Japan's aging population could actually be good news

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24822-japans-ageing-population-could-actually-be-good-news.html

by eugenesia • 13 years ago

38 54 13 years ago

lkrubner• 13 years ago

Interesting:

"Japan has the world's oldest population, with a median age of 46 years, an average lifespan of 84, and a quarter of the population over 65. "

That is a very old population!

didgeoridoo3• 13 years ago

But fewer people in future will mean it has more living space, more arable land per head, and a higher quality of life, says Eberstadt. Its demands on the planet for food and other resources will also lessen.

Different day, same Malthusian bullshit. These people can only think of humans as net negative parasites on the planet, rather than individual agents with a positive expected value to society. Density is GOOD — it leads to cross-pollination of ideas and the advancement of the world. Yes, the planet is on a path that will require us to eventually get smarter about resource consumption. Advocating fewer people on Earth is the most harmful & naive way to solve that problem.

If your life raft is sinking, do you try to patch it, or do you throw someone overboard? Your instinctual answer says a lot about the type of person you are.

[edit: I'd remove the last paragraph if it weren't intellectually dishonest to do so. I feel like it's causing people to miss my main point. It was written more out of anger than reason. Please ignore.]

omegant• 13 years ago

Honest question: What population do you find excessive and too much for the Earth to be able to sustain it?. By the way, Japan is not throwing people to the sea, just not replacing the ones that pass away, quite a big difference IMHO.

didgeoridoo3• 13 years ago

Morally, yes there's a huge difference. In terms of long-term economic, technological, and societal impact? Not really.

gtaylor• 13 years ago

If your life raft is sinking, do you try to patch it, or do you throw someone overboard? Your instinctual answer says a lot about the type of person you are.

Nobody is being thrown overboard. The article is just pointing out that it may not necessarily be catastrophic if population growth slows or even reverses for a time. We're all just speculating, whether you agree or disagree.

In support of the article, slower population growth would reduce resource consumption. Rampant population growth would speed up the resource depletion process. As certain crucial resources become more scarce, conflict is likely to follow. It'd only be a matter of time before large scale war followed, perhaps leading to an extinction event.

There are definite positives and negatives to slowing growth rates, but I think there are probably more positives if we're talking about a gradual slowing (as opposed to a sudden tanking). We can do a lot more with a lot less today. Many of us don't need massive families anymore, and that's OK.

didgeoridoo3• 13 years ago

A fertility rate of 1.4 is not a slowing of growth. It means population is shrinking. If you think of individuals as net negative for society, you probably think this is a good thing. I do not.

Fewer people means fewer ideas. Resource consumption is a problem with our current technological base - but it has ALWAYS been a problem, and a solution has always been developed that results in higher overall quality of life. Agriculture was the technology that allowed more than a few hundred thousand humans to live on the planet. Humanity has a pretty good track record of coming up with the next tech in plenty of time.

Panglossian? Maybe. But I'd rather be Pangloss (syphilis and all) than a misanthrope like Ehrlich or Malthus.

sn0v• 13 years ago

A positive contribution to society and a positive contribution to the planet aren't necessarily the same. Sure, more intellectuals mean faster societal development. That doesn't take away from the pressure an increased population places on our limited natural resources.

ahomescu13• 13 years ago

GP isn't saying "we should have more intellectuals", he/she is saying "we should have more people because that way we get more intellectuals". IMHO it's a big difference.

sliverstorm4• 13 years ago

I follow your argument. I will note though that Japan is already land- and natural resources-bound in ways the United States has never had to struggle with. It's a smallish island nation with lots of mountainous (difficult to farm) terrain. I believe Japan has not been able to feed itself without imports for ages. If there is anywhere downsizing population might make sense, it would be there.

guard-of-terra5• 13 years ago

Hong Kong and Singapore are much worse when it comes to feeding themself yet they have no problem doing so. In practice, they are the richest.

Russia has infinite resources of growing food which is only constrained by the fact that it's not very profitable. Nobody it the world wants food so badly to pay for in same kind of money they cough up for oil.

Food is not the constraint, neither is living space.

Daishiman2• 13 years ago

Different day, same Malthusian bullshit.

We are currently experiencing a human-induced mass extinction event and reduction of biodiversity comparable to the largest natural catastrophes in the planet. The way things are going, by the end of the century most of the large mammalian predators will be definitely extinct, and if carbon emissions are not reduced by the end of the century, by which we should become a carbon-negative society, the oceans will not be able to support most of the base of its food chain.

I question your valuation of human society above the base of the biological systems that support its very existence. A large population living in a humongous wasteland is of dubious utility for its inhabitants.

