The Vitality of Dying Cities

The headline is dire: "Facing The Scenario Of Demographic Deserts In The EU." A desert connotes a void, the absence of life. Global cities, on the other hand, would be demographic rainforests. While geographic metaphors as heuristics abound, deserts can and do support a wealth of biodiversity. The same is true of places dealing with the shame of demographic decline.

At the scale of the nation-state, prosperity drives demographic desertification. Better educated women have fewer children. Smarter people tend to be more geographically mobile. Stuck in place is a symptom of socioeconomic malaise. Without immigration, many of the world's richest countries would be shrinking.

Demographic norms are currently caught between two economic eras. The industrial revolution pulled workers off of the farms and into the cities. The need for a large brood faded into the past. Both blue and white collars benefited from an income boost. In the knowledge economy, only the skilled get a lift and fortune favors a two-income household. While the number of people living within one home drops, the money earned (in real terms) grows. More people in Pittsburgh have jobs now than did during its population peak.

During the height of US manufacturing employment (as a % of the workforce) in the 1950s, the bulk of dependents were kids and women. Over the last few decades, more women have jobs as the number of retirees has exploded. Thus far, the typical answer to this policy problem amounts to a "Leave It to Beaver" approach. Have more children and attract more new residents. Educating children and immigrants is expensive as well as inefficient. Demographer Sarah Harper identifies the low-hanging fruit:

This idea that you need lots and lots of people to defend your country and to grow your country economically, that is really old thinking...It is much easier to enable older adults to stay upskilled and healthy and in the labour market than it is to say to women ‘oh you have got to have children’.

This idea that the 65+ can't work is really old thinking, too. Able-minded succeeds able-bodied, as the march of women into work demonstrates so well. We can't do much about unproductive toddlers. We haven't done enough for unproductive adults.