Some news links: fertility, population aging, migration, demography is not destiny, Eurabia

Over the past week, I've come across some interesting news reports about different trends in different parts of the world.

• The Independent noted that the length and severity of the Greek economic crisis means that, for many younger Greeks, the chance to have a family the size they wanted--or the chance to have a family at all--is passing. The Korea Herald, meanwhile, noted that the fertility rate in South Korea likely dipped below 1 child per woman, surely a record low for any nation-state (although some Chinese provinces, to be fair, have seen similar dips.)
• The South China Morning Post argued that Hong Kong, facing rapid population aging, should try to keep its elderly employed. Similar arguments were made over at Bloomberg with regards to the United States, although the American demographic situation is rather less dramatic than Hong Kong's.
• Canadian news source Global News noted that, thanks to international migration, the population of the Atlantic Canadian province of Nova Scotia actually experienced net growth. OBC Transeuropa, meanwhile, observed that despite growing emigration from Croatia to richer European Union member-states like Germany and Ireland, labour shortages are drawing substantial numbers of workers not only from the former Yugoslavia but from further afield.
• At Open Democracy, Oliver Haynes speaking about Brexit argued strongly against assuming simple demographic change will lead to shifts of political opinion. People still need to be convinced.
• Open Democracy's Carmen Aguilera, meanwhile, noted that far-right Spanish political party Vox is now making Eurabian arguments, suggesting that Muslim immigrants are but the vanguard of a broader Muslim invasion.

On China becoming a country of immigrants

A South China Morning Post article, Jenni Marsh's "Afro-Chinese marriages boom in Guangzhou: but will it be 'til death do us part'?", published last year caught my attention. This article on the substantial African immigrant community in Guangzhou described how this community, and its descendants, were becoming embedded in the city. Ultimately stemming from the human connections made by China with West African countries during China's Maoist era of internationalism, economic migration has created a large and growing community.

"Chocolate City" OR "Little Africa", as it has been dubbed by the Chinese press, is a district of Guangzhou that is home to between 20,000 and 200,000, mostly male, African migrants (calculations vary wildly due to the itinerant nature of many traders and the thousands who overstay their visas).

Africans began pouring into China after the collapse of the Asian Tigers in 1997 prompted them to abandon outposts in Thailand and Indonesia. By exporting cheap Chinese goods back home, traders made a killing, and word spread fast. Guangzhou became a promised land.

It is easy to believe that every African nation is represented here, with the Nigerian, Malian and Guinean communities the most populous. But Little Africa is a misnomer; in the bustling 7km stretch from Sanyuanli to Baiyun, in northern Guangzhou, myriad ethnicities co-exist.

Uygurs serve freshly baked Xinjiang bread to Angolan women balancing shopping on their heads while Somalis in flowing Muslim robes haggle over mobile phones before exchanging currency with Malians in leather jackets, who buy lunch from Turks sizzling tilapia on street grills, and then order beer from the Korean waitress in the Africa Bar. Tucked away above a shop-lined trading corridor, the bar serves food that reminds Africans of home - egusi soup, jollof rice, fried chicken.

Whereas Chungking Mansions conceals Hong Kong's low-end trading community, in dilapidated Dengfeng village - Little Africa's central thoroughfare - the merchants, supplied by Chinese wholesalers, are highly visible. And it's in this melee of trade where most Afro-Chinese romances blossom.

I would also recommend this Al Jazeera photo essay.

I've blogged here before about immigration into China. In August 2010 I touched upon Russian immigration into China, as people migrated from the Russian Far East to a relatively more prosperous and dynamic Chinese northeast. In a 2011 post on Taiwan, I mentioned in passing the settlement of large numbers of Taiwanese in the Shanghai area. (I recommend one 2009 paper by Yen-Fen Tseng and another by Ping Lin looking at the phenomenon of Taiwanese migration to the Chinese mainland.) In passing while writing on Korea, I've mentioned here and here that many desperate North Korean female refugees have married Chinese farmers. Southeast Asian women seem to be following suit in southwestern China.