I reckon you haven't been able to see the true impacts of humans on most of the ecosystems in the planet. Ultimately, I think you're confusing density with population; a large population is not a requirement for a dense population. Furthermore, the percentage of the population that contributes to innovation is a very, very restricted subset of it.

revelation• 13 years ago

I don't get it. The ecosystem is not a constant system. It is summary randomness, guided by evolution. Whatever you are trying to preserve, be assured new randomness will happily take its place.

kenster07• 13 years ago

Consumerism dramatically amplifies all said effects. Many of these issues would be solved for a long time by simply mitigating that mindset.

ahomescu13• 13 years ago

If your life raft is sinking, do you try to patch it, or do you throw someone overboard? Your instinctual answer says a lot about the type of person you are.

You try to patch it, but it also makes a lot of sense to stop bringing more people onboard. Lowering birth rates is an example of the latter, not of throwing people overboard.

iterative• 13 years ago

Good luck trying to convince people. I think that Malthusianism just makes sense to people instinctively, and that counts for much more than the fact that it's been proven incorrect over and over again. Even though doom and gloom about things like "overpopulation" have been debunked time and again by people like Julian Simon ("The Ultimate Resource") you'll never convince people who've bought into it to change their minds.

TheAldGarde2• 13 years ago

Throwing people overboard is analogous to killing. Not reproducing isn't killing. Bad analogy. Look at it more like we're on a cruise liner lost eternally at sea. Sure, there's a garden on deck that supplies food, but it only supplies enough for X people. And the fuel is limited. Wait, that's not really metaphorical at all. That's almost the literal situation earth faces.

But, yeah, patch the raft. And stop having 4 kids.

reirob• 13 years ago

Density is GOOD — it leads to cross-pollination of ideas and the advancement of the world.

How much density is needed to make progress? At which point too much density becomes a danger and what kind of danger?

I guess that there might be already some answers to these question. And in my opinion it IS important that we start talking about this. Because the only discussion that I hear until now is that many countries have not enough children (e.g. Japan, Russia, Germany, Italy - just to name few that I have seen in print media in Europe) which is seen as a danger. But talking about socially and psychologically positive solutions how to better distribute population density - nobody is speaking about this. I guess that one of the reasons is because we still think in national boundaries. But this is not the only one. I think the deeper reasons might be more on an instinctive level? I do not know, but I find it good that we start talking about un-growth of population instead just having a taboo.

w1ntermute• 13 years ago

1. Overcrowding in Japan is largely due to such a large percentage of the population congregating in Tokyo. If the Japanese economy (and thus population) were more decentralized, this wouldn't be such a big problem.

2. A lot of the reasons for the high cost of living has to do with protectionism. For example, the rice farmer lobby benefits from very high tariffs on imported rice. Most of the rice farmers are old men, so more young people (or the existing young people being more politically engaged) could actually help fix this problem.

a8da6b0c91d4• 13 years ago

With regard to #2, Japan has a food security problem that will be alleviated by a lower population. Cramming more people in and becoming even more vulnerable to a disruption in shipping is an obviously bad idea.

rayiner4• 13 years ago

Here's the problem I see with both population decline and life extension: lots of research indicates that the creative peak happens from 20-40 or so. Geniuses rarely continue to be the same level of productive after that. In other words, progress is probably better served by giving two people the chance to live 50 years than one person the chance to live 100, though resource consumption is about the same. An aging society, one without new generations of people with new ideas, is not a vital and creative one. Progress is served by turnover.

gwern• 13 years ago

Here's the problem I see with both population decline and life extension: lots of research indicates that the creative peak happens from 20-40 or so.

I'm not sure that's as clear as you think it is. There's a number of issues and confounds which mean that simply plotting age vs achievement can be very misleading. Check out "Age and Outstanding Achievement: What do We Know After a Century of Research?" http://www.resources.emartin.net/blog/docs/AgeAchievement.pd... , Simonton 1988

ggreer• 13 years ago

I get a DNS lookup failure for that domain. It looks like the correct URL is http://resources.emartin.net/blog/docs/AgeAchievement.pdf

modeless• 13 years ago

Part of life extension is restoring neuroplasticity. If medical science advances to the point where we can cure cancer along with all the other diseases of aging, rejuvenating the brain ought to be doable too.

onebaddude• 13 years ago

lots of research indicates that the creative peak happens from 20-40 or so

Is that a social or physiological phenomenon?

I always assumed the great thinkers became less prolific as they voluntarily moved into other stages of life, like finding a mate and starting a family, and hence had less time to commit to intellectual pursuits.

a3n3• 13 years ago

But if, on average, we live longer and healthier lives (healthier is not guaranteed), then our creative lives might last longer too.

