,750 --> 00:15:44,200 But but this one in Germany is now coming to pass. Germany has, as you know, already slipped into population decline. 150 00:15:44,200 --> 00:15:49,210 The population of Germans in Germany has been declining for much longer, for several decades now. 151 00:15:49,210 --> 00:15:57,800 So that we may think this is quite amusing at the time, but it is now coming home to roost, as it were, as reality. 152 00:15:57,800 --> 00:16:04,370 This is a sort of pattern which we have in the 1930s to the point of view of net reproduction and total fertility, 153 00:16:04,370 --> 00:16:11,300 quite a lot of countries even back in the 1930s. I'm sorry to remind you about this, but it's very important to keep it in mind. 154 00:16:11,300 --> 00:16:18,980 60 years ago, 70 years ago, populations already had reproduction rates, which were less than one. 155 00:16:18,980 --> 00:16:23,690 That is to say, they are not producing enough children to replace the population in the long run. 156 00:16:23,690 --> 00:16:26,340 Even Australia, just less than one in the world, 157 00:16:26,340 --> 00:16:37,190 is considerably less than one Frances amongst journalists and one New Zealand and Sweden and the US all less than one in that respect, 158 00:16:37,190 --> 00:16:44,720 not the same or even lower than the other present time. The reproduction rate in the US is higher than this. 159 00:16:44,720 --> 00:16:51,440 In Sweden, it's higher than that in New Zealand. It's higher than that in Germany it's lower. 160 00:16:51,440 --> 00:16:55,880 So there's no real consistency about this. These are some surprising reasons. 161 00:16:55,880 --> 00:17:02,510 Total fertility, generally speaking, as you are about to point nought five on the conditions of low mortality, 162 00:17:02,510 --> 00:17:08,690 gives you that reproduction rate of about one point nought. 163 00:17:08,690 --> 00:17:16,070 Interestingly enough to me, anyway, the emphasis back in the nineteen thirties was all about population decline. 164 00:17:16,070 --> 00:17:22,190 They knew about population ageing. And this poster put up in it for an exhibition by the Population Investigation 165 00:17:22,190 --> 00:17:26,480 Committee in 1986 shows they were they were aware about population ageing. 166 00:17:26,480 --> 00:17:33,950 This is a diagram you can't read it very easily, which is the projected change of the age structure of the population from 1935, 167 00:17:33,950 --> 00:17:44,720 which is here up to 2025, that the the red our children ought not to north to 14, the black or old people 65 and over. 168 00:17:44,720 --> 00:17:50,690 You will see at that time a very healthy concentration of population in any way of life in working age. 169 00:17:50,690 --> 00:17:54,740 This was this was the era of the demographic bonus in the Western world. 170 00:17:54,740 --> 00:18:02,480 This bird is shrinking. As time goes on, children become smaller in number of the elderly increase. 171 00:18:02,480 --> 00:18:05,900 This is perceived to be a really major threat by 2050. 172 00:18:05,900 --> 00:18:14,540 Five, the other 65 on this very pessimistic projection reckoned to be, as you see, more or less, 50 percent of the population over pessimistic. 173 00:18:14,540 --> 00:18:20,660 But we are all heading for something around this sort of level in quite a few of the countries. 174 00:18:20,660 --> 00:18:27,740 The well, not so bad in England, but certainly so in, say, Southern Europe or East Asia. 175 00:18:27,740 --> 00:18:32,480 Quite wide population ageing didn't attract the excitement then that it does now. 176 00:18:32,480 --> 00:18:40,550 I'm not quite sure, but it was very much to do with population decline, perhaps population ageing just too far, far away at time. 177 00:18:40,550 --> 00:18:44,450 So what's the current position? 178 00:18:44,450 --> 00:18:51,550 As you know, we've moved sort of out of the end of the demographic transition into this unknown world, this unknown world. 179 00:18:51,550 --> 00:18:55,550 We don't really know where the birth rate is going to go next and where our current 180 00:18:55,550 --> 00:19:00,230 experience in the developed countries shows it pointing in all sorts of different directions 181 00:19:00,230 --> 00:19:06,200 with a range of almost two fold from the one point north of Taiwan to the two point 182 00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:13,520 nought five of France and the US and the one point nine five of the UK and Scandinavia. 183 00:19:13,520 --> 00:19:21,350 So a really not too much of a clue as to which way people are going to decide to go in terms of their reproduction, 184 00:19:21,350 --> 00:19:27,220 looking simply at the range of options on offer in the contemporary world. 185 00:19:27,220 --> 00:19:33,820 We've got the serious decline on offer in central and Eastern Europe, especially in the former Soviet Union, 186 00:19:33,820 --> 00:19:39,610 moderate decline in southern Europe and East Asia for, as I mentioned earlier, a non pathological reasons. 187 00:19:39,610 --> 00:19:47,560 Interestingly, more and more countries in the developing world are also heading for population decline if current trends in the birthrate continue. 188 00:19:47,560 --> 00:19:52,750 Now, you will have seen from the past projections that current trends in the birthrate often don't continue. 189 00:19:52,750 --> 00:19:59,050 Nonetheless, there are good reasons for supposing that the birth rates in many developing countries will continue to decline, 190 00:19:59,050 --> 00:20:04,150 not least because many of the female inhabitants of those countries, 191 00:20:04,150 --> 00:20:10,180 when, when quizzed in surveys, keep saying they are having somewhat more children than they actually want, 192 00:20:10,180 --> 00:20:15,670 and they often regret the last birth that they had as an unmet need for contraception. 