The Aging Society

Understanding The Aging Population

Seeing that this blog is nominally "the Gen X view of the Universe", I thought I should post something I've been forced to reckon with in the last few years.

I did a quick count of my friends with kids and they were actually fewer than my friends without. This was a bit alarming. Then I went through the friends with kids and how they were doing and many were doing it tough. I did a similar count with my cousins and found that most of the females did not get married and did not have children.

I didn't have kids either. The people in my generation, when tallied up did not replace themselves in numbers.

The further I looked in to it, unless they were financially boosted by their parents in some way, Gen X didn't get close to reproducing itself in numbers. There is a massive drop off, even from people born in the first half of the  1960s, to those born in the second half.

Historically speaking, and by history I mean, DNA and the history of the species, it has been shown that 80% of our genes come from females in the human genome tree; 4/5ths of men in history did not reproduce and pass on their genes - and this is the historic norm according to genetics. However, when it is the women who are not giving birth, you know there is a seismic shift in the constitution of the human population going on.

People who study demographics would cite a few things such as readily available contraception and abortion as factors, but to that list I would like to add AIDS, the property bubbles, and the constant condition of wars that have adverse effects on the economy. The book 'Freakonomics' makes a big case that the crime wave predicted for the late 1990s never arrived because of abortion. yet, when I cast my mind to it, the babies that didn't arrive are not isolated to the lower socioeconomic group of the USA; it's a phenomenon that took place here as well as across Asia. Not only did Gen-X in Japan and Taiwan and South Korea not really get a look in, in those in Japan got hit by the Bubble collapsing and the aftermath where there was far less stability offered in people's jobs.

They did not have kids because they simply could not afford to have kids - and amazingly, nobody commented, nobody proposed a policy to combat this and in the case of Japan only recently did they start handing out a 'baby grant' of about AUD$200 for people who have babies. Like, AUD$200 is going to convince you to have a kid in this day and age.

Now, Japan is facing a demographic crunch as their Babyboomers head off into retirement at an estimated 6million per year for the next 10years. In the mean time, there is deflation as asset prices decay and demand drops. There is a realistic likelihood that the economy won't be able to generate enough money to support all these old Babyboomers in retirement.

I look at Australia's property bubble deflating slowly, and give it 15 years before Australia hits a demographic crunch. It might welcome immigrants by the boatload to boost the sagging population figures, but ultimately there's going to come a moment when there aren't enough people to look after the elderly.

Right now, people in Australia are talking about the property prices only in terms of how it impacts immediate value. The true impact of this is going to be felt when governments will find that tax receipts collapse as there aren't enough people capable of working and supporting the aged populace. And just as it was in Japan, there isn't a single politician with enough of a long view who can stop this turning into a real mess, down the track.