Johnson’s post is one week old - my fault for waiting this long. It is well worth a read, however. If you are a population junkie or interested in the one-child policy, check out the paper by Nicholas Eberstadt.

From a social policy standpoint, I don’t have much to say. I’m not into that sort of judgmental stuff, and so whatever conclusions along those lines that are made by Eberstadt - I’ll leave those for you to judge for yourself. The guy works for the American Enterprise Institute, so that kind of says it all.

What is quite interesting, however, are the numbers - what China’s demographics will look like in 20 years and what we can conclude about the effects on the country’s economy and social insurance system. To many old people = strain on the retirement system. This is fairly obvious math.

Japan is/will have this problem in a big way, and the retirement of the U.S. Baby Boomers will also put a fantastic whammy on the U.S. Social Security system. No one has yet solved these problems budget-wise in the U.S. or Japan. This will no doubt be the biggest political fight (if we ever address it) in the U.S. in a long time. (I’m not an expert on Japanese politics, so no comment on how this stuff has been addressed over there.)

What will China do about this? I have no idea - the social insurance system here is just being built. To put that kind of stress on it in just a couple of decades, ouch.