193 00:20:15,670 --> 00:20:20,950 The United Nations expects that the birth rates in many developed developing countries will go below 194 00:20:20,950 --> 00:20:26,170 replacement rate and indeed below the level of north Western Europe in the next 30 or 40 years. 195 00:20:26,170 --> 00:20:32,740 The 2010 U.N. population projections suggested all sorts of French rather unexpected countries. 196 00:20:32,740 --> 00:20:36,730 Some of the countries in the Gulf, for example, some countries in Latin America, 197 00:20:36,730 --> 00:20:41,980 some countries in Asia will achieve birth rates lower than that of North Western Europe. 198 00:20:41,980 --> 00:20:44,020 And indeed, apart from tropical Africa, 199 00:20:44,020 --> 00:20:50,710 North Western Europe may they have the highest birth rates in the world for some period of time in the middle of this century 200 00:20:50,710 --> 00:20:58,360 until the postponement goes away in the developing world and their birth rates rise up to something closer to replacement. 201 00:20:58,360 --> 00:21:04,120 So the U.N. thinks anyway, what this means is that by 2050, 202 00:21:04,120 --> 00:21:12,670 about two point four billion people in what's now the developing world are expected to be in populations where the numbers are actually going down, 203 00:21:12,670 --> 00:21:20,560 not up. This would include China, Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan and a number of others, 204 00:21:20,560 --> 00:21:27,060 which perhaps one might not think about in terms of population decline at the present time. 205 00:21:27,060 --> 00:21:34,650 As the global population this is one of those candidates is well known probabilistic projections of which 206 00:21:34,650 --> 00:21:40,740 the thin red line in the middle is the media and perhaps the thing to to accommodate these bandshell, 207 00:21:40,740 --> 00:21:45,750 increasing uncertainty of projection as time goes on, according to this formulation. 208 00:21:45,750 --> 00:21:52,170 And as you see around about 2070, that expectation is the population will start to go down on a global stage. 209 00:21:52,170 --> 00:21:55,230 This is not mean, naturally, that every country in the world is going down. 210 00:21:55,230 --> 00:22:00,060 On the contrary, this will be a mixture of populations, some of which will be in decline. 211 00:22:00,060 --> 00:22:07,550 Others which almost certainly in tropical Africa will still be increasing quite vigorously. 212 00:22:07,550 --> 00:22:14,420 And we see a similar diversity, if you look at the major regions of of Europe, the US here is in blue, 213 00:22:14,420 --> 00:22:19,820 just as a contrast, Eastern Europe is red on top, already in decline since the end of communism. 214 00:22:19,820 --> 00:22:23,660 Northern Europe at the bottom in orange, still growing quite vigorously. 215 00:22:23,660 --> 00:22:28,310 And the regions in the middle are somewhat intermediate. And a similar contrast. 216 00:22:28,310 --> 00:22:35,840 If we look at different countries in Europe, the red line at the top is Germany already just slipped into decline and projected 217 00:22:35,840 --> 00:22:41,960 to be overtaken by the U.K. and possibly also by France by by mid century. 218 00:22:41,960 --> 00:22:49,610 These are only projections and the projection for the UK, for example, particularly assumes continued migration at the present, 219 00:22:49,610 --> 00:22:54,620 but even higher than the present high level of assumed 130000 net four years. 220 00:22:54,620 --> 00:23:01,070 If that if that drops, then that graph will not intersect the graph of Germany's growth. 221 00:23:01,070 --> 00:23:10,370 And these are these are four major countries already in decline, Germany, Japan, Russian Federation and the Ukraine. 222 00:23:10,370 --> 00:23:17,860 I think you can pass over that. This is an extreme example of a pessimistic population projection. 223 00:23:17,860 --> 00:23:22,450 You may feel it echoes the the unwise pessimism of the 1930s. 224 00:23:22,450 --> 00:23:30,250 Nonetheless, it's certainly interesting that our unofficial national website is possible to find a projection of a country's extinction. 225 00:23:30,250 --> 00:23:38,740 This is a very long range population projection of the population of Japan from the present time, up to about 2000 to about 3000. 226 00:23:38,740 --> 00:23:45,430 It's an awful long way into the future, so that quite a lot can go wrong with that projection, as you might imagine. 227 00:23:45,430 --> 00:23:51,110 Nonetheless, it's instructive because it does show in the blue line the decline in the population. 228 00:23:51,110 --> 00:23:55,880 This side of the graph here, about 130 million at the present time. 229 00:23:55,880 --> 00:24:05,780 Here's two thousand one hundred, then down to about 60 or 70 million by boat by two thousand two hundred, but down to about 10 million. 230 00:24:05,780 --> 00:24:11,740 And then the last Japanese is wandering about vaguely around this time. 231 00:24:11,740 --> 00:24:15,370 And then the last day is another march anymore. More Japanese. 232 00:24:15,370 --> 00:24:23,150 I find that that projection from the national security population such profoundly and unrealistically pessimistic, 233 00:24:23,150 --> 00:24:28,020 it assumes a continuous TFR of one point three, four, forever and ever. 234 00:24:28,020 --> 00:24:32,890 I'm sure it's not going to happen for all sorts of reasons. There is one instructive aspect to this graph. 235 00:24:32,890 --> 00:24:40,160 You will forgive me, draw your attention to that is to say that while some replacement fertility. 236 00:24:40,160 --> 00:24:47,450 Generates continuous population decline, this is assuming no migration. Nonetheless, it does not imply continuous population ageing. 