Laurence Smith - The World in 2050 - Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future

Is an elderly population a good thing or bad? Clearly, there are some benefits: perhaps a wiser, less violent society, for example. But it also strains health care systems, 83and from an economic perspective it absolutely raises the burden on younger workers. Economists stare hard at something called the “elderly dependency ratio,” usually calculated as the percentage of people aged sixty-five or older relative to those of “working age,” between fifteen and sixty-four. 84By the year 2050, elderly dependency ratios will be higher all around the world. Some places, like Korea, Spain, and Italy, will have elderly dependency ratios exceeding 60%. That’s barely sixteen people of working age for every ten elders. Japan, with a dependency ratio of 74%, will have only thirteen.

Elsewhere, the overall dependency ratio will be lower but the transition shock greater. Relative to 2010, dependency ratios will more than quadruple in Iran, Singapore, and Korea. They will more than triple in China, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, Turkey, Algeria, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. Many of these places today have large youthful workforces that attract global business in its tireless search for labor. But by 2050, the United States may find itself in the unfamiliar position of being unable to find enough migrant farm laborers from Mexico’s aging workforce.

Clearly, the whole concept of “retirement” is about to undergo a major overhaul. People will have to work later in life, at least part-time, and perhaps as long as they are able. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as there is some evidence that most people are actually happier with a phased retirement 85just so long as they perceive a sense of choice in the matter. 86On the other hand, a “gray crime wave” has now begun in Japan: Arrests of struggling pensioners over age sixty-five has doubled—mostly for shoplifting and pickpocketing—and the number incarcerated has tripled to over 10% of Japan’s prison population. 87It is also apparent that some big cultural shifts will be needed in the way we treat and value our elderly. “Our society must learn that ageing and youth should be valued equally,” writes Leonard Hayflick of the UCSF School of Medicine, “if for no other reason than the youth in developed countries have an excellent chance of experiencing the phenomenon that they may now hold in such low esteem.” 88

Another thing about to undergo a major overhaul is how the countries treat and value foreign immigrants. As the world grays, skilled young people will become an increasingly coveted resource, both for direct immigration and for globalized labor pools abroad. This creates the opportunity for new economic tigers to emerge when today’s “youth bulges” mature into “worker bulges” in Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia—countries offering a reasonably educated workforce and business-friendly environment. 89A graying world also bodes well for women’s employment in places that currently discourage it, because allowing women into the labor pool is the quickest and easiest way to double it. Countries where women don’t work for religious and/or cultural reasons will experience an increasingly powerful economic incentive to abandon that tradition by 2050.

The following point will become particularly important later in this book. In an aging world, those countries best able to attract skilled foreign workers will fare best. The early signs of a migrant planet are already here. In 2008, some two hundred million people—3% of the world population—were living outside their native countries. In most OECD countries the proportion of foreign-born was over 10%, even in countries like Greece and Ireland, where emigrants used to flow out, not in. 90Foreign workers benefit their homelands as well as host economies: The World Bank estimates overseas remittances to poor countries was USD $283 billion in 2008, constituting a huge share of GDP in countries like Tajikistan (46%), Moldova (38%), and Lebanon (24%).

What about in 2050, when the nursing homes in Mexico, China, and Iran are packed full? Who will be running the computers and caring for the residents? Unless the entire world has entered a full-blown robotic age by then, we will still need young people around to do things. Where on Earth will they come from?

This is harder to project demographically, because those young people haven’t been born yet. But based on current population structures, the most youthful countries in 2050 will be the same ones where fertility rates are highest today—in the world’s least modernized places. Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, the West Bank and Gaza, Ethiopia, and much of sub-Saharan Africa will offer our world’s youth in 2050.

It’s a critical but open question whether our poorest countries can convert their forthcoming demographic advantages into the new skilled workforces needed to help care for an elderly world. Just having a bunch of young people running around is not enough. Huge improvements in education, governance, and security are also required. Women will have to start attending school and working in places where this is uncommon today. Terrorism must be sufficiently quelled such that the countries that need young workers will accept immigrants from the countries that have them. I hope that these things can be achieved, and a global skilled-worker program all worked out, by 2050. I’ll be eighty-two years old—and I just can’t imagine anything lonelier than being turned over in my bed by a robot.

Inose my compact SUV out of traffic and into the Mobil gas station at Cahuenga Pass, just off the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles. Perched high above me atop the Santa Monica Mountains are the enormous white letters of the Hollywood sign. The nine letters gleam out proudly over a booming young megacity that barely existed a century ago.

I find an open pump and hop out of the car. I swipe a credit card and tap in my ZIP code. I choose a fuel grade, lift the pump handle from its cradle, and jam it into the tank’s orifice. I squeeze the pump’s handgrip and feel its metal grow cold as fuel churns from another tank in the ground beneath me to the one in my car. It is a simple, mindless act I have repeated countless times since I was seventeen years old. I give no more thought to the process than I do to washing my hands or drinking a glass of orange juice. But I really should be more appreciative. In L.A. the elixir of life isn’t Botox: It’s gasoline.

The average man must labor for ten hours a day, for two solid months, to perform as much physical work as one gallon of crude oil. No wonder we’ve abandoned horses and carriages in favor of oil-powered vehicles. This raw material, from which all gasolines, diesels, and jet fuels are refined, is miraculous stuff. It fuels 99% of all motorized vehicles today. And oil is so much more than just a transport fuel—it is an essential ingredient of nearly everything we make. Our plastics, lubricants, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and millions of other products all derive somehow from oil. Our food is grown with oil. So besides what I was pumping into my gas tank, I was sitting in oil while driving and was drinking oil as I sipped coffee from my cup.

Since the Industrial Revolution oil, coal, natural gas, and metals have improved nearly every aspect of human life. Before then, a meager existence was the norm no matter what country one lived in. It is naïve to romanticize the eighteenth century as simpler, happier times—the lives of those farmers and townspeople were a constant struggle. Without fossil fuels and metals our lives would be very different. Indeed, today’s urbanization megatrend and gigantic cities would not even exist.