500 years from now all Japanese will be called Sato. This is predicted by a study carried out in Japan by the economist Hiroshi Yoshida, professor at the Research Center for the Economy and Society of Aging, at Tokoku University, in Sendai. Sato is today the most common surname in Japan – similar to García in Spain – and, according to this projection, 100% of the population may end up having it in the year 2531. The somewhat provocative conclusion is intended to be an allegation against the Japanese legal tradition – which also exists in European countries, such as France – in which families can only pass on a surname to their children, and that this is generally the father’s. For all Japanese people to end up saying the same thing “will not only be an inconvenience, but will also undermine individual dignity”, declared Yoshida in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
The issue, however, goes beyond the threat – relevant enough – to individual identity. The example illustrates the ravages of population aging, which in Japan has become the number one national problem. With 125 million inhabitants, the country of the Rising Sun has the oldest population on the planet, with an average age of almost 50 years, the result of decades of having one of the lowest fertility rates in the world (currently, 1.3 children per woman, according to data from the World Bank, far from the 2.1 that guarantees generational replacement). Low wages and job insecurity, the high cost of housing and the delay in motherhood – causes that can also be observed in other developed societies – explain this phenomenon. And, in this case, foreign immigration – in a country strongly reluctant to anything foreign – has not been able to act as a counterweight.
As a result, Japan is on its way to severe population decline. According to the projections of the government Institute for Research on Population and Social Security (IPSS), by 2070 the country will have lost 30% of its population and 40% of its inhabitants will be over 65 years old. This poses serious problems of labor force shortages – which will diminish its economic power – and of the viability of health and social services that will be more stressed than ever. Japan has the unfortunate privilege of being a pioneer country in this area: the fall in the birth rate began there in the 1970s. But the problem concerns everyone.
The threat of demographic loss is particularly evident in Asia, mainly in the Far East. It’s not just in Japan. The problem, although later, has also started to hit hard in countries such as South Korea, which has the lowest fertility rate in the world (0.7) – causing its president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has described this week as a “national emergency”–; Taiwan (1.1) and China (1.2), victim of decades of the political irony of the only child. Beijing estimates that by 2035, due to a lack of children, there will be a shortage of 1.9 million teachers…
For its part, India, today the most populous country in the world with 1,428 million inhabitants, is on the razor’s edge (index 2), although the decline in fertility is beginning to be felt in certain regions.
After having increased by 80% between 1950 and 1980, the population of Asia begins to fall sharply. Which, as the American economist Nicholas Eberstadt emphasizes, will have not only internal but also geopolitical consequences. “This decline will benefit the United States, to the extent that it will weaken its rival”, he wrote in Foreign Affairs, and emphasizes that China will have enormous difficulties in displacing the US from first place as a world power.
The United States is certainly better off demographically, thanks in large part to immigration. But it also suffers from the same process of falling birth rates (1.7). The same as the whole of Latin America.
And what can we say about Europe! If we start with the East, Russia (1.5), the country with the most territory in the world, will soon not know how to fill it. In the EU, Italy (1.3) and Spain (1.2) approach Asian fertility levels, but the problem is general. In Germany it is 1.6 and in France – once the birth champion – it has fallen to 1.8, which recently led President Emmanuel Macron to call for a “demographic rearmament”.
Everything indicates that these efforts will be wasted and that humanity will have to face very important social transformations in the coming decades. The latest demographic studies indicate that during this century there will be a general depopulation of the Earth. The world population will reach its peak – around 10 billion people – between 2060 and 2080 and will start to decline from there. Africa, the most dynamic continent in this area, will be the one to resist the most. But only for a while. A study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) published in April in The Lancet, estimates that by 2100 only six countries will have a sufficient fertility rate: Chad, Niger, Samoa, Somalia, Tajikistan and Tonga . Until then, today’s maligned African immigration can become a precious manna.
“These trends will completely reconfigure the global economy and the balance of international power and require a reorganization of societies,” says Dr. Natalia V. Bhattacharjee, co-author of the study, who predicts the emergence of “fierce competition ” to attract immigrants who sustain economic growth (the Bank of Spain estimates that Spain will need 24 million immigrants in the next thirty years)
Meanwhile, the European Union, lured by the apocalyptic sermons of the extreme right, only thinks of erecting itself in an impregnable fortress.
