Froma Harrop
China’s shrinking population, we are told, poses an economic threat to that country, as well as an economic drag for us.
Here are the numbers: Deaths exceeded births in 2022 by 850,000. That leaves over 1.4 billion Chinese. That’s over four times the U.S. population occupying about the same land mass. More than 1 billion people would be a lot of people in anybody’s book.
Two reasons for concern are flawed. One is the idea is that an economy needs more people to grow. The other is that aging societies need vastly more young people to support their elderly.
Start with the notion that fewer workers restrain economic growth. That might hem in the gross domestic product, but what does that big number mean to the average worker? The GDP could stay the same, but if it was applied to fewer…
