6 - Demographics

Summary

Gordon Smith: It was interesting that Stijn bracketed China with India and Brazil. One of the things that struck me as you were talking was the effect of the prolonged one-child-per-couple policy in China. The economic consequences of that are very dramatic. Would you really bracket China with India and Brazil, given that it had this policy for such a long time? Is there any projection of what will happen in China specifically given the liberalisation towards more children?

Stijn Hoorens: I have not studied these countries in detail but I deliberately left out China because of its one-child policy. You can see in China that there will be a massive problem with their labour force much earlier than in countries such as India precisely because of that.

Diana Mansour: Dr Botting, I understand the problems looking at birth rate, but you showed in England and Wales that there was a small increase in birth rate over the last 3—4 years (Figure 4.1, page 34). Have you any idea whether that is because women who previously delayed having children are now catching up and so we had a dip before it increased? Or is this increasing migration?

Beverley Botting: I'll answer in two parts. Given that we are seeing the increasing rates in the older ages, that goes together with the assumption that it is ‘catch-up’ and later births. When we look at the cohort graphs (Figure 4.4, page 37), we see, even for the younger women, that they are starting to converge.