China has the potential to become a major destination for immigrants. China has become a global economic power, with interests and relationships worldwide, connections that can be capitalized upon by migrants if there are niches. With a China that is become increasingly rich, especially compared to much of the Third World, with an increasingly low birth rate and a soon-to-shrink working-age population, there are niches. These niches might well attract large numbers of migrants from relatively poorer countries, but they might also attract migrants from relatively richer countries. I mentioned Russia and Taiwan above, while South Koreans are also noteworthy. Looking to the experiences to date from Taiwan and Hong Kong with international migration, I would suggest that Southeast Asia might well become a source of migrants. Will the Philippines become a major source country? What of Thailand and Vietnam? What about an African continent that China is building more ties with? Et cetera.

What will the overall impact be on China's population dynamics? I honestly can't say. With on the order of 1.4 billion people living in China, it would take huge numbers of migrants--tens, if not hundreds of millions, of people--to create change on a large scale. Then again, change on smaller scale, on the level of a province or a metropolis, is also possible. It's arguably already starting to happen. Will this impact the international migration choices of Southeast Asians, if a migrant-accepting China is next door? Is China at all ready for this prospect?

How will the Chinese people and state react to these changes? Any number of outcomes is possible. It will be a privilege to see what will happen in the coming decades.

On North Korea becoming a place where people are from

Writing at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Robert Farley linked to some interesting efforts being made to plan for Korean reunification. Reacting to this conference report, one Robert Kelly took issue with the idea that reunification could be managed as anything but a wholesale and terrible expensive takeover of the North by the South, on account of the North Korean state's lack of legitimacy compared to South Korea.

This will bring about numerous issues, especially he notes in regards to migration issues.

Getting NK up to speed ASAP is also necessary to forestall a massive migration southward with consequent North Korean ghettoes emerging around Southern cities and all the crime, resentment, and pseudo-identity politics that would create. The likely food shortages alone will probably drive Northerners southward. USFK/ROKA ideas of air-dropping food into North Korea are band-aids, and notions of a green revolution to improve NK agricultural production will take several years to fall into place. But the obvious attraction of Southern lifestyles will be the true driver as it was in Germany, a point I am surprised was not made in the report.

It is worth noting how much internal migration there was in unified Germany. Pusan National University had a German speaker on this issue of post-unification migration. He noted that it was 20% of the entire ex-GDR population, slowed only by moving the capital to the east, an option a unified Korea would not likely entertain. I have written this up on my blog (October 22, 2010), and the Project might like to contact the speaker.

Migration-deterring notions like an internal passport or temporary work permits for Northerners in the South would appear terribly immoral, suggest North Koreans are second-class citizens, embarrass Korea before global opinion, and fire revanchist Northern political entrepreneurs. Once the DMZ is open, it will be politically near-impossible to reclose it without North Korea turning into something like the West Bank, a semi-occupied wild west zone in legal limbo, or a gigantic SEZ for the chaebol. Either way, it would appear so immoral before global opinion, and ‘illegal internal immigration’ would be so persistent, that I cannot imagine it will work.

I've blogged here about South Korea's emergent status as a country of immigration, at least as early as September 2009 and most recently earlier this month. The idea that North Korea may become a major source of immigrants is something that makes perfect sense to me, given the dysfunction in the North as contrasted to the prosperity in the South and assuming the reunification of the Korean peninsula--as I wrote in March 2010, very many North Koreans will want to head south. I've also written in November 2010 about how the contrast between a relatively multicultural South and a North that prides itself on ethnic purity may already be complicating intra-Korean relations, and may complicate relations significantly if Korea is reunified.

South Korea, as I noted, is becoming a place that people are moving to. North Korea, in the 21st century, is going to be a place that people are from. I don't think economic convergence with the south if reunification occurs is going to proceed at anything like the speed necessary for anything but the maintenance of the inter-Korean border to prevent large-scale migration south. As I noted in March 2010, North Koreans can go elsewhere, too, whether to adjacent China, Russia, Japan or points beyond. Last September here in Toronto, local news media covered the mass wedding of 15 refugee couples from North Korea at Toronto City Hall--see the tabloid Toronto Sun and the broadsheet Toronto Star for examples.