237 00:24:47,450 --> 00:24:52,600 These shaded areas here show the proportion of the population aged. 238 00:24:52,600 --> 00:25:03,880 Not to 14 in this band here, 50 to 64 up here and 65 and about, you know, of all the ageing is concentrated in the first 50 years or so. 239 00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:09,070 Absolutely. As population 30 really want to expect population. 240 00:25:09,070 --> 00:25:13,660 Age structure depends entirely on the balance between constant birth rates and constant death rates. 241 00:25:13,660 --> 00:25:17,950 Once the birth and death rates have been in operation for two generations, 242 00:25:17,950 --> 00:25:26,080 a new population structure comes into existence different from the previous one, forgotten its past and is maintained permanently. 243 00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:26,890 From that time onwards, 244 00:25:26,890 --> 00:25:34,960 there's no further deterioration in the pattern of population ageing from 50 years after the beginning of the drop in the birth rate. 245 00:25:34,960 --> 00:25:41,320 No matter how long it goes on for population decline, there is continuous. 246 00:25:41,320 --> 00:25:50,230 Well, I mentioned the US already, I think this is just an example of how much migration matters in the future populations of Europe. 247 00:25:50,230 --> 00:25:54,640 I mentioned that that Japanese projection assumed there would be no migration. 248 00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:58,630 There is some in Japan, not very much, but it is assumed know migration. 249 00:25:58,630 --> 00:26:01,930 This is a projection for Sweden after mid century, 250 00:26:01,930 --> 00:26:08,980 showing that the projected population assuming migration, which is the red line going up, as you see, 251 00:26:08,980 --> 00:26:12,670 and the projected population assuming no migration either in or out, 252 00:26:12,670 --> 00:26:19,030 which is the blue line showing some increase arising out of residual population momentum, but then a gradual decline. 253 00:26:19,030 --> 00:26:23,830 That's pretty much par for the course in many European countries. 254 00:26:23,830 --> 00:26:28,450 This is the case for the United Kingdom. This is the 2008 population projection. 255 00:26:28,450 --> 00:26:37,690 The 2010 world is quite similar. So I'm not ashamed. Having shown this slightly obsolete diagram, the blue line here is the only central projection, 256 00:26:37,690 --> 00:26:46,220 assuming a TFR of one point eight four, it's now higher, actually, assuming net migration of 180000 is now 250000. 257 00:26:46,220 --> 00:26:50,290 So we can take the high migration option as being more likely one. 258 00:26:50,290 --> 00:26:58,960 And this here is a projection. If there's no migration at all in or out, so-called natural change population, as with Sweden, 259 00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:04,510 there's an increase thanks to population momentum, quite a large one, actually, up to about 65. 260 00:27:04,510 --> 00:27:09,640 And then it declines gradually and doesn't go back to its previous levels until two thousand sixty one. 261 00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:16,930 So one still encounters newspaper comments about Britain's declining population, Britain's declining birthrate. 262 00:27:16,930 --> 00:27:20,620 This is total fantasy. Britain is not declining. 263 00:27:20,620 --> 00:27:28,060 And even if there were no migration at all, as you see, the population will continue its present level for the next 50 years or so. 264 00:27:28,060 --> 00:27:33,910 This is a particularly powerful example of the effect of migration on population change in north Western Europe. 265 00:27:33,910 --> 00:27:41,440 Most of the Scandinavian countries also have quite a lot of migration, but perhaps not not quite as much as in that graph there. 266 00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:46,570 This shows how migration matters in different, different countries. 267 00:27:46,570 --> 00:27:56,190 The blue line, the blue bar here, rather. Is the percent of projected population changed in this century with migration? 268 00:27:56,190 --> 00:28:05,190 This is a scale here, as you see, this would imply about 25 percent population growth in Norway, assuming migration levels. 269 00:28:05,190 --> 00:28:12,040 His UK, assuming that 23 percent population growth and migration, the then current levels. 270 00:28:12,040 --> 00:28:16,380 And so here, Sweden, Spain, France, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, 271 00:28:16,380 --> 00:28:26,010 Italy and Germany arranged in declining order of projected population size increase with migration without migration. 272 00:28:26,010 --> 00:28:30,120 And we have the Dakar's Norway slow growth, UK still grows faster growth. 273 00:28:30,120 --> 00:28:36,660 All the others decline to modest or quite substantial degrees and Germany declines 274 00:28:36,660 --> 00:28:41,250 whether there is migration or whether there's no migration on that projection. 275 00:28:41,250 --> 00:28:49,410 And I keep on saying or projections are subject to considerable error and depends entirely on their assumptions. 276 00:28:49,410 --> 00:28:54,470 That I think we can dispense with. 277 00:28:54,470 --> 00:29:05,150 So back to the dynamics of the matter, um, the interest recently, unlike the 1930s, Michigan ageing are not in decline. 278 00:29:05,150 --> 00:29:11,420 It's sometimes thought that one causes the other somehow. Rather, this is not the case for population. 279 00:29:11,420 --> 00:29:15,150 Ageing doesn't cause decline. Population decline doesn't cause ageing. They're both. 280 00:29:15,150 --> 00:29:22,060 The consequence of underlying processes in birth and death and migration are usually low birthrate. 281 00:29:22,060 --> 00:29:27,350 Low birth rates typically cause both of these things. One does not cause the other. 