- 2018-10-29
Let Africans immigrate to Asia?
No one may yet support this view, but two recent reports from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show that a possible solution to many economic problems in the emerging world is: a large number of people migrate from Africa to Asia.
The latest "Asia-Pacific Economic Outlook" published by the IMF in May warned that due to the sharp decline in fertility, the Asia-Pacific region may "get old before getting rich." This may make the region far inferior to the developed countries, at least the latter will become wealthy before getting old.
In sharp contrast, a research report on Africa released in April concluded that the key reason why the African continent cannot replicate Asia’s poverty alleviation process is its "slow rate of demographic transition", that is, the birth rate is still too high.
In theory, a simple solution to help alleviate these two problems in one fell swoop is to allow the younger population to emigrate to the east on a large scale, but the complexity and difficulty associated with this make this approach almost unimaginable.
Some people worry about the possible impact of the rapid aging of the population in Asia (especially East Asia). Such concerns are not new. A year ago, Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimated that by 2050, 80% of the world’s elderly will live in emerging markets, mainly Asia. As the first chart shows, developing countries are not only returning to the old path of developed countries, but they are also speeding up significantly.
In February of this year, Standard Chartered's forecast showed that by 2050, the proportion of pensioners in countries such as South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and China will be higher than most developed countries, as shown in the second chart.
The latest analysis by the IMF points out that Asian countries may be far less wealthy than developed countries when the proportion of working-age population in the total population peaks. In fact, in some countries such as China, Thailand, Vietnam, and South Korea, this is no longer a prediction, but a fact.
According to IMF calculations, when the proportion of working-age population peaked in terms of purchasing power parity, the per capita income of Australia, Japan, Germany, Italy, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom reached at least 70% of the same period in the United States. The proportion of working-age population in these countries peaked between 1950 and 2009.
In 2011, the proportion of working-age population in China peaked, but the per capita income was only 20.7% of the same period in the United States. Thailand is richer. When the country’s working-age population peaked in 2013, its per capita income was 28.9% of the same period in the United States, but Vietnam was even poorer. When the working-age population peaked in 2014, its per capita income That is 10.4% of the same stage in the United States.
According to forecasts, when the proportion of working-age population in Malaysia, Indonesia, India and the Philippines peaks (probably between 2020 and 2056), the income situation will be better, but still lower than the level reached in the West.
"People with relatively low per capita incomes in many parts of Asia are rapidly aging, and adapting to an aging population may be particularly challenging for Asia."
The IMF predicts that by 2050, the population growth rate of the entire Asian region will drop to zero (Japan has become a moderately negative value), the fertility rate will drop to 1.83 (currently 1.98 children per woman), and life expectancy will increase. Will slow down, as shown in the fourth chart. Ranil Salgado, head of the IMF’s Asia-Pacific division, added: “From a global perspective, Asia is changing from being the largest contributor to the world’s working-age population to leading to a reduction of hundreds of millions of people in the global working-age population.”
Salgado wrote: "In the past few decades, Asia has benefited greatly from demographic trends. Many regions in Asia (especially East Asia) have reaped a "demographic dividend" because the number of workers has grown faster than the number of dependants. It has strongly promoted economic growth. For many economies in Asia, this demographic dividend is about to end."
Some issues are worth noting. This analysis is based on 13 Asia-Pacific countries, excluding some countries with very high fertility rates, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Cambodia and Laos, and the Middle East countries, the Middle East was at least once regarded as part of Asia. In addition, in recent years, global population growth forecasts have often been revised upwards rather than downwards.
However, the IMF believes that these demographic trends will lead to a slowdown in economic growth in most countries studied by the organization.
The IMF predicts that from 2020 to 2050, in the absence of immigrants, demographic characteristics will reduce Hong Kong’s per capita GDP growth rate by 1.2 percentage points. The IMF predicts that the figures for South Korea, Singapore and China will be 0.69, 0.65 and 0.64 percentage points respectively. Japan and Thailand are 0.51 and 0.41 percentage points respectively.
The IMF believes that immigration may alleviate these landslides. If the United Nations’ forecasts for future immigration are included, the IMF estimates that the per capita GDP growth rate of Hong Kong and Singapore will shrink to 0.94 and 0.55 percentage points, respectively. The rate of decline in other regions’ growth rate will be smaller (but China’s growth rate will be smaller). The decline will increase slightly, and the country is expected to become a net outflow country.)
This situation is unlikely: East Asian countries choose to open their doors to large-scale immigration to promote economic growth. But if this unlikely situation does happen, another IMF team may be able to point out where immigrants should be introduced.
The African department of the IMF is worried that Africa will find it difficult to follow the path that Asia has taken, because the birth rate in Africa is still too high.
IMF's "Structural Transformation in Employment and Productivity: What Can Africa Expect?" "(Structural Transformation in Employment and Productivity: What Can Africa Hope For?) concluded, "Sub-Saharan Africa will not be able to achieve transformation through manufacturing as East Asian countries have done in the past 20 years."
According to the analysis, when the Asian manufacturing boom (attracting laborers to high-productivity industries) rises, “due to the low labor force growth rate, the proportion of employment in the lowest-productivity industries (mainly agriculture) has fallen sharply”.
However, the situation in Africa is somewhat different. From 2000 to 2010, the annual growth rate of the labor force in East Asia was 1.2%, that of South Asia was 1.7%, and that of sub-Saharan Africa was 2.6%.
The IIMF concluded pessimistically: "Companies will not be able to absorb the same proportion of labor because there is too much labor."