"South Korea Scours Himalayas for Staff as Population Ages"

Perhaps informed by Hugh and Vistesen's post on Japan's particular path, I wanted to post a link to a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article, Eunkyung Seo's "South Korea Scours Himalayas for Staff as Population Ages". In brief, the article describes how South Korea is starting to become a country of immigrants.

Sharma Sagar is the new face of Korean manufacturing. He’s from Nepal.

Sagar studied Korean for years, competing with other candidates in his native Himalayan homeland to be chosen by a joint-government program that was set up to help South Korea supplement its dwindling labor pool.

“Everyone wanted to come,” said Sagar, who has been mixing materials to produce vinyl at Homyeong Chemical Industrial Co. north of Seoul since he arrived in May. “I’m earning a lot here, about 20 to 25 times more than my friends back home. I want to stay here as long as possible.”

With one of the world’s fastest-aging populations, South Korea has gone from a country where labor was the only abundant resource to one seeking staff to help run the plants and farms of Asia’s fourth-largest economy. While neighboring Japan has largely rejected imported labor as a solution to its aging workforce, South Korea is beginning to accept it. Immigrants have risen sevenfold since 2000, to 2.8 percent of the population, and could make up more than 6 percent by 2030, the government said.

“We should take preemptive structural action to tackle the aging population in order to avert Japan’s path of the so-called lost decades,” said Choi Kwang Hae, a director-general at the Finance Ministry. “It’s inevitable that we will have to absorb foreign labor to boost our economy.”

As the won strengthens and the yen weakens, some of South Korea’s exporters are increasingly looking to hire abroad to cut costs and remain competitive. In the past six months, the won has gained 4.3 percent against the U.S. dollar, while the yen has fallen 16 percent.

“Our factory can’t operate without foreign workers,” said Park Kwang Seo, director at Homyeong Chemical, which supplies packaging to Coca-Cola Co. and coating films to Samsung Electronics Co. “Our business is growing fast and we need to hire more to meet the demand.”

The government announced steps on Nov. 28 to attract more immigrants, including easing visa and citizenship requirements and giving more social support for settlement.

“Demand will increase sharply for foreign labor in each part of our society,” Prime Minister Kim Hwang Sik said in a statement at the time. “We should take pre-emptive action with a comprehensive and long-term perspective to maximize benefits from inflows of foreigners.”

There were 1.45 million foreign residents in South Korea in December, up from 210,249 in 2000, according to the Ministry of Justice. The number will rise to 3.2 million in 2030, according to the ministry.

With a birth rate of 1.24 children per woman in 2011, South Korea will be short 2.8 million workers by 2030, according to a Finance Ministry report released on Dec. 26. The nation’s potential gross domestic product growth would drop to 1.9 percent by 2031 from a 3.8 percent average pace during 2011-2020, the report said.

Readers might be interested to go through the archives, checking other posts tagged with Korea and South Korea. The article explores some of the major themes we've examined here: the rapid aging of the South Korean population, labour migration from China mainly by ethnic Koreans, marriage migration from Southeast Asia, problems associated with recruiting migrants into higher-paying positions and rigid barriers, and so on. The looming potential of North Korea, as a source of migrants or a cause for migration, isn't mentioned.

One thing, however, seems clear: South Korea is a country that people are moving to.

A few population-related news links

This evening, I thought I'd share a few interesting population-related news links I've collected in the past couple of weeks.

* The Discover Magazine blog 80 Beats summarized a recent study of young game-playing children in Beijing suggesting that these children are less trusting and more risk-averse than one might expect.

* On a perhaps-related note, an article in the latest issue of The National Interest by John Lee examines at length the consequences of China's rapid aging on its economic model, among other things.

* An article in The Guardian contrasting a relatively prosperous Chinese northeast with a stagnant Russian Far East makes the point that Russia need not fear millions of Chinese crossing their country's northern frontier. What incentives would there be for them to leave?