It could be that creativity doesn't have as much to do with age and health as we think, and is more related to being new in a fascinating field. If we live longer we'd have more opportunities to be new with a large number of years in front of us. You can see this effect in the small when you get excited about a new programming language or industry.

Probably lots of other effects on creativity beyond mere youth. Said the old guy.

rayiner4• 13 years ago

Its not a matter of health. You can give a 65 year old the brain of a 20 year old, but you can't give him back his naive unindoctrinated view of the world. And the sheer wonderment of childhood and adolescence is something you can never recapture. I have a 1 year old. There are expressions of joy you will only ever see on the face of a 1 year old, because for them the most mundane experiences are nonetheless firsts. Similarly, you only experience anything for the first time no matter how long you live. And I think there is a tremendous creative energy arising from those firsts.

I'm partial to the idea that geniuses have one or two great ideas in them per lifetime, regardless of how long that life lasts. Given 150 years of life, I don't think Picasso would invent cubism then something else.

hcarvalhoalves• 13 years ago

This comment upsets me.

How pretentious to define what people should do with their lives and how long they should live based on some loosely defined "progress". Society doesn't have a moral obligation of pumping out geniuses. People live because that's a natural right.

Besides, not many things in life are more valuable than sitting down and having a chat with someone 70, 80, 90 years old. It's wisdom you won't find on Google.

rayiner4• 13 years ago

I'm not saying what people should do with their lives. I'm pointing out a counterpoint to the usual cheerleading about life extension. It'll be a world in which things change more slowly. Definitely in terms of social progress, but potentially also in terms of scientific progress.

themgt• 13 years ago

It's the "Children of Men" solution to the automation/jobs crisis.

gojomo• 13 years ago

And yet: something that bothers me about that book/movie is that its portrayal of the labor/immigration dynamics seems exactly backward.

Without a fresh supply of young workers, but with all the factories/tools/capital/housing that supported a larger population, the benefit of incremental workers becomes gigantic.

The winning regions in such a scenario would be those that welcome massive immigration to maintain production.

Even assuming some xenophobic fear arising from the uniqueness of the zero-fertility situation, nations like the UK or US, that already have the benefit of worldwide adoption of its language (and cultural exports), and functioning beachhead immigrant communities of all types, would in such a scenario be most likely to recognize that immigrants could soften the pains of a population-shortage.

Keeping immigrants out would require even more of the dwindling population wasted on 'guard labor', and even more empty buildings/communities and idle factories. And to the extent that there are culture clashes – there's now plenty of space to congregate in voluntarily-segregated communities, but still within the same national boundaries for easier trade.

So while I loved a lot about the 'Children of Men' story/movie, its economics were all wrong.

guard-of-terra5• 13 years ago

I also think of this problem as about an elective one.

Imagine you have half voters over 65.

Why would they care about innovation or ecology or whatever common good? They would only care about getting their cut of social security. This way they can easily throw a society off the cliff if it happens tomorrow. They don't care about tomorrow.

Yeah, and they also like to tell youth how to live their life. Especially in the areas themself can no longer do anything. This can lead to repressive and suffocating societal changes.

eddiedunn• 13 years ago

Are you an idiot? Are you seriously suggesting that just because someone is over 65 they stop giving a shit about the planet, society and/or the greater good?

guard-of-terra5• 13 years ago

In countries where fertility rate is much under 2.0, people tend to have two opinions on demographics:

1) If you don't have enough (read: a lot of) money then don't have children. If you're not ready to spend all your time on children while still making enough money then don't have children. If you're not the model family then don't have children. If we think you're not the best parent possible then don't have children. You better not have your children too late and certainly not too early. And yes, we're going to take your child away the first moment we suspect something from above violated.

2) People are so damn selfish, they don't understand that their prime happiness is their children, they spend their lives on themself and so we're all going to die as a nation and as an economy.

Surprisingly enough we often see both at the same time in one individual. More often than not.

sliverstorm4• 13 years ago

People's individual choices don't always line up with their beliefs about what the country as a whole should do.

I am told BART was approved by a whole lot of voters who liked the idea of everybody else using BART, so they could have less traffic on the roads. Nobody was voting for BART so they could use it themselves. (Or so the story goes).

squirejons• 13 years ago

an aging population means GDP will decline!

Ziss is unspeakable! Ziss is an unmitigated disaster for corporate profits!

GDP uber alles!

Ve must force japan to take in immigrants! For ze sake of corporate profits! GDP uber alles!

TheAldGarde2• 13 years ago

This comes without surprise. A higher median age for any population is usually indicative of higher quality of life.

There's a good TedTalks video on the subject. There's also a good book called Common Wealth written by Jeff Sachs that covers this.

Japan's aging population could actually be good news

Related Stories