How to Deal with a Falling Population

While for a long time, one of the main concerns has been the population boom in third world countries, the world will now have to face up with the decline of is population. This article, which is entitled “How to deal with a falling population” and which was published by The Economist, refers to this new trend and tries to explain the consequences and the measures required to reverse the phenomenon.

First of all, this article begins by a quick observation: for thousands of years, the world population has increased slowly, while during the 20th century, the growth of the population skyrocketed. But, this increase is now beginning to fall and demographers are expecting the world population to reach a peak at around 10 billion in 2050. It is thus clear that this new trend has replaced the former concerns about the squeeze on resources of the 70 and the 80, which were completely absurd, since the earth does not lack of primary resources.

Then the article tries to explain why the fall poses a real threat. Indeed, in some areas of the world such as Eastern Europe, the falling population is reality, and in these countries, the economies will increasingly suffer from the decline of skilled workers and from financial problems, as far as for example the funding of state pension is concerned.

Afterwards, this article underlines that the transition to a lower population can be difficult. The solution is not to encourage people to have more babies but to change people’s mind, which goes through a state intervention. Thus, the governments should enable people to work longer, they should wipe out mandatory ages and increase state pension ages, ease immigration to make up for labor shortages and promote women workforce.

However, some countries, especially America and North Western Europe, are growing again thanks to voluntaristic policies, encouraging paradoxically parents to work.

But, how can we explain the fall of the birth rate in the whole world? Why is the falling population so worrying? I will try to answer to these questions.

First of all, with globalization, people have to be flexible and to meet the demands