Demographics and politics
One of the things I thought of when I read these articles was about future political leaders in the UK.If you ask your students to compare the political careers of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin to the careers of earlier leaders (like Ted Kennedy or Tony Blair), what similarities and differences would they identify?
Now, what do the changes predicted for Britain tell us about future political leaders in the UK? What route would a politically ambitious young person in the UK follow for success, given the demographic changes coming in the British Isles?
And if not politicians, how about policies? What implications are there for policy choices in the changing population?
Multiplying and arriving: Immigrants and babies could make Britain the EU’s biggest country
"IF DEMOGRAPHY is destiny, then the British are roaring forward. On August 27th Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical service, predicted that by 2060 Britain would be the EU’s largest country, with a population of 77m (compared with around 61m today). Germany, the current top dog, will see its 82m citizens dwindle to 71m over the same period. Britain’s boom will be fuelled by a mix of immigration and a comparatively high birth rate...
"Besides getting bigger, Britain will also remain youthful, at least by EU standards. Although the share of people over 65 will rise from 16% to 25% by 2060, that will still mean fewer greybeards than anywhere else in Europe except Luxembourg...
"In the wake of enthusiastic migration from eastern Europe from 2004, local councils complained that official underestimates of their populations left them starved of cash and unable to do their jobs properly. And a popular conception that Britain is “full” receives some backing from statistics. Although its overall population density of 251 people per square kilometre is not particularly high for western Europe, England has 392 people per square kilometre, the second-highest density in Europe (behind the tiny Netherlands, with 395)...
"Such pressure may persuade officials to consider demography in their planning, something that they do only intermittently now, mainly when considering social-security entitlements. But demographic predictions are notoriously unreliable..."
Andrew Anthony asks some questions in a Guardian op-ed piece:
The time has come to say Britain is full
"The science of demographic projection and the art of scaremongering enjoy a relationship akin to that of the sadist and masochist... Thus forecasts of increasing population numbers are guaranteed to produce dystopian visions of social collapse...
"Last week, the European Commission announced its most recent population predictions. Britain came top of the league with an estimated growth in the next 50 years of 16 million people. With a total of 77 million inhabitants, Britain is predicted to become the most populous country in Europe.
"To those who view the world through a purely economic prism, these figures are a cause for celebration...
"This has become the rationale for the policy of population expansion. To deal with greater life expectancy, runs the theory, we need to produce or, rather, import more people...
"It's impossible to know the future, but there's no excuse for ignoring the present and just now things feel a little cramped in Britain, especially in the south east. Roads are almost permanently clogged, public transport is a mess, schools and hospitals are full and the sense of friction, the tension of reduced personal space, is often palpable. Would these problems be alleviated with another 16 million, the majority of whom would settle in the south?
"And here we come to the main problem of discussing the benefits and drawbacks of population growth. Immigration is inextricably tied to the issue of race. To wonder if 10 million new migrants is a good thing is to stray into territory most notably occupied by racists. In fact, immigration has become a much more complex matter than race; it's not uncommon, as author Mike Phillips noted last week in these pages, to see black Londoners complaining about the presence of white Poles. None the less, it's a sensitive matter and that's one reason the immigration debate has been restricted to the more neutral ground of economics...
"However, economic success is not the only guide to a nation's health.
See also: Immigration trends: Poles depart
Labels: demographics, leadership, policy, UK
posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:05 AM
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