282 00:29:27,350 --> 00:29:33,560 As far as the other factors are concerned, immigration of the usual pattern, normally moderate's population, 283 00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:37,610 ageing and also normally moderates or reverse this population decline for obvious reasons. 284 00:29:37,610 --> 00:29:45,920 Sometimes it doesn't. When you have retired English people and Germans and Dutch people migrating to the cost of geriatric care in Spain, 285 00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:53,630 then of course the next population older, not younger. But that's our exceptional decline in the death rate has an opposite effect. 286 00:29:53,630 --> 00:29:57,470 Decline in the death rate makes population ageing worse. 287 00:29:57,470 --> 00:30:07,000 That makes population decline less less bad for obvious reasons and more people, even though they're older and possibly not working. 288 00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:20,600 And this is an example of diversion effects of mortality recorded on population size and and structure. 289 00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:27,830 So what are the consequences, why do people get concerned about this, particularly economists and businessmen? 290 00:30:27,830 --> 00:30:30,350 The worry is that the. 291 00:30:30,350 --> 00:30:38,270 Benefits of population growth, which many assumed to be axiomatic, as long as it's not too high, we'll simply get removed or even reversed. 292 00:30:38,270 --> 00:30:47,660 If population growth ceases and if numbers go into decline, it's not unreasonable to assume there are benefits in large population which are growing, 293 00:30:47,660 --> 00:30:52,040 which I briefly detailed right at the beginning questions, 294 00:30:52,040 --> 00:31:00,170 security, questions of a large workforce, the capacity to raise large armies, to confront external threats, 295 00:31:00,170 --> 00:31:05,960 and the way in which population used to be regarded as the major factor of production. 296 00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:08,810 And it's still a very important factor of production. 297 00:31:08,810 --> 00:31:16,280 And the absence of this is perceived with with very considerable distress by some economists and businessmen, particularly across the Atlantic. 298 00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:22,070 Less so perhaps here. Alfred Sauvie was a very noted French theoretician of population. 299 00:31:22,070 --> 00:31:28,700 France, for historical reasons, as you know, is that we are traditionally, instinctively paternalist. 300 00:31:28,700 --> 00:31:36,830 So we consider that that population size really was very important and the population decline should be avoided. 301 00:31:36,830 --> 00:31:44,360 And although he also pointed out the different levels of population growth benefited different components of the population, 302 00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:50,870 a very large population which might somewhat impoverish the individual, was best for the state because it gave the state more power, 303 00:31:50,870 --> 00:31:58,010 more tax, bigger armies, a smaller population might give individuals a better chance because it meant that workers were 304 00:31:58,010 --> 00:32:03,200 more scarce and therefore command higher wages and therefore accrues themselves a higher slice, 305 00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:11,360 as it were, of the national cake. So he was also keen on the idea that population ageing and population decline was bad intellectually, 306 00:32:11,360 --> 00:32:21,080 that in his memorable phrase that countries were defining populations were characterised by old men and old buildings thinking old ideas. 307 00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:28,400 He also pointed out that many others have pointed out the large populations and growing populations permit economies of scale in manufacture. 308 00:32:28,400 --> 00:32:31,730 If you can make things on a large scale, sell them on a large scale, you could do it more cheaply, 309 00:32:31,730 --> 00:32:40,400 more profitably than if you're doing it on a sort of cottage industry basis and you have a large domestic market in insulates you from from the 310 00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:48,590 vagaries of international exchange rates and the failure of demand in overseas countries whose economies you have no no control whatsoever. 311 00:32:48,590 --> 00:32:55,310 So a number of perfectly cogent reasons for thinking the population growth and large populations are 312 00:32:55,310 --> 00:33:03,660 rather beneficial for the national economy and ipso facto for the people who are living in that economy. 313 00:33:03,660 --> 00:33:15,750 The downside is, is, however, more interesting, it appears that even though you can show that that gross domestic product naturally, 314 00:33:15,750 --> 00:33:24,120 inevitably gets bigger as populations get bigger because gross domestic product is has a very important factor of population built into it. 315 00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:31,890 Nonetheless, there's no evidence that gross domestic product per head, which is a very crude proxy for for individual income, 316 00:33:31,890 --> 00:33:37,050 has any is affected at all by population growth or decline in the developed world. 317 00:33:37,050 --> 00:33:41,190 I'm not talking about the developing world or by population size. In fact, slightly the reverse. 