Home Australia Population Policy Needs More than Ad Hoc Decision Making

Population Policy Needs More than Ad Hoc Decision Making

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by James O’Neill

Significant population trends in developed countries have created a range of policy challenges, most of them historically unique.  Our patchwork of inconsistent policies is creating future problems that require a radical rethinking of traditional assumptions

There has been some recent discussion in Australia about whether the gross immigration numbers should be reduced. The relatively narrow focus of the debate is unfortunate. The demographic trends in a country are influenced by a number of factors, of which the net immigration figure is only one. What is badly needed is a widening of the debate, and more information about the demography, not only of Australia, but comparable countries whose experience and policies can be instructive.

It is elementary that future population size is dictated by the interplay of key factors. The factor with the longest term consequences is the birth rate, and the most sensitive indicator is the total fertility rate (TFR), that is, the number of births a woman, on average, can expect to have if current age-specific fertility rates continue. The discussion will be confined to what are broadly called developed countries, and here I will use that term to include the European Union nations, plus Canada, China, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the United States.

In the absence of net migration, plus or minus, for the population level to be maintained a TFR of 2.1 (or 210 births per 100 women) is required. None of the EU nations or the seven add-ons above has experienced that level of fertility or higher for several decades. Most are in the range of 1.3 – 1.7, with an EU average of 1.5. The same is true for the non-E U countries listed, with South Korea at 1.26, Japan 1.41, Russia and China each at 1.6.

Once the effects of the postwar baby boom (1946-61) have worked their way through the age pyramid, again in the absence of net immigration, the population will decline, as deaths will exceed births. An excess of deaths over births is already a phenomenon in a number of these countries, including economic powerhouses like Germany and Japan. That will be the situation in the vast majority of the EU countries over the next 20 years. Sustained sub-replacement fertility rates inevitably lead (again in the absence of net migration gains) to an  aging of the population.

The proportion of the population over 65 years is already on average nearly 20% in the EU countries plus Japan and that also is expected to significantly increase over the next 20 years.

That inevitably poses a number of social policy issues, and focusing on gross migration figures which has tended to be the case in Australia, simply ignores most of those issues. Some of the more important issues include: labour force participation rates; the age of retirement; the role of technology in substituting for labour shortages; the specifics of a migration policy; and what incentives might be offered in an attempt to influence individual decisions about each of these variables. I do not suggest that this is an exhaustive list of policy issues, but the experience of a number of countries can provide useful pointers.

(a) Labour Force Participation Rates. This is not simply a question of persuading people of both sexes to prolong their working life. Technological change means that as much as one half of all current jobs will either disappear or be substantially modified in their skill requirements during an expected ordinary working life.

This has implications for education, which will necessarily be an ongoing requirement. There are also feedback loops. If more women extended their effective working life, then this will likely impact upon their willingness to reproduce, and therefore compound problems created by the initial sub-replacement fertility.

(b) Retirement. The Prime Minister has recently announced the abandonment of the proposed raising of the retirement age to 70 years. This is typical of the ad hoc approach to population policy issues. Some budgetary implications of the policy change have been noted, but that is only a small component. With life expectancy steadily increasing it makes little sense to have people in retirement for 15 to 20 years when their demands on health and social services are increasing exponentially.

The current pension system is grossly inefficient and prone to abuse. A radical overhaul is long overdue, and tinkering with the retirement age is simply deferring the hard decisions.

(c) Technology. One of the more enduring myths is that technology is going to replace the need for workers so that our biggest problem is how to spend the extra enforced leisure time that being made redundant by a machine will create.

It is correct that the nature of employment will change, and sometimes radically because of technology as the experience of the mining and manufacturing industries over the past half-century or more confirms. One has to look however at the detailed breakdown of actual jobs that are available now. Nearly 40% of them in their present format did not exist half a century ago. Generic job descriptions such as “nurse” or “journalist” are radically different in the job prescription today than they were even 10 years ago.

That trend is unlikely to diminish, and again the chief challenge will lie in appropriate vocational and re-education programs as a lifetime requirement.

