100 years of global aging, in one GIF 06-11

100 years of global aging, in one GIF

The median age of a Japanese citizen today is about 46.5 years old. In Cameroon, it's just 18.5 years. That's a wide gap, and one that tells us a lot about both countries — and, more broadly, the state of the world today.

To understand what this gap tells us, it helps to look at a global perspective. The following GIF, from Lund University Masters student Aron Strandberg, does this beautifully. Using data from the United Nations World Population Prospects, it traces the median age around the world from 1960 through today. It also uses the UN's projections to estimate how each country's median will likely change over the next 40-odd years:

Immediately, you see two things. First, the median age tends to be significantly higher in wealthy and middle-income countries than in poorer ones. Second, the median age is going up in almost every country worldwide.

These two trends reflect centuries of good news. Rapid technological development and economic growth since the Industrial Revolution have allowed people to live much longer. Basic public health techniques have dramatically reduced infant mortality, and more advanced technologies (like chemotherapy) allow people to live even longer. This progress has been uneven — people in wealthy countries still live longer — but the trend is unmistakable.

That explains why the median age is getting higher basically everywhere, and why it's higher in rich countries than in poor ones. People are just living longer.

But there's a dark side to this trend: Populations can get too old.

An older median age isn't produced merely by people living longer. If fewer babies are being born in a country, then that will raise a country's median age even if it hasn't seen huge increases in life expectancy. According to the UN, "fertility has declined in virtually all major areas of the world" in recent years.

In some places, that's not so bad: Sub-Saharan African countries still had an average of 4.7 children per woman between 2010 and 2015, more than enough to deliver robust population growth. In those countries, a lower birthrate over time would be a good sign, as it tends to correlate with economic development and more education for women.

But in Europe (fertility rate: 1.6), North America (1.86), and Asia (2.2), low birthrate is becoming a serious problem.

As the map shows, the median age in countries like Japan, China, the US, and France will soon reach the 40s and 50s if current trends continue. Imagine a world where the median age in America is 10 years older than it is today, and then think about how many more people will qualify for Social Security versus how many fewer working-age people there will be who can be taxed to pay for it.
This isn't an imminent problem in the United States, and may not be one for some time. But it is in Japan, which has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. The Japanese experience is serving as something of a test case for what happens when a country gets too old.

"The working age population is falling by about 1 percent per year, and the rate of shrinkage will eventually approach 1.7 percent per year, so that even productivity growth of 2% or more will deliver very low aggregate or per capita growth," a recent OECD report concludes. "There will simply be no way to sustain high living standards and quality public standards in a 'super-aging' Japan unless the country is able to achieve much higher rates of productivity growth."

So while it's great news that a lot of countries are getting older, some countries — namely rich ones — are getting too old. This is a solvable problem: Both increased immigration from poor countries and better integration of women into the workplace should raise a country's birthrate. But if rich countries want to stave off serious economic problems down the line, they need to start dealing with their birthrate problems soon.

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What Taking a Global View of Youth Unemployment Reveals 11-01

Looking at trends in youth unemployment in high- and low-income countries makes the need for supporting youth entrepreneurship clear Youth unemployment is a critical issue for any country. From the lifelong effect graduating in a recession can have on students’ earnings to the upheaval of the Arab spring, the headlines of the last few years have shown that the ramifications of youth unemployment are deep and far-reaching. Taking a global view of trends in youth employment reveals what’s at the heart of the challenge—and points to the change that needs to be made to address it.

While youth unemployment rates across geographies vary, they diverge in a fashion that one may not expect. The world youth unemployment rate (ages 15–24) sits at 13.9 per cent, according to the World Bank, increasing by .2 percentage points since 2006. High-income countries—including the United States, Argentina and Kuwait—average an unemployment rate of 18.2 per cent. Middle-income countries—including China, Malaysia and Mexico—average a rate of 13.8 per cent. Low-income countries—including Afghanistan, Nepal and Liberia—a rate of 9 per cent. The key to making sense of what may be a surprising disparity is to ask: What kind of employment do these numbers reflect? That in turn underscores the transformative role youth entrepreneurship can play in both developing and developed economies.

“What often goes unrecorded in the data on youth unemployment is underemployment, and the negative impact that has on income and quality of life,” says Dr. Ben Oppenheim, Visiting Scholar and Senior Fellow at New York University, whose research focuses on economic development and governance in emerging markets. “Unemployment estimates can also be unreliable, since in many emerging markets, a significant share of labor activity takes place in the informal economy.”

A dearth of legal, high-paying economic opportunities means populations, including youth, in developing countries are forced to take jobs that expose them to occupational hazards and decrease their overall well-being. A 2012 study, for example, found that people in developing countries are exposed to more than 80 per cent of global occupational hazards.

In a similar vein, workers in the developed world are witnessing an increased informalization and fragmentation of their work, putting greater strains on youth employment. “What we see today is increasingly informalized labor in wealthy countries,” says Oppenheim. “The rise of the on-demand economy creates both pressures and opportunities for workers in the developed world to piece together income streams, as many people in developing countries do.”

This global, cross-regional perspective helps to clarify where the focus of combating youth unemployment should be—not just on hitting a number of “employed,” but also on creating quality employment opportunities with a positive impact on the individual and community alike. Fostering youth entrepreneurship may provide one avenue for accomplishing this. “Small and micro enterprises can absorb a lot of labor, and we know how to stimulate those kinds of businesses—for example, through microloans when credit bottlenecks are a critical constraint,” says Oppenheim. While no prescription for fostering youth entrepreneurial activity will be the same across borders, there may be similar through-lines that transect geographies. A key challenge, however, says Oppenheim, is that not everyone is ready to be an entrepreneur, and training and relieving constraints to entrepreneurship can only go so far.

This highlights that a combination of measures is needed to support a culture of youth entrepreneurship by choice, as opposed to labor-force participation out of hand-to-mouth necessity. While programs like social safety nets can free young would-be-entrepreneurs from subsistence work, getting to the “liftoff” point, where ideas become thriving business realities, takes more than that. That’s why training and mentoring are key. Investing in these resources for youth can have an impact on a country’s social and economic health that goes far beyond today’s topline numbers.

In the coming weeks, we’ll explore how this central insight is being turned into solutions that are unique to the challenges and opportunities of countries around the world.

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