Can We Populate Our Way Out Of Recession?
I’ve been searching Twitter for “population” and “economics” this month and came across this article on LifeSiteNews.com. The contention: Low population growth is responsible for the current recession. Here’s a snippet:
“With the decline in births, there are fewer young people that productively enter the working world,” Tedeschi explained. At the same time, he said, “there are many more elderly people that leave the system of production and become a cost for the collective,” increasing social welfare costs that a shrinking proportion of taxable young workers will have to sustain.
There’s actually a smidgen of truth to that. In a nation where the population is growing, the young outnumber the old. Where there are “pay as you go” retirement programs like Social Security in the U.S., this places an increasing burden on the working class to support the elderly.
But to say that the current global recession is due to slow population growth disingenuous. China is still doing quite well, even though its population growth has also slowed. The US continues to have relatively rapid population growth, but it’s in a recession just like places where population is stagnating, like Western Europe and Japan. The places world where population is growing fastest are typically highly impoverished. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Daily Monthly*