* The Taipei Times covered a recent statement by the head of the South Korean central bank calling for more immigration to ameliorate the effects of population aging.

* An Inter Press Service article notes that rising life expectancy for Japanese women is, unfortunately, being accompanied by falling incomes.

* The Population Reference Bureau's Behind the Numbers blog notes that birth rates have continued to decline throughout India.

* In Canada, a recent article in The Globe and Mail notes that there's an east-to-west income gradient for immigrants in Canada, immigrants in Québec enjoying substantially lower wages than their counterparts in Ontario who in turn earn less than their counterparts in western Canada.

* In the Atlantic Canadian province of Nova Scotia, meanwhile, the provincial government is trying to boost its attractiveness to immigrants in the face of declining immigrant numbers and a local population tending to decrease.

* In Europe, the Portuguese-American Journal notes that statistics indicate that more than one million Portuguese have left the country in the past fourteen years. This sort of emigration, which if anything seems to be accelerating, has obvious consequences.

* In the nearby Spanish region of Galicia, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation's Swissinfo takes a look, in the article "From Galicia to the Jura", at one community in Galicia that has been marked by emigration to Switzerland as a natural life stage for a half-century. (Likewise, emigration isn't slowing down.)

* A New York Times article profiles the Chinese of Barcelona, who have apparently so far resisted the effects of the Eurozone recession well.

On Tokyo's relative ascent in a shrinking Japan

Tuesday night is usually anime night for me and my friends, an evening when we watch some of the high-quality animated series that have made it out of Japan into North American audiences. A trope I've noticed appear frequently in anime is that of the vast city, of immense urban sprawl that dominates life. Taking a look at the statistics, Japan certainly is a highly urbanized society, not only in the simple terms of Japan being a country where more than 90% of the population lives in cities but in the reality that the Greater Tokyo Area--the conurbation dominated by Tokyo but including all seven prefectures of the Kantō region and Yamanashi Prefecture to the west--is still by many measurements the largest conurbation in the world.

Recently, Wendell Cox at his New Geography site has been producing interesting posts about, among other things, the future of Tokyo.. In September, Cox linked to a prediction of significant aging and population shrinkage in Tokyo over the 21st century.

2100 will see Tokyo's population standing at around 7.13 million — about half of what it is today — with 45.9 percent of those in the metropolis aged 65 or over, a group of academics and bureaucrats has concluded.

Tokyo's population, which stood at 13.16 million in 2010, will peak at 13.35 million in 2020 before dropping by 45.8 percent from the 2010 census figure 88 years from now, the group, including seven academics and 10 metro government and municipal bureaucrats, said Sunday.

This means the 2100 population will be resemble that of 1940's Japan, before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

"The number of people in their most productive years will decline, while local governments will face severe financial strains," the group said in a statement. "So it will be crucial to take measures to turn around the falling birthrate and enhance social security measures for the elderly."

The number of Tokyoites 65 or over, estimated at 2.68 million in 2010, will peak at 4.41 million in 2050 before falling to 3.27 million in 2100, while their presence in the overall population will rise to 37.6 percent in 2050 and 45.9 percent in 2100 compared with 20.4 percent in 2010.

Those aged in their productive years between 15 and 64 will represent 46.5 percent of the population in 2100, the group said.

The projections assume that people moving to Tokyo continue to outnumber those moving out and that the fertility rate — the average number of children a woman gives birth to over her lifetime — will remain unchanged at its 2010 level of 1.12 among Tokyo women, the lowest in the nation.

This prediction, long-range though it might be, doesn't strike me as entirely unlikely, on account of the longevity of the Japanese population, sustained low fertility rates, and low rates of immigration. (Comparing Tokyo with Seoul is salutary.) Tokyo was plausibly selected by the Still City interdisciplinary study group as the paradigmatic post-growth city, stagnant demographically, economically, and politically.

That said, as noted by Cox in June in his survey of Tokyo's demographics, Tokyo's demographics are actually substantially healthier than those of the remainder of Japan on account of Tokyo's attractiveness to migrants from elsewhere in Japan, to the point that Tokyo's relative demographic weight is only going to grow.

