The most surprising demographic crisis

It'll be very interesting to see how the Chinese government deals with (1) the gender imbalance, once the surplus of males reach marrying age and (2) the dearth of young people.<p>I wouldn't be surprised if they easily solved problem #2 by paying poor people to have more kids (though there will still be a period of labor shortage, during which they'll probably bring in migrant workers that they'll unceremoniously boot out when they're no longer needed), but the solution to #1 will be very interesting to observe.<p>There are few things that stir as much civil unrest as not being able to find a woman to marry. They will have to either (a) subsidize the import of women from Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, North Korea, Mongolia and other poor neighbors, or (b) kill the surplus men. Given the modern Chinese government's penchant for a foreign policy of non-interference, (b) seems like the most likely option. But even China's economic hegemony at the time may not be enough to suppress the inevitable cries of outrage from abroad (and perhaps even at home) at the mass murder of millions of young men.

It really <i>shouldn't</i> be surprising that after a few decades of one-child policy you're going to wind up with far more old people than young people. If they didn't see this one coming then I'd be very surprised.<p>Most Western countries are facing a similar problem with aging populations, though on a lesser scale demographically. On the other hand, the Chinese government is much happier to leave folks to fend for themselves, while Western governments run into problems as the old folks demand ever-increasing spending on pensions and health care.

I've often wondering what would happen to populations if/when gerontology researchers like Aubrey de Grey do find a way to delay death from old age or even stop it completely.<p>Would a replacement rate of 2 just result in an ever increasing population or would other forms of death step in to limit populations? How much bigger could we expect populations to get if we had a replacement rate of 2 and an average life span of 1000 years?<p>I only ask because it seems China is going to be an interesting showcase of the pros and cons of population control.

The gender imbalance is a real problem. Historically cultures that have an overabundance of males end up at war. I really would hate to be a typical male in that culture right now. But it's good that their birthrate is decreasing.

Interesting when you compare the argument made in the ranking article right now (<a href="http://www.spacex.com/updates.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.spacex.com/updates.php</a>) to the one made here in the Economist. China is at a crossroads it would seem. Further, the potential for China to have an even greater healthcare-cost problem than the US seems pretty obvious now, no?

I suddenly realized by accident that Chinese children do not have brothers and sisters. I mean just imagine a whole country... hundreds of millions of children... not one has a brother or a sister. Imagine a sixth of a population of the planet shudder when it hears words like "brotherly affection". Life must be so different there.

Health advances may negate some of the problem, if a 60 year old in the future is as healthy and as active as a 30 year old now no reason why they can't still be making great contributions to the workforce. In China this may be harder given how much of the work force is engaged in manual labor type positions.