We’ve kicked, flogged, and beaten the snot out of China’s demographic horse, but what other countries are facing a similar demographic decline?

Germany, Japan, and Italy are first on the list. These countries got an early start on industrialization and urbanization thanks to their geography. Thus, rapid aging and population shrinkage was locked in for these WWII Axis powers. South Korea’s rugged terrain meant urbanization was essential, which has translated to them being one of the fastest aging societies in the world.

India and Brazil started down this road much later than the rest of this list, but decades of low birth rates, low fertility, and limited technological upgrades put them in a difficult position. Should these trends continue, they could face severe demographic and economic challenges before reaping the benefits that come along with industrialization.

Hey all, Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from your cemetery park, the northwest part just above Tilden Lake over there. And, it’s chit chat and peek in the back. I’m not sure about that, though. Anyway, taking another question from the Patreon page.

Aside from China, which has the worst demographics in human history and is looking at societal collapse within a decade.

What other countries make your top ten list? Let me give you six. How about that? Just one video. The first three, are the countries that industrialized first and urbanized heavily first. And they are Germany, Japan and Italy.

The situation all three of these countries is that they were among the first countries to pick up the industrial technologies and get what they needed to go into urbanization in a very big way.

It happened in Germany very, very quickly because Germany used to be a series of a number competing regions. And so when all of a sudden they got electricity and rail, it was very easy for these regions to each set up their own node. They tried to compete with one another a little bit. We had a series of conflicts in the 1800s, and eventually we got the urbanized Germany that led into the world wars, in Japan, very similar.

The region’s topography is very, very rugged. So as soon as the technologies were available for people to live better, they chose to and they moved into high rises. Italy’s a little different. Italy’s population is concentrated in the Po Valley. And if you remember your Machiavelli, Italy is a series of, again, competing city states. And so once you got the technologies to go up instead of out, everyone did it anyway.

These three countries, their geographies and their political history is really meshed with industrial technologies. You will notice that all three of these were the axis powers in World War two. That is not a coincidence, because when these countries started to urbanize and industrialize, they got a burst of national power that they used, perhaps unwisely. But that’s not a coincidence.

Next country down is Korea. Korea is the head of the what they used to call the mix. The newly industrializing countries of East Asia.

Korea’s geography is a little bit like Japan’s in that it’s very, very rugged. And people live on a few chunks of flat land. And so when industrial technologies came about, you could move from rice farming into a high rise.

And that was kind of a no brainer for most people. In addition, they had so little land that once they got the industrial technologies, they were able to reclaim land from the seas. And those again went straight up. as a result, with the exception of China, Korea is arguably the fastest aging society in the world now.

The next two are countries that I’m not worried about now. But if things don’t change, right, I’m going to be worried about them. Very much so in 20 or 30 years. Not that that’s going to be my problem at that point. But anyway, and those are, Brazil and India. Now, these are countries that came late to the game.

They didn’t really start seriously industrializing until the 1980s, early 1990s. But because the path has been paved and all the technologies have had been invented, they were able to adapt those technologies very, very quickly, urbanize very, very quickly. And so as a result, their birth rates are significantly below the United States at this point. If they keep aging at their current position, they’re not going to enter a Japanese style crisis until like 2070.

I mean, there’s still a lot of time for this to go a different direction, but we’ve already had 40 years of record low birth rates for both of those large developing countries, and unfortunately, they have not moved up the value added scale like, say, the Germans or the Japanese or the Koreans have in the time that it’s taken them to industrialize.

So if, if if nothing changes on the birth rate front, those two countries will be looking at, demographic degradation without the attendant increase in technological prowess, skilled labor, or standard of living. So, you know, if you’re in India or if you get in Brazil, chop, chop. You got some work to do. Yeah. That’s top six.

Okay. That’s it. See you guys on the other side of the lake.