Forget declining fertility rates. Focus instead on gender equality. And embrace migration. That’s the message to governments from a new United Nations Population Fund report released Wednesday. Policies designed to influence people, especially women, to have more or fewer children don’t usually work, the report says. The better way to deal with the problems of an aging population is to permit more orderly immigration from growing countries. Why it matters: Most of the world’s population live in countries with low fertility where people face a future in which the elderly outnumber younger, working-age citizens. Without more immigration, they’ll struggle to provide health care for elderly people, fund government pension programs and have enough soldiers to fight wars. Europe is feeling this firsthand. In the next three decades, its population will decrease by 7 percent, according to the report. Populations in North America and other regions will continue to grow but peak by 2100. Japan is projected to experience a 15 percent decrease by 2050, from 123 million people to 103 million, according to Our World In Data. China’s population will also decline by some 120 million people by 2050. Policy responses: The U.N. isn’t against policies to make having kids easier, such as parental leave for men and women and child tax credits. But countries that have offered financial incentives to encourage women to have children haven’t seen great results. South Korea, for example, has spent more than $200 billion to promote child-bearing over the last 16 years and still has the world’s lowest fertility rate. So countries like Poland and Russia that are adopting similar strategies are unlikely to succeed in increasing their populations, UNFPA Executive Director Natalia Kanem told Carmen. Limiting access to abortion, as in the United States, isn’t a solution to demographic changes either, she said. What’s left? Migration will drive population growth in rich countries over the next decades, the report says. And that’s a good thing, according to Kanem: “The receiving country gets huge benefits once the incoming person is integrated properly, once there are plans in place to address barriers they face."
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