Japan has been centralizing for decades, principally as rural citizens have moved to the largest metropolitan areas. Since 1950, Tokyo has routinely attracted much more than its proportionate share of population growth. In the last two census periods, all Japan’s growth has been in the Tokyo metropolitan area as national population growth has stagnated. Between 2000 and 2005, the Tokyo region added 1.1 million new residents, while the rest of the nation lost 200,000 residents. The imbalance became even starker between 2005 and 2010, as Tokyo added 1.1 million new residents, while the rest of the nation lost 900,000.

Eventually, Japan’s imploding population will finally impact Tokyo. Population projections indicate that between 2010 and 2035, Tokyo will start losing population. But Tokyo's loss, at 2.1 million, would be a small fraction of the 16.5 million loss projected for the rest of the nation (Figure 5). If that occurs, Tokyo will account for 30 percent of Japan's population, compared to 16 percent in 1950. With Japan's rock-bottom fertility rate, a declining Tokyo will dominate an even larger share of the country’s declining population and economy in the coming decades.

In the post "Japan’s 2010 Census: Moving to Tokyo", Cox noted that the Greater Tokyo Area's growth is exceptional, that even the Keihanshin conurbation anchored by Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto is declining. The decline of the only urban area comparable in size to the Greater Tokyo Area leaves the country's urban hierarchy all the more focused on the national capital.

The fortunes of the prefectures in Japan's two largest urban areas could hardly be more different. The four prefectures of the Tokyo – Yokohama area had added approximately 3,000,000 people in each five-year period until 1975. Since that time, growth has been slower, but the area has added 1 million or more people each five years from 1975 to 2010. On the other hand, the Osaka – Kobe – Kyoto area (Osaka, Hyogo, Kyoto and Nara prefectures), which also experienced strong growth after World War II, adding between one and two million people in each five year period until 1975, has seen its growth come to a virtual standstill. Over the past five years, Osaka – Kobe – Kyoto added only 12,000 people. As a result, Osaka – Kobe – Kyoto is easily the slowest growing mega-city in the world, by far. Osaka – Kobe – Kyoto seems destined to fall substantially in world urban area rankings in the years to come. Tokyo – Yokohama, however, remains at least 14 million larger than any other urban area in the world, a margin that seems likely to be secure for decades to come.

[. . .] These numbers suggest there is ample reason to worry about the concentration of population and power in the Tokyo – Yokohama area, which now contains nearly 30 percent of the nation's population. None of the world's largest nations, outside of Korea (which ranks 25th in population), are so concentrated in one urban area. Among other nations with more than 100 million the greatest concentration is in Mexico, where Mexico City accounts for less than 20 percent of the population. The largest urban areas in Brazil (Sao Paulo) and Russia (Moscow) have little more than 10 percent of the population. The largest urban area in the United States, New York, accounts for less than seven percent of the population, while in China (Shanghai) and India (Delhi), the largest urban areas house less than two percent of the population. Paris, the beneficiary of centuries of centralization, has less than 20 percent of the population.

(This sort of super-centralization isn't unique--as I noted in November 2010, half the population of South Korea lives in greater Seoul.)

What might this mean for Japan? I'd question whether there's any particular sense in Japan trying to reverse the centralization of its population in Tokyo, actually. Where will it get the funds necessary to subsidize outlying areas, like the Tohoku I surveyed back in March 2011, which has been experiencing first relative then absolute decline for generations? Seeking Alpha's observation that Japan's new trade deficit and shrinking savings leaves the country short on cash is quite valid. Can Japan afford to prop up its peripheries if the people living in these peripheries no longer want to live there?

A note on North Korea after Kim Jong-Il

Kim Jong-Il may have died, but North Korea is still damned.

Korea--the south, the north, the peninsula in toto--has been the subject of more than a few posts here at Demography Matters. Korea matters.

