Impacts of demographic changes

In your view, what are the likely political and socio-economic impacts of the demographic changes we see in the world today?

Demographic changes are occurring in many parts of the world today- in India there is a high population growth due to gender preference and in Japan the opposite is occurring due to low birth rate. But no matter what the demographic changes are, there are negative and positive impacts to such changes.

As stated in the video “World in the Balance” (Channel News Asia, 15/7/07, 7.30pm), Japan’s low birth rate of 1.3 per woman coupled with a large number of unmarried youths due to women pursuing career success has led to the number of elderly in Japan outnumbering the young. What this would lead to is a large decrease in the number of workers, consumers and a need for more immigrants. This would thus lead to a decline in the nation’s economy as a smaller production source and a lack of consumers to purchase the products and services. A possible social impact that could arise from this could be the government providing more encouragement to increase birth rates or even the provision of more incentives to citizens giving birth to more children.

In the case of Kenya, a large number of cases of HIV results in a higher death rate than birth rate, causing a population decline as well. The large number of HIV cases is due to the commonplace scenario of women selling their bodies when they desperately are in need of money, sometimes just to get a meal. Similarly, this could lead to the economy decline as mentioned in the Japan’s issue. One political impact that could arise from the Kenya’s case is the government’s intervention to remove prostitution from the country. Although this measure might be too drastic, it is definitely necessary if the government wants to solve the problems occurring due to the large number of HIV cases in Kenya.

In India’s situation, gender preference is causing high population growth, where the number of young outnumbers the number of elderly. In India, boys are favoured over girls as boys will be able to stay with the family and dowry has to be provided by the girl’s family should there be a marriage. This would also lead to economy decline as there is not enough jobs for the people, leading to extreme poverty in several places. Also, part of the income of the nation is probably used to provide for aid to areas of extreme poverty thus leading to a decline in economy.