318 00:33:41,190 --> 00:33:51,120 As I show in a moment when the Royal Commission on Population came to inspect this problem of population decline back in the 1930s, 319 00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:57,480 the first time that population have really been addressed by a collection of experts appointed by the government, 320 00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:02,550 they pointed out that population growth generated or could generate a balance of payments problems, 321 00:34:02,550 --> 00:34:09,150 a chronic difficulty for this country that as now and increased import dependency for food and raw materials, 322 00:34:09,150 --> 00:34:16,170 particularly in respect of a country which like this one, is not about losing land area and whose population is rather larger than it's easy 323 00:34:16,170 --> 00:34:24,030 to to to feed excess elementary level for its own domestic agricultural projects. 324 00:34:24,030 --> 00:34:29,550 There's another downside of population growth in that if there's a constant increase in the supply of labour, 325 00:34:29,550 --> 00:34:33,540 either from a high birthrate or from immigration or from both, 326 00:34:33,540 --> 00:34:38,430 it means that marginal populations can be ignored when you have populations 327 00:34:38,430 --> 00:34:42,810 of young people who are who are not in employment or education or training. 328 00:34:42,810 --> 00:34:47,340 So who needs you now? Number a million in this country aged between 16 and 24. 329 00:34:47,340 --> 00:34:54,930 It doesn't matter all that much from the point of view of labour supply because there's a good supply coming in from overseas, 330 00:34:54,930 --> 00:34:58,870 for example, which, of course, is generating population growth. 331 00:34:58,870 --> 00:35:04,590 If you have population growth, it means you can continue producing the same old stuff in the same old way, 332 00:35:04,590 --> 00:35:09,240 possibly an increasing volume merely by increasing the labour input, 333 00:35:09,240 --> 00:35:15,510 not by putting putting in more capital and therefore thereby improving productivity and ultimately, 334 00:35:15,510 --> 00:35:18,840 therefore improving the rates of growth of incomes. 335 00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:24,690 The only way in which incomes really grow in the long run is by productivity increases, not by increasing the total output, 336 00:35:24,690 --> 00:35:29,910 merely by increasing the number of people who are churning out the same old stuff in the same way. 337 00:35:29,910 --> 00:35:31,980 There's also the downside, again, 338 00:35:31,980 --> 00:35:41,610 in a population inhabiting a limited land area that housing costs in richer things keep on going up and a rather larger than otherwise 339 00:35:41,610 --> 00:35:48,390 proportion of national income has to be devoted to building new houses as opposed to renewing old ones or other kinds of improvement. 340 00:35:48,390 --> 00:35:56,080 And the effect on the environment is, I think, pretty obvious, certainly to most of us here. 341 00:35:56,080 --> 00:36:00,400 This depends very much upon the density of the population, 342 00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:07,720 if the population is living in a continental sized landmass like the United States or like Canada or like Russia, 343 00:36:07,720 --> 00:36:12,930 there are many of these problems of population growth, particularly those related to overcrowding, 344 00:36:12,930 --> 00:36:20,330 to environmental damage, to cost of housing, are going to be very small if nonexistent. 345 00:36:20,330 --> 00:36:27,050 It's understandable, therefore, the population is dealing with enormous amounts of space to their disposal, especially the United States, 346 00:36:27,050 --> 00:36:35,880 to some extent, Australia, Russia also should not be concerned about about population growth, but instead should fear population decline. 347 00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:41,870 More understandable, the population like the Netherlands, Britain, many others, north west Europe, with much more restricted land areas, 348 00:36:41,870 --> 00:36:50,600 much more restricted capacity for increasing agricultural output, and all the rest should be more concerned. 349 00:36:50,600 --> 00:36:55,820 I return again to the issue of the process of decline versus being small. 350 00:36:55,820 --> 00:37:03,080 It's understandable the process of decline should cause a certain amount of of alarm and despondency, 351 00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:06,680 particularly to those involved in investing for the future. 352 00:37:06,680 --> 00:37:16,490 A decline in numbers is, generally speaking, a sort of conventional indicator anyway of of a failure and withdrawal. 353 00:37:16,490 --> 00:37:22,100 If you're an investor, then it's very helpful. If you can look forward to a projected increase in customers, 354 00:37:22,100 --> 00:37:27,140 a projected increase in the workforce, who will buy your products and make your products? 355 00:37:27,140 --> 00:37:31,530 Of course, the alternative for that is, is to export more. 356 00:37:31,530 --> 00:37:39,530 And indeed, small countries tend to export a higher proportion of their GDP than the large countries do for entirely obvious and sensible reasons. 357 00:37:39,530 --> 00:37:47,300 The failure of demand arising out of population decline alarm both Maltose and Keynes and many others as possible, 358 00:37:47,300 --> 00:37:56,120 leading to it to a negative spiral of downward economic recession, the contraction of certain kinds of infrastructure, schools, colleges and so on. 359 00:37:56,120 --> 00:38:00,020 The decline remaining population may be regarded either as a benefit or is a problem, 360 00:38:00,020 --> 00:38:04,760 depending on on whether you can redeploy the personnel involved or whether 361 00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:15,460 the buildings can be converted to some of the more competitive markets that. 362 00:38:15,460 --> 00:38:25,710 Um. I suppose you would, but you would at least have a bigger playing field, as it were, in which to expand your activities, 363 00:38:25,710 --> 00:38:35,280 whereas if you imagine if you got a declining market and even the same number of individuals still producing the same goods and services, 364 00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:42,090 then the competition has got to get tighter and that some of those producers or innovators drop out of the market by being bankrupt. 