Decline breeds new and perplexing dangers
… But behind all of the Kremlin’s contemporary geopolitical bluster, the successor state of the once-mighty Soviet Union is caught in a demographic and socioeconomic death spiral.
… Russia, in other words, is dying.
… By midcentury, according to official estimates, Russia will be more than 50 percent Muslim – and the [...]

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A series of looming demographic trends will greatly affect international security in the twenty-first century. How policymakers adjust to these changes now will determine the course of global political and economic stability for years to come.
Over the coming decades the proportion of retirees in developed nations will greatly increase, and the proportion number workers will [...]

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The Chinese state media has admitted that the country’s One Child policy has resulted in a potentially disastrous demographic crisis. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reports that the policy that mandates abortion for many pregnancies, combined with sex-selection and a cultural preference for boys, has created a gender imbalance that will result in 24 [...]

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More than 30 years after China’s one-child policy was introduced, creating two generations of notoriously chubby, spoiled only children affectionately nicknamed “little emperors,” a population crisis is looming in the country.
Looming population crisis forces China to revisit one-child policy – washingtonpost.com

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Japan looks like a country that is growing old. After talking to some young Japanese you discover that this is exactly what they are most worried about. The reason is everywhere you look. I have never been in a country with such a preponderance of old people. They’re everywhere, and they’re far from frail.
The [...]

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Even as the Chinese economy under the Hu-Wen administration is set to wean through the global financial crisis with a remarkable eight percent growth rate this year, senior officials from the Ministry of Civil Affairs under the jurisdiction of the State Council, which is responsible for social and administrative affairs, revealed that China’s aging population—people [...]

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Russia’s population has fallen by 6.6 million since 1993, despite the influx of millions of immigrants, a United Nations report said Monday, and by 2025 the country could lose a further 11 million people.
The result could be labor shortages, an aging population and slower economic growth, the U.N. said.
Recent Kremlin efforts to reward women for [...]

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Over the next few decades, the developed world will age and weaken. Meanwhile, demographic trends in the developing world-from resurgent youth booms in the Islamic Belt to premature aging in China and population implosion in Russia-will give rise to daunting new security threats.
While some argue that “global aging” is pushing the world toward greater [...]

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China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women in less than 15 years as a gender imbalance resulting from the country’s tough one-child policy becomes more pronounced, state media reported Friday.
The tens of millions of men who will not be able to find a wife could also lead to social instability [...]

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We all know that a large wave of Baby Boomers in the US are approaching retirement. But what about the rest of the world? And what happens when those retirees need to spend out of savings? There is more than just a credit crisis and a government deficit crisis in our future. A rising level [...]

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