Right now, the North and the South are marked by notable imbalances: the south has urbanized, has completed the demographic transition, is in fact at the level of lowest-low fertility, and has begun to receive substantial inflows of immigrants, while the north remains substantially rural and substantially less advanced in the demographic transition and--obviously!--is far more a land of emigration than a land of prospective immigration. South Korea has reached the levels of First World; North Korea combines the worst of the Second and the Third Worlds, with an inflexible totalitarian economy broadly hostile to non-centrally directed enterprise in the context of terrible general poverty. Notably, the South is rather less xenophobic than the North; I wrote back in November 2010 about how the South responds to its deficit of women by sponsoring the immigration of women across East Asia to marry locals, while the North punished women who engaged in survival sex with Chinese men with--at best--the sorts of abortions that didn't involve being kicked repeatedly in the abdomen by members of the security forces.

In the event that the north's border controls weaken sufficiently, as I wrote back in March 2010 sustained mass emigration--to South Korea, an amplification of the existing marriage-driven migration to China, to anywhere--is much the most likely outcome for decades to come. East Germany lost two million people to the West after reunification, and East Germany was--by world standards--a high-income society with relatively advanced consumer industries and a high level of technology. What can North Korea plausibly offer its citizens, especially given the huge improvements in life chances awaiting a North Korean who left and the perhaps (alas) slim likelihood that a new government could trigger quick positive economic transformations.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

A note on changing dependency ratios and migration

The concerns I expressed about Canadian immigration patterns and policies risking the reproduction of patterns of socioeconomic inequality linked to immigration status and ethnicity are all the more salient in light of this Statistics Canada report on projected changes in the Canadian labour force.

Using a range of projection scenarios, the labour force is projected to grow to between 20.5 million and 22.5 million by 2031. In 2010, the labour force numbered about 18.5 million.

[. . .]

Between 1971 and 1976, when the large baby-boom cohorts were entering the labour market, the labour force increased at an average rate of just over 4% a year. This growth rate slowed to about 1.4% between 2006 and 2010. By 2016, growth is projected to be less than 1% on average in all scenarios. Projections show it could slow even further to between 0.2% and 0.7% in the period from 2021 to 2026.

In four of the five scenarios, the growth is projected to stop slowing after 2026, once most baby boomers have left the labour force.

The projections also suggest that, if recent trends continue, the labour force will become older and increasingly ethnoculturally diverse. Close to one person out of four in the labour force could be aged 55 or over by 2021. There would also be higher proportions of foreign-born people and people belonging to a visible minority group (as defined by the Employment Equity Act) in the labour force.

As the growth of the labour force loses momentum, the population of seniors aged 65 and over is projected to grow increasingly rapidly as a result of population aging and the entry of the baby boomers into this age range.

[. . .]

In 2010, the participation rate was 67.0%; by 2031, it is projected to range between 59.7% and 62.6%, which would be the lowest observed since the late 1970s.

The projected decline in the overall participation rate over the next two decades would be largely attributable to demographic phenomena, such as the aging of the baby-boom cohorts, increasing life expectancy and a fertility rate below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman.

The aging of the baby boomers, which is largely behind the projected decline in the overall participation rate, has had a major impact on the aging of the labour force. Between 2001 and 2009, the proportion of people in the labour force aged 55 and over rose from 10% to 17%, an increase of 7 percentage points in nine years. The first baby boomers reached the age of 55 in 2001.

[. . .]

In 1981, there were roughly six persons in the labour force for each retiree. By 2031, or 50 years later, this ratio is projected to decline to less than three to one, according to all five scenarios. The ratio is projected to decline in every province.

By 2031, roughly one in every three people in the labour force could be foreign born. Between 1991 and 2006, the percentage of foreign-born people in the labour force rose from 18.5% to 21.2%. If recent immigration levels were to continue, that proportion is projected to reach almost 33% in 2031, according to most scenarios.

If labour forces remain largely static, it's not good at all to have a large and growing share of the national population shut out for reasons linked to ethnicity. This is the problem facing the western province of Saskatchewan, where the First Nations population is growing rapidly but remains underemployed.

