1. In 2005 Japan had the highest median age of all countries in the world, while Australia's population was only moderately aged. Some 50 years ago the demographic situation was quite different, with the median age of Australia's population being seven years older than Japan's.
The ageing of the population is a major issue for Australian policy makers, particularly in regard to the long-term implications for reduced economic growth and the increasing demand for Age Pensions, and health and aged care services. As the population ages, growth in the number of people of working age will slow, while the proportion of people of retirement age will increase.
Sustained population ageing also leads to slowing or negative population growth. While declining population growth in developed countries is welcomed by some environmentalist and social scientists, economists tend to agree that population decline brings gloomy economic prospects. In addition to the decrease in the labour supply, the demand side of the economy may be affected through shrinking markets for goods and services.
How quickly this occurs depends on the dynamics of fertility, mortality and overseas migration. While a moderate pace of demographic change allows for gradual adjustment of the economy and policies to the changing population demographics, rapid changes are more difficult to manage. As a result, governments and society as a whole may need to take actions to address these issues. But how severe is the ageing of Australia's population, relative to other countries?
One way of applying a degree of perspective to the ageing debate is to compare ageing in Australia with that of other countries. This article examines the population structures in Australia and Japan and the demographic forces that shape the respective populations, both historically and projections for the future.
2. With an abundance of low priced labor relative to the United States, it is no surprise that China, India and other developing countries specialize in the production of labor intensive products. For similar reasons, the United States will specialize in the production of goods that are human and physical capital intensive because of the relative abundance of a highly educated labor force and technically sophisticated equipment in the United States.
This division of global production should yield higher global output of both types of goods than would be the case if each country attempted to produce both of these goods itself. For example, the United States would produce more expensive labor intensive goods because of its more expensive labor and the developing countries would produce more expensive human and physical capital intensive goods because of their relative scarcity of these inputs. This logic implies that the United States is unlikely to be a significant global competitor in the production green technologies that are not relatively intensive in human and physical capital.
Nevertheless, during the early stages of the development of a new technology, the United States has a comparative advantage in the production of the products enabled by this innovation. However, once these technologies become well understood and production processes are designed that can make use of less skilled labor; production will migrate to countries with less expensive labor.
3. Diasporas – communities which live outside, but maintain links with, their homelands are getting larger, thicker and stronger. They are the human face of globalization. Diaspora consciousness is on the rise: Diasporas are becoming more interested in their origins, and organising themselves more effectively; homelands are revising their opinions of their diasporas as the stigma attached to emigration declines, and stepping up their engagement efforts; meanwhile, host countries are witnessing more assertive diasporic groups within their own national communities, worrying about fifth columns and foreign lobbies, and suffering outbreaks of ‘diasporaphobia’.
This trend is the result of five factors, all of them connected with globalisation: the growth in international migration; the revolution in transport and communications technology, which is quickening the pace of diasporans’ interactions with their homelands; a reaction against global homogenised culture, which is leading people to rethink their identities; the end of the Cold War, which increased the salience of ethnicity and nationalism and created new space in which diasporas can operate;
And policy changes by national governments on issues such as dual citizenship and multiculturalism, which are enabling people to lead transnational lives. Diasporas such as those attaching to China, India, Russia and Mexico are already big, but they will continue to grow; the migration flows which feed them are likely to widen and quicken in the future.
4. This year’s Nobel Peace Prize justly rewards the thousands of scientists of the United Nations Climate Change Panel (the IPCC). These scientists are engaged in excellent, painstaking work that establishes exactly what the world should expect from climate change.
The other award winner, former US Vice President Al Gore, has spent much more time telling us what to fear. While the IPCC’s estimates and conclusions are grounded in careful study, Gore doesn’t seem to be similarly restrained.
Gore told the world in his Academy Award winning movie (recently labelled “one sided” and containing “scientific errors” by a British judge) to expect 20 foot sea level rises over this century. He ignores the findings of his Nobel co winners, the IPCC, who conclude that sea levels will rise between only a half foot and two feet over this century, with their best expectation being about one foot. That’s similar to what the world experienced over the past 150 years.
Likewise, Gore agonizes over the accelerated melting of ice in Greenland and what it means for the planet, but overlooks the IPCC’s conclusion that, if sustained, the current rate of melting would add just three inches to the sea level rise by the end of the century. Gore also takes no notice of research showing that Greenland’s temperatures were higher in 1941 than they are today.
Gore also frets about the future of polar bears. He claims they are drowning as their icy habitat disappears. However, the only scientific study showing any such thing indicates that four polar bears drowned because of a storm.
The politician turned movie maker loses sleep over a predicted rise in heat related deaths. There’s another side of the story that’s inconvenient to mention: rising temperatures will reduce the number of cold spells, which are a much bigger killer than heat. The best study shows that by 2050, heat will claim 400,000 more lives, but 1.8 million fewer will die because of cold. Indeed, according to the first complete survey of the economic effects of climate change for the world, global warming will actually save lives.
5. Who would have thought back in 1698, as they downed their espressos, that the little band of stockbrokers from Jonathan's Coffee House in Change Alley EC3 would be the founder members of what would become the world's mighty money capital?
Progress was not entirely smooth. The South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 and the coffee house exchanges burned down in 1748. As late as Big Bang in 1986, when bowler hats were finally hung up, you wouldn't have bet the farm on London surpassing New York, Frankfurt and Tokyo as Mammon's international nexus. Yet the 325,000 souls who operate in the UK capital's financial hub have now overtaken their New York rivals in size of the funds managed (including offshore business); they hold 70% of the global secondary bond market and the City dominates foreign exchange trading. And its institutions paid out ￡9 billion in bonuses in December. The Square Mile has now spread both eastwards from EC3 to Canary Wharf and westwards into Mayfair, where many of the private equity 'locusts' and their hedge fund pals now hang out.
For foreigners in finance, London is the place to be. It has no Sarbanes Oxley and no euro to hold it back, yet the fact that it still flies so high is against the odds. London is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, transport systems groan and there's an ever present threat of terrorist attack. But, for the time being, the deals just keep on getting bigger.
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