365 00:38:42,090 --> 00:38:51,520 And that might be you. So I think it's not a wholly irrational fear. 366 00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:56,590 This is just a graph to show that population growth and size within the Western world, 367 00:38:56,590 --> 00:39:00,610 it's important to emphasise, doesn't appear to have any bearing on individual welfare. 368 00:39:00,610 --> 00:39:04,600 This is this is what we got here. I can't read the writing is so small. 369 00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:13,120 This is GDP per per head and population size in Western countries and Japan around 2000. 370 00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:20,680 And as you can see, there really is if there is a relationship, it is it is a very slight one. 371 00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:26,050 It and it would appear from this the smaller countries on the whole do slightly better. 372 00:39:26,050 --> 00:39:31,150 The relationship is, in fact not statistically significant, but certainly not the case that small countries do badly. 373 00:39:31,150 --> 00:39:35,170 And all you have to do is think of some of the small countries in Europe, Denmark, Switzerland, 374 00:39:35,170 --> 00:39:42,730 Sweden, notoriously the most prosperous ones in Europe by some degree, the smallest one of any size. 375 00:39:42,730 --> 00:39:46,390 Luxembourg has by far the biggest GDP per head. But that's rather a special case. 376 00:39:46,390 --> 00:39:49,420 And I would I would pray that in aid of my of my argument, 377 00:39:49,420 --> 00:39:56,260 this is a relationship between the growth of the GDP on the one hand, and the growth of population in Western countries. 378 00:39:56,260 --> 00:40:04,290 As you see, again, there's no relationship. Of course, you may argue that in due course, given a few decades of population decline in Germany, 379 00:40:04,290 --> 00:40:07,840 in Japan, in other countries, this relationship may change. 380 00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:14,540 That may well happen. But at the moment, it doesn't seem to be of any importance. 381 00:40:14,540 --> 00:40:22,850 So what about being smaller? Well, I feel small. Of course you haven't in the nature of things, got such a big voice on the international scene. 382 00:40:22,850 --> 00:40:28,010 You can't so easily defend yourself against your neighbours. You've got to join alliances. 383 00:40:28,010 --> 00:40:35,900 Nonetheless, you may be rather crucial in those alliances, depending on which side you choose to be on. 384 00:40:35,900 --> 00:40:41,570 And also, it means that if you're small and can't defend yourself, you can cut your defence spending. 385 00:40:41,570 --> 00:40:49,940 A small countries in NATO do not contribute very much to NATO's budget in proportion to their numbers. 386 00:40:49,940 --> 00:40:55,290 It may mean that you can't generate. 387 00:40:55,290 --> 00:41:03,570 Technical innovations of your own, of a kind which are very demanding of capital, as Wolfgang Lutz points out, quite a lot. 388 00:41:03,570 --> 00:41:10,260 Nonetheless, it's instructive to see that quite small countries like Sweden, with a population of just under 10 million, 389 00:41:10,260 --> 00:41:13,770 managed to produce a very large number of highly innovative products, 390 00:41:13,770 --> 00:41:19,770 particularly the defence field where there were the intent to be self-sufficient, to be a neutral non native country. 391 00:41:19,770 --> 00:41:23,850 And Finland, with an even smaller population, is the homeland of Nokia, 392 00:41:23,850 --> 00:41:28,110 which produces many of the mobiles in your handbags and pockets at the present time. 393 00:41:28,110 --> 00:41:32,490 So it's maybe the present level of average population size in Europe. 394 00:41:32,490 --> 00:41:37,920 About five million isn't so small that it cuts out technical innovation altogether, which you can't do very, 395 00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:46,980 very large things, of course, but it doesn't seem to to obviate high tech development or rather impressive kind. 396 00:41:46,980 --> 00:41:49,560 There's also the case that if you're smaller, 397 00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:58,230 it may encourage a more equal society if you have do not have large reserves of manpower to to rely upon. 398 00:41:58,230 --> 00:42:01,470 Assuming, of course, that migration is not large, 399 00:42:01,470 --> 00:42:09,510 then it means that workers may be rather scarce and that means that workers may be able to demand higher wages than otherwise would be the case. 400 00:42:09,510 --> 00:42:11,460 That being the case, 401 00:42:11,460 --> 00:42:18,060 it may be expected that the population would be rather more equal in terms of its incomes and a living wage would be the case in a large population. 402 00:42:18,060 --> 00:42:27,380 I don't know if there is actually a statistical relationship of that kind. It's something we'll take a look at, but it is a possibility. 403 00:42:27,380 --> 00:42:30,290 What is the actual experience? 404 00:42:30,290 --> 00:42:36,440 Well, we haven't got much recent experience, as I mentioned, it's only just recently that populations have started tipping into decline. 405 00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:40,190 Migration has moderated this decline and prevented it happening. 