(d) Migration Policy. Australia has been an enormous beneficiary of migration. The problems that have been created by, for example, pressures on housing and other infrastructure are not the fault of migration per se, but a policy failure to adequately anticipate, plan for, and implement appropriate policies.

It is absurd on a number of levels that migrants overwhelmingly end up in Sydney and Melbourne. The mantra of “that’s where the jobs are” is a self-fulfilling prophecy and represents a major policy failure.

Countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom have been enormous beneficiaries of migration, xenophobic outbursts notwithstanding. Germany for example would otherwise have had a declining ageing population and would have been facing major challenges in staffing its hugely successful industrial base. The vast majority of service industry jobs, particularly at the low skill end of the spectrum, and the dirty and dangerous jobs, are now performed by migrant labour.

Japan and South Korea, which for a variety of cultural reasons, are essentially closed to foreign migration. They faced very difficult future policy choices as a consequence.

(e) Reproductive Incentives. The short answer is that incentives to reproduce are almost invariably unsuccessful, and restrictions on the capacity of women to control their fertility are completely unacceptable in any society with pretentions to democracy and gender equality.

In the 1970s what was then the GDR (East Germany) had the lowest birth rate in Europe. They also had the most generous by far package of incentives to reproduce, including paid maternity leave, excellent child care facilities, and generous financial payments that increased substantially with the birth of the third or subsequent child.

None of it was sufficient to persuade German women then, or their modern counterparts, to increase the average number of births sufficient to raise that to at least replacement level. That is perhaps the most valuable lesson to draw. Almost none of the major demographic parameters are amenable to manipulation in a manner that various governments might think they can control, and that includes the net migration figure.

A population policy needs more than ad hoc, politically influenced, half-baked decisions. It needs recognition of 21st century realities and of the formulation of appropriate policies to accommodate the inevitable changes and pressures created by persons making individual decisions in what they perceive to be their best interests.

*Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst.  He may be contacted at joneill@qldbar.asn.au

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12 COMMENTS

  1. James,

    I suspect migration policies and population issues may well be determined by forces beyond our “learned” bureaucrats and political visionaries.

    According to ecology.com the estimated world population in 1900 was estimated to be approx. 1.5 billion. By the year 2020 it is estimated to be approx. 7.65 billion. What was the 20th Century notable for, apart from two World Wars, and countless regional wars??

    Central Banking and the global spread of fiat currency.

    Perhaps when the inevitable demise of un-backed fiat currency produced by Central Banks and their banking system buddies occurs, then the world will return to a more stable and truly sustainable population growth trend.

    In the meantime, there may well be a bit of a culling. Hopefully not though.

  2. Australia because of restraints of whether uncertainty and soil and many other factors such as politicians who are second rate it is inadvisable for greater population growth, the questionas why there are somany peple on the move seems a question rarely put, whilst the financial elite make money from war and destruction you will have migration.
    The Imperialist nations having set up this system for cheap labor and also for terrorisism to flourish within the the First World they need to a flow of subversives.

  3. So the World System depends on a steady supply of slaves to do “low skill, dirty and dangerous” work ?
    Well perhaps the Kraut Government should have applied itself to training up some monkeys.

    • ‘steady supply of slaves to do “low skill, dirty and dangerous” work’

      Growing up I had to do a lot of that kind of work. It also kept bread on the table while I went to school part time. Perhaps people who feel ‘entitled’ need to do some of that kind of work to develop some humility and a work ethic – and make them want to achieve something more in their lives.

      My grandparents told me many horror stories of the Great Depression. I remember those stories and as I grew up I was grateful to have even a crappy job that provided an income.

      When the next economic collapse occurs, those crappy jobs that people turn their noses up at now, will be sought after for just a meal in payment.

      • The point is that no tax-funded “generous reproductive incentives” project was ever intended to do anything but destroy personal/national autonomy

  4. Yeah Terry,

    My old man told me stories of the luxury of “bread and dripping” for Sunday treats.

    Heaven help the “precious” if the trucks stop rolling, the ATMs don’t spit out cash or the grid goes down for more than 3 hours.

    • So the government/supermarket depend ency of the Age can be raced back to the bread-and-dripping habit of Yesteryear?

