Elon Musk was typically provocative and – to some – rude in his tweet predicting an existential threat for Japan, where the death rate has for long outstripped the birth rate. Many in Japan weren’t amused. But Musk has a point. Japan’s population fell by over half a million in 2021 and its birth rate is among the lowest in the world. Japan is a particularly sharp example of the low economic growth trajectory that countries with ageing, falling populations are stuck with. Fewer citizens in the working age depresses consumption overall and increases the social security burden on the available workforce. Unlike the US and other developed countries like Canada, Germany and Australia that have been bolstered by immigrants, Japan has waffled. And a plan to let in half-a-million blue-collar workers by 2025 was stalled by the pandemic.
India is a study in deep contrast with Japan. India’s birth rates are falling too. The NFHS-5 survey reveals that the total fertility rate, or the average number of children born to each woman, has declined below replacement levels to 2.0 from 2.2 in 2015-16. But India is still in the midst of a demographic boom that is swelling the numbers of young people in their teens, 20s and 30s – the demographic implications of the latest TFR will be felt only down the line. This is why what India does now will determine what kind of a society it turns out to be. If policy is unable to create jobs for today’s youth bulge, this cohort transforms in a few decades into a demographic burden of millions of unskilled middle aged and elderly citizens who couldn’t be fully productive during their prime. The failure of the current generation to enter the middle class will also hobble the prospects of their children by denying them quality education for matching the technological needs of the fourth industrial revolution.
India’s falling TFR is a qualitative outcome of the quantitative increase in up to 12 years of schooling that most female children can now access. Unfortunately, women’s workforce participation rate has fallen in these last two decades, another testimony of our failure to create enough jobs for the bulging workforce. Learning outcomes are also patchy. Reforms in education are critical more than ever before with economies poised for a great leap into the unknown with 5G, AI, automation, robotics, nanomaterials and biosciences. All of these promise big disruptions. Every day lost in inane Centre-state disputes, divisive rhetoric, caste obsession is a lost opportunity for present and future generations.
This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
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