406 00:42:40,190 --> 00:42:42,560 There've been no migration and the population of Germany, 407 00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:49,040 of Italy and other European countries would have been in decline for much longer overall than has been the case. 408 00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:57,660 And we do have a few examples. Some countries, of course, have lost population by boundary changes. 409 00:42:57,660 --> 00:43:02,460 Austria lost a huge part of its population when the Hungarian empire collapsed in 1918. 410 00:43:02,460 --> 00:43:15,060 Germany lost a huge area of population where East Prussia was transferred to Poland, where 12 million Germans to emigrate back to Germany. 411 00:43:15,060 --> 00:43:21,450 But. But. But some stayed put. And the U.K. lost population when one and left the United Kingdom in 1920. 412 00:43:21,450 --> 00:43:26,040 One or two. There's no discernable effect on GDP per head. 413 00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:31,650 Of course, it may be argued that what was being lost were marginal unless well-off populations. 414 00:43:31,650 --> 00:43:40,410 I'd hazard a guess that if Scotland succeeds the United Kingdom, then the per capita GDP of what's left will be higher than previously was the case. 415 00:43:40,410 --> 00:43:47,310 The example of population decline in Europe in the 19th century and into the 20th was Ireland. 416 00:43:47,310 --> 00:43:50,880 The Irish population started to decline for about eight million or so at the time of the 417 00:43:50,880 --> 00:43:57,000 potato famine in 1846 and had gone down to about three and a half or four million by 1950, 418 00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:01,140 despite the fact the birth rate remained very high over that period. 419 00:44:01,140 --> 00:44:07,470 Nonetheless, immigration became so ingrained in national habits that a third of each birth cohort emigrated. 420 00:44:07,470 --> 00:44:12,450 The population kept on declining. Nonetheless, per capita income kept on increasing. 421 00:44:12,450 --> 00:44:16,800 Whether it would have increased further had the population remained high is not clear. 422 00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:22,730 Although Ireland was regarded as being very overpopulated as an agricultural country back in the 1950s. 423 00:44:22,730 --> 00:44:29,520 And likewise, a period of decline in West Germany in the 1980s was not accompanied by any blip in the economy, 424 00:44:29,520 --> 00:44:31,770 although to be sure, it was a very short period. 425 00:44:31,770 --> 00:44:38,430 And perhaps that is too, too short a period to judge when there are one or two ancient historical examples, 426 00:44:38,430 --> 00:44:44,430 very convenient historical example, because it was unlike the present period of population decline, 427 00:44:44,430 --> 00:44:49,740 not associated with population ageing, which therefore was quite a handy natural experiment, 428 00:44:49,740 --> 00:44:52,720 although not so agreeable for those who are obliged to take part in it. 429 00:44:52,720 --> 00:45:00,210 I'm, of course, talking about the very substantial reduction of population which took place in Europe and many other areas, including China, 430 00:45:00,210 --> 00:45:06,780 from the Black Death of the of the mid 14th century that took the population of Europe down to about two 431 00:45:06,780 --> 00:45:11,970 thirds of the previous level and kept it at that low level for the next hundred and fifty years or so. 432 00:45:11,970 --> 00:45:18,570 The consequence appears to have been, according to many but not all economic historians, that the capita income, 433 00:45:18,570 --> 00:45:26,160 especially of Labellers peasants, agricultural workers, building workers, went up substantially. 434 00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:29,340 Some economic historians call it the golden age of the peasant, 435 00:45:29,340 --> 00:45:35,610 simply for the reason that but by by becoming scarce while the area of land remained the same, 436 00:45:35,610 --> 00:45:39,510 while the number of of magnates and feudal overlords remained the same, 437 00:45:39,510 --> 00:45:49,020 they could command higher wages for their services, or they could erode the feudal system by obliging feudal landlords to commute a service, 438 00:45:49,020 --> 00:45:58,590 compulsory service in the Lords fields to to rent payments of more and more rational kind. 439 00:45:58,590 --> 00:46:02,220 And you can see from this graph that this is a rather long range, ambitious graph. 440 00:46:02,220 --> 00:46:07,050 It starts at thirteen hundred here, ends up at nineteen hundred and thirteen here. 441 00:46:07,050 --> 00:46:11,190 These are the real wages of unskilled construction workers in European cities, 442 00:46:11,190 --> 00:46:16,020 construction workers, because it's only in buildings that there are regular payments, 443 00:46:16,020 --> 00:46:25,830 regular records of payments made cathedrals, castles, royal palaces, buildings, a very long, long life which have records of very long life. 444 00:46:25,830 --> 00:46:30,330 They're content. They contain records of the wages paid to labour so we can reconstruct indices. 445 00:46:30,330 --> 00:46:35,250 Anyway, this is where I hear this is Istanbul. 446 00:46:35,250 --> 00:46:40,630 This is Florence and Milan. This is Antwerp and Amsterdam. And this is London. 447 00:46:40,630 --> 00:46:46,740 And as you can see, there's a very considerable increase in the real wages on this index here. 448 00:46:46,740 --> 00:46:50,580 The scale doesn't matter from from before that. 449 00:46:50,580 --> 00:46:56,730 The Black Death up to after the black death, which is maintained, then declines gradually as time goes on. 450 00:46:56,730 --> 00:47:01,380 And only and then it really gets much bigger right at the end of the 19th century. 