      Makes perfect sense when you think about it

  5. O’Neil’s article is not up to his usual high standard. In fact, he has little grasp of the factors which ultimately must downward regulate immigration and population… the capacity of the land mass to support an optimum population.

    He has examined peripheral issues and the prerequisite depth of analysis has had to be provided by Phil, Hotartglass, and others. O’Neil appears unaware that Australian policy is not formulated by Australian politicians and bureaucrats, but by the investment banker elite; which somewhat defies his title of geopoliticial analyst.

    This is a subject I have researched ad nauseum for decades but which is evidently nonpunishable.

    Nevertheless, it goes like this…

    The current conversation about immigration and acceptability levels focuses on ideology, global relativity, complementation of the national skills pool, and preferred origin of immigrants; and inexplicably ignores elephantine core criteria… water, food, and accommodation.

    Water
    Australia has sufficient water resources to support the current population providing drought regimes do not intensify. Many climate experts suggest they will.

    Speaking from the vantage point of cheerful ignorance, many politicians call volubly for capture of northern wet season rains; oblivious to the coastal flatness of the north, the porous nature of ambient geology, massive tropical evaporation rates, and the daunting amount of high-cost energy required to pump this water to areas of need should it actually be captured.

    Meanwhile, central eastern Australia, the Murray-Darling basin, is in perennial water crisis, and talk of desalination and recycling ignores toxic heavy metal retention and very high cost.

    On the issue of water alone, any additional immigration is prohibitive.

    Food
    Few Australians seem aware that only 4% of our continent comprises arable soils. Our food security has always been in the balance; increasingly so as developers unconscionably gobble up outer urban arable land, which is always the most productive.

    Compliments of free trade ideology, domestic food production has been decimated and much arable land upon which national food security relies has been turned over to export monocultures and non-food crops such as cotton (which also injures national water security).

    Not only does this make Australia vulnerable to future food ransom, as famously alluded to by Henry Kissinger, ruthless land management practices are destroying our arable soils with inappropriate cultivation; chemical fertilisers which kill essential soil bacteria; and the endemic monocultural failure to fallow and rotate crops.

    This damage, according to emeritus professor Henry Nix will, in the very near future, injure our arable land beyond realistic repair.

    Clearly, our food production and inadequate water resources already delimit immigration. By my calculation, we have already reached our optimum population level.

    But, in any event, where would we find the accommodation for more immigrants? Thanks to the corporate profit-led deregulation which free trade policies have demanded, foreign buy-up of homes and land has driven accommodation prices beyond reach of anyone on fixed or otherwise low incomes.

    So, yes, we should welcome any immigrants who are independently wealthy and who bring their own soil and water.

  6. Hey Tony,

    On top of “So, yes, we should welcome any immigrants who are independently wealthy and who bring their own soil and water.” could I add “and don’t expect to be fed, clothed and sheltered immediately upon arrival… unless they are a LEGITIMATE REFUGEE FLEEING PERSECUTION, and also bring with them an attitude of appreciation for the welcome and a genuine desire and intention to assimilate into our society,”.

    Sure, keep their links to their “old country”, like the Italians, Greeks, Vietnamese, etc, but leave their old biases behind.

  7. We get our freedom as long as we don’t say too much (pencils at all previous elections). Unsustainable debt and consumption are the shackles that keep us enslaved in the system of maximum disorder. The more punters there are the bigger the profits for the banksters .
    That is the sole reason for mass migrations, nations destructions and peoples suffering worldwide these days .

  8. People who advocate policy prescriptions confirm faith in the economic status quo. Talk about politically conservative. Yet economic systems foundered on monetary growth, which is the developed world’s raison d’etre, have always collapsed. The Mediterranean confirms that. So instead of fiddling at the margins wouldn’t it be a better idea to restructure. Out with the old and useless Westminster hierarchy and its hangers’ on institutions hogging the riches of monetary growth, and in with the new – a creativity based merit system where the riches of human imagination and effort are enjoyed by all. After all we all possessed creativity and imagination before being compulsorily shackled to the school desk and told to repeat after me. Me being the teacher who was, under threat of violence/unemployment, repeating what he/she was told to repeat. And so forth. Now that would be the change to delight a progressive heart.

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