China, Índia e EUA, o Que a Demografia Diz?

Artigo na Rand Review sobre as tendências demográficas nos EUA, China e Índia: The United States also appears likely to have the demographic and economic resources to retain its global supremacy through at least 2050. Its fertility and immigration rates are high enough to keep its population rising, albeit in the range of 0.5 to 1 percent per year (once the effects of the current recession on immigration rates wear off). The United States, which has 4.7 percent of the world’s working-age population today, will still have 4.3 percent by 2050. (If one assumes that the U.S. fertility rate, which, uniquely, is higher than it was in the last generation, stays constant and that illegal immigration continues at rates characteristic of the last ten years, then the U.S. percentage of total world population might not decline at all.) When the relative flatness of the ratio between U.S. GDP per capita and the GDP per capita of most other nations is factored in, the current share of global GDP accounted for by the U.S. economy is likely to stay quite high. Demographics are not destiny, but they are the next best thing. The accumulation of slow demographic changes inexorably alters nations, especially vis-à-vis one another — and in ways that are not easy to reverse. In the decades ahead, China and India will have the most to gain or to lose, and the United States will continue to have the most to protect and to defend.