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September 23, 2003

Wisdom

I am looking for a paper on economic analysis of population growth versus reduction. I have this vague idea of an argument in my head about world population growth control...what effect would it have on world governments if their populations suddenly held steady? Would a government be able to provide health care, education, welfare, retirement, defense, etc to a population that held steady?

Assuming an even population distribution (which is a fairly good assumption in a zero population growth society, though there will always be a little more on the young end and a little less on the old end), and an average lifespan of say 75 for every citizen, you'd have 28% of the population too young to pay taxes (and also involved in the education system), 13% of the population collecting retirement, and the remaining 59% working and paying taxes to support the rest of the population economically.

The question is, could that 59% of the population possibly pay enough in taxes to sustain not only their own social service needs (health care, defense, etc) but also the needs of the rest of the population? I'd say no, and that you need multiplicatively more 21-65 year olds working at any given moment than you have retirees at least (if you want a social security system that allows the retirees to eat and have a roof), and you need to constantly cut back on services for children (since you would need multiplicatively more children than you have adults who can't be bothered to pay taxes to support them and feed themselves too).

In all, I get the feeling that a zero population-growth society would need to be socialist in nature...either that or it would need to find a good way to kill people off as soon as they retire (as an aside, cigarettes might fit that bill nicely...lung cancer right at retirement age!).

A paper on the subject would be infinitely fascinating to me...alas Wisdom has no reviews on such a piece, and I haven't the foggiest idea of where to start looking for one.

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