Demographics another headwind
China has undergone over a generation of the one-child policy, which has served to restrict her population growth. The law of unintended consequences raised its head along the way.
The population is aging rapidly. The accompanying chart shows that the UN projects the proportion of China’s elderly population, which is defined as those over [...]

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But just as Russia proved more resilient than widely predicted at the bottom of the cycle, so it is probably far more fragile than it looks at the top. The country’s demographic, social, economic, and political challenges remain awesome.
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of Russia’s position is its demographic decline. On some projections, the country’s [...]

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Who cares about Vicky? Well, young women like Vicky are reeking demographic havoc all over the planet. These party girls are too busy to have a family, and all of us will ultimately pay the price.
Her friend Vicky Yang is hunched over a borrowed laptop, downloading an e-mail from a pesky client on her cell [...]

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The Carrie Bradshaw lifestyle (Sex and the City) is showing up in unexpected places, with unintended consequences.
Three demographic facts are at the core of the New Girl Order. First, women—especially, but not only, in the developed world—are getting married and having kids considerably later than ever before. According to the UN’s World Fertility Report, the [...]

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“A terrible demographic crisis is taking place,” said Nikolay Petrov, a specialist on Russian society at the Carnegie Center in Moscow. “Over the next 20 years, Russia will need 20 million immigrants to compensate for the labor shortage. This is the first time in which the population and labor force are declining together. It will [...]

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The birth rate reached a 15-year high in Russia in the first six months of 2007, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stated at a traditional Monday meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with government officials. According to Medvedev, 142,000 babies were born between January and June 2007, a record number since the collapse of [...]

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The central question this study raises and that Americans must answer is what costs and benefits come with having a much larger population and a more densely settled country. Some foresee a deteriorating quality of life with a larger population, including its impact on such things as pollution, congestion, loss of open spaces, and sprawl. [...]

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By 2020, 37 million Chinese men would be unable to find wives if trends continue
BEIJING, China, August 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Recent demographic reports are showing that the ratio of males to females in China is spiraling out of control. If the increasing imbalance, caused primarily by sex-selected abortions and infanticide, is not remedied, it [...]

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Worries about a population explosion have been replaced by fears of decline.
Think of twentysomethings as a single workforce, the best educated there is. In Japan (see article), that workforce will shrink by a fifth in the next decade—a considerable loss of knowledge and skills. At the other end of the age spectrum, state pensions systems [...]

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In a nutshell, it seems that all of the potential challengers of American global dominance in the next few decades — China, India, the European Union, Russia, Japan — will also be shouldering huge new financial burdens from state pension systems as their populations age. Those costs will be a major drag on their economies [...]

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Fertility data suggest that the international migration picture is about to change.
As the debate over illegal immigration from Mexico rages in Washington and across the country, and as the administration’s reform bill hangs by a thread, few Americans are aware that this problem is on track to decline, and will eventually become a vague memory.
There [...]

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In the mainland: 1,321,851,888 (July 2006 est.)
In Hong Kong: 6,994,500 (2006 census)
In Macau: 503,000
Total: 1,329,349,388
1950: 562,000,000
1960: 648,000,000
1970: 820,000,000
1980: 984,000,000
1990: 1,147,000,000
2000: 1,264,587,054

Projections

2010: 1,347,000,000
2020: 1,430,000,000
2030: 1,461,000,000
2040: 1,463,144,780
2050: 1,465,224,000

Historical population of China in millions

2100 BC: 14
2 AD: 60
1000: 40
1502: 103
1650: 123 (22,5)
1750: 260 (35,8)
1850: 412 (35,1)
1950: 552 (21,6)
1975: 924
2000: 1263 (20,5)

Age structure

0-14 years: 20.8% (male 145,461,833; female 128,445,739)
15-64 [...]

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In 2005, the population of Europe was estimated to be 728 million according United Nations, which is slightly more than one-ninth of the world’s population. A century ago, Europe had nearly a quarter of the world’s population. The population of Europe has grown in the past century, but in other areas of the world [...]

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Graph depicting Russia’s projected population decline over the next forty years
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SHE GOES WEST, HE GOES RIGHT
A new study has found that many more women are leaving economically moribund Eastern Germany. The result is a new, frustrated and largely male underclass. And many of them find succor in the neo-Nazi scene.
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If current trends don’t reverse, Russia’s population will drop to about 100 million from its current level of about 143 million by 2050, according to the World Bank. If that happens, the country’s growth could be choked off by a shortage of workers. By simply addressing preventable deaths and raising life expectancy to the average [...]

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The Realignment of America
The native-born are leaving “hip” cities for the heartland.
In 1950, when I was in kindergarten in Detroit, the city had a population of (rounded off) 1,850,000. Today the latest census estimate for Detroit is 886,000, less than half as many. In 1950, the population of the U.S. was 150 million. [...]

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Societies with high birthrates are prone to conflict, demographers find. That is especially true when there are a disproportionate number of young men between the ages of fifteen and thirty (NYT). The reasons are multifold: This “youth bulge” results in a large reservoir of potential recruits to radical organizations, as this new Backgrounder outlines. It [...]

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Saudi Arabia’s baby boomers, born after the 1973 oil embargo, are redefining the kingdom’s relationship with the modern world .
Scented smoke from dozens of water pipes mingled with Lebanese pop music at Al-Nakheel, a seaside restaurant in the Red Sea port of Jeddah. Saudi men in white robes and women in black abayas, their head [...]

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What does all this mean? Unfortunately it isn’t likely to generate any short-term trading ideas, but it does provide some perspective for a thematic approach to international investing:
* The U.S. is relatively well-off compared with other developed markets.
* China-hype may be misplaced. China may simply lack the [...]

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Japan’s population is expected to fall to less than 90 million in 2055, compared with the current level of around 127.8 million, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said on Dec.20, 2006.
The forecast is based on an estimate by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, an affiliate of the ministry, which [...]

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