Global good, national bad?

May 7, 2008 5:10 AM

Any recommendations for published research on dealing gracefully with population decline?

I'm looking for academic or semi-academic work on the problems associated with population decline, and primarily on how countries can (or do) deal with them gracefully. I'm less interested in approaches that try to reverse decline, whether through increasing immigration or offering incentives for childbirth; what I'm looking for is work on how population decline can happen without affecting a nation negatively.

posted by trig to law & government (3 comments total)

Looking first at Japan, whose population is already in decline.

Demographic Dividends and Population Aging in Japan [PDF].

On page 53 of this powerpoint presentation they suggest:

• better utilization of aged workers and extension of
  the retirement age - Japan already has 35% of males over 65 still in the workforce
• labor-saving technology (robots!) and more efficient use of
  young workers

But after this they go on to the most interesting suggestion which is financial education of the elderly so that they can invest and manage their substantial savings better. In effect a grey finance sector.

And the for the global situation I found this paper:

Managing the Global Aging Transition, P Hewitt - Brown J. World Aff., 2001 [Google Scholar]
posted by Sitegeist at 6:15 AM on May 7

Thanks Sitegeist! That looks interesting.
posted by trig at 11:14 PM on May 7

I'll check in on this question periodically, so if anyone comes across it and has something to add, please do!
posted by trig at 5:39 AM on May 12