"If you have a large 65-plus (population) and don't match that with an increase in the labour force size, then your dependency ratio or the health care costs or other costs associated with the retired group may be a concern," said University of Saskatchewan policy and labour expert Rose Olfert.

"On the other (hand), if those baby boomers have good retirement plans and have lots of good discretionary spending, they can also be a source of expenditure and growth for the economy as they begin to spend all their hard-earned money that they acquired over their lifetime."

Olfert warned that as bay boomers retire they will leave "a relative vacuum of experience and skills on the part of the incomers." That puts skilled and educated labour at a premium.

It's not just a numbers game, she said, but an issue of quality. Attracting and retaining workers will be a difficult and competitive process and Saskatchewan will be competing with other provinces and other countries to fill the void.

[. . .]

"We need to engage aboriginal people like never before, both as employers and as employees," he said.

High unemployment rates in the aboriginal community means that population could help meet the labour demand and, with numerous policies and programs in place, progress is being made. A recent Statistics Canada report shows offreserve aboriginal employment in Saskatchewan grew by 3,300 jobs in July from a year ago. Employment among aboriginal youth was up by 500 jobs.

"It's just that the challenge is large and even though these policies and practices are successful and are working to a large extent, they seem to not be enough," Olfert said. "It's as though you are running fast, but you have to run a little bit faster to keep up."

As for the situation in labour-exporting New Brunswick, it can be safely described as potentially catastrophic.

In New Brunswick, the labour force participation rate was at 64 per cent in 2010 and is expected to fall to between 54 and 58 per cent by 2031 - roughly six percentage points below the national average.

While the proportion of the labour force aged 55 and over is expected to reach 24 per cent in Canada by 2031, it's expected to be three percentage points higher in New Brunswick.

At the same time, the ratio of workers to retirees by 2031 is expected to be three to one in Canada and two to one in New Brunswick.

The bleak outlook is partly due to the fact the population in New Brunswick is already older than in Canada overall, Lebel said.

Seniors made up 14.7 per cent of the province's population in 2006, one percentage point higher than the proportion for Canada as a whole, according to census data.

At the same time, New Brunswick's fertility rate of 1.59 children per woman is lower than the national average - 1.68.

Almost half of the population could be more than 65 years of age by 2031, according to medium-growth projections based on historical trends by Statistics Canada.

Saskatchewan at least has a reasonable prospect of following in the path of neighbouring Manitoba.

The famous United Nations report on replacement migration of a decade ago produced some interesting results. One of these results was the confirmation that rapid population aging is irreversible. In the admttedly extreme case of South Korea, experiencing rapid aging owing to the collapse in fertility rates from the very high level of the 1960s to the very low levels of the past decade. In order to keep the exceptionally 1995 high ratio of workers to seniors, 5.1 billion immigrants would be needed. Among other things, transforming the southern half of the Korean peninsula into a vast arcology would be problematic. Declining dependency ratios are inevitable; it's occurring worldwide. Even immigration won't necessarily change dynamics, since immigrant populations would have to have exceptionally and unrealistically high birth rates to reverse secular trends (this, in turn, having its own obvious problems).

That same report on South Korea did suggest that certain relatively medium-term improvements might be sustainable; the numbers and proportions of immigrants and immigrant descended people necessary to sustain either the peak population of South Korea or the peak working-age population of South Korea seems possible. South Korea is more open to immigration than neighbouring Japan, at least, and the movement of people from Vietnam, China, and the Philippines associated with marriage-driven immigration could contain the seeds for a broader migratory movement. South Korea might come to emulate a Canada that is enacting something very much like those policies right now, you could say. For those policies to work, though, you need a labour force that is permeable to people of diverse backgrounds at every level. Besides being a waste of resources, the ethnic segmentation of a workforce carries obvious dangers for social cohesion. Creating immigrant underclasses through migration policies which don't give immigrant the chance to acquire the cultural and economic capital needed to integrate, as we've seen in many countries around the world, is--besides being foolish--self-destructive.

Migration policies really need to be thoroughly thought-out.