451 00:47:01,380 --> 00:47:11,490 So some evidence of an improvement in wages of ordinary people in real terms, an improvement in conditions of life because of its corrosive effect. 452 00:47:11,490 --> 00:47:13,770 So it's the claim on the feudal system. 453 00:47:13,770 --> 00:47:23,280 And also it is also claimed an impetus to rather a better means of production and impetus is claimed for more efficient kinds of watermills, 454 00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:34,530 windmill's other kinds of techniques, admittedly, of a simple kind by our standards, but an advance in terms of the Middle Ages. 455 00:47:34,530 --> 00:47:41,790 The question is, how far is this reduction of population a feedback effect? 456 00:47:41,790 --> 00:47:47,110 We rather cease to think about feedback effects in bottom population dynamics, 457 00:47:47,110 --> 00:47:53,160 the connexion between population size and growth on the one hand, and individual family behaviour on the other hand, 458 00:47:53,160 --> 00:48:03,570 which is which is evidenced and documented quite well in reality in Schofields work on the relation between population, real wages, marriage, 459 00:48:03,570 --> 00:48:12,930 the birth rate and back to population again in the Schofields reconstruction of England's population from 15 Seventy-one, 15, 51 to 1871. 460 00:48:12,930 --> 00:48:15,720 That's that's thought to be a thing of the past. 461 00:48:15,720 --> 00:48:21,900 In recent thinking, there's been disconnection between population phenomena on the one hand and family decision making on the other. 462 00:48:21,900 --> 00:48:29,550 Maybe that's not right. Maybe what we're seeing seeing in terms of some replacement fertility for a while is a kind of 463 00:48:29,550 --> 00:48:36,540 delayed response to to to population size and the effects of density on on on wage competition, 464 00:48:36,540 --> 00:48:42,450 the effects of density on on on accommodation prices and so on, 465 00:48:42,450 --> 00:48:54,000 which is overshot because once once conditions of life start to become apparent in such a way that families start limiting their size 466 00:48:54,000 --> 00:49:01,770 because that the the there's no benefit in having additional children and a considerable pressure on individual standards of living. 467 00:49:01,770 --> 00:49:06,300 Once that starts happening, there's still lots of growth left in the population because as you know, 468 00:49:06,300 --> 00:49:14,700 population momentum means even when families have reduced their family size to a level which they find convenient to say to children, 469 00:49:14,700 --> 00:49:22,050 population will continue to grow because of the accumulated inheritance of a youthful population structure from the past. 470 00:49:22,050 --> 00:49:29,970 And it will take 25, 30, 40, 50 years for that to to to to burn itself out in terms of population growth. 471 00:49:29,970 --> 00:49:36,900 So the population will continue to grow for longer and become bigger than was even was the case when, 472 00:49:36,900 --> 00:49:41,910 let's say it helped to induce families to limit their birth to a lower level. 473 00:49:41,910 --> 00:49:48,150 Consequently, it become too large in relation to the contemporary family size. 474 00:49:48,150 --> 00:49:56,040 Maybe, therefore, a family size will go down as a consequence until such time as a population size has gone down again 475 00:49:56,040 --> 00:50:02,190 and things can accelerate and and the birthrate can recover replacement of a highly speculative idea. 476 00:50:02,190 --> 00:50:04,320 So it's that there isn't really very much evidence, frankly. 477 00:50:04,320 --> 00:50:11,790 But but it would it would be one way of imagining the reconnection of population size and growth to talk to 478 00:50:11,790 --> 00:50:17,400 family behaviour and also might help to explain why birth rates are so low in so many parts of the world, 479 00:50:17,400 --> 00:50:26,370 including simple, not simple societies, including the developing world outside Europe, of which more later. 480 00:50:26,370 --> 00:50:32,800 So. Why are a population decline some reasons to worry about it, but but not others? 481 00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:39,950 I think it's the end of the day it's going to be inevitable thanks to global climate change that's going to depress population, 482 00:50:39,950 --> 00:50:49,280 whether we like it or not. And the sooner that we start limiting our numbers in terms of global climate change to avert harmful consequences, 483 00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:55,390 then the better that our arguments in favour of population size of a very long standing, 484 00:50:55,390 --> 00:51:05,140 but not thereby irrational kind of to do with power and security and investment, there's no advantage to the individual from population growth. 485 00:51:05,140 --> 00:51:13,390 It would appear a no harm either from modest, modest decline and certainly no relationship between between per capita income, 486 00:51:13,390 --> 00:51:20,410 individual welfare on the one hand, and population size of countries in the modern developed world. 487 00:51:20,410 --> 00:51:26,180 Important, rather, the process of decline on the one hand and being small or big on the other are different. 488 00:51:26,180 --> 00:51:33,400 Also important to remember that population decline does not cause population ageing and population ageing does not cause population decline. 489 00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:38,920 They are parallel developments of similar with similar causes underlying them. 490 00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:43,810 So on that uncertain note, I will stop and resume the story on Thursday. 491 00:51:43,810 --> 00:51:47,248 Thank you.