That was the contention of many people in Japan, where the rapid aging of the population was visible as early as the 1960s, when the birthrate first fell below the replacement rate. The do-nothing argument is that the economic impact of population decline doesn’t matter, if it doesn’t lower per capita incomes. But it is hard for any country to hold that above-it-all pose. The reality of global competition will always intrude. In 2010 China became the world’s second-largest economy, passing Japan, which has since mobilized much more aggressively to try to restart economic growth and respond to
...more
