At first it is worth explaining what is hidden under the concept of demography. Demos (from gr.) means ‘people, people’, and grapho means ‘writing, describing’. Demography is so a discipline dealing with the analysis and description of the population, including its distribution, natural growth, migration. In this work we will address the situation of Poland, including the number of people and births, age structure and fertility.
The basis of all country is people. Without them there is no economy, armed forces, culture and art. There's no future. It is they who produce goods and products, preserve speech and customs, make fresh technologies, pay off the debts of governments and, following their vocation, undertake various life challenges – both individual and social ones. Valuable natural riches mean nothing without a man to extract, acquire, and exploit them. Demography forms the basis on which all another areas of life grow. erstwhile analysing demographic data, it is easy to measure trends in the country and reasonably accurately foretell what will happen in the future.
It is hard to decide what is more crucial – demography or culture? Both factors are linked. Without people there is no culture, but without culture people are easy demoralized and enslaved. Contrary to appearances, economical improvement can be achieved very quickly. This has been shown by many examples of countries specified as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and late besides China. The political will of the leaders is adequate to make the developing economy very rapidly improve the standard of surviving of the inhabitants in just 10 years. For example, Japan, in 1 year only – 1959, reached an economical growth of 17%. In the 1960s, it exceeded 10% per year in the Cherry Flowering Country. Japan's GDP has increased 2.6 times in this 1 decade. As a rule, administrative obstacles stand in the way of economical development. The strategy does not should be a problem if it is not harmed, while negative demographic trends are much harder to reverse.
If demography is specified an crucial issue – what I will show in a minute – why is it not more frequent in tv talks, seismic debates or technological analyses? The origin seems beautiful prosaic. Demographic data are nonsubjective and not manipulative, unambiguous. They are hard to get the propaganda of success, creative accounting, creating illusions. An additional problem is that the inevitable consequences of demography are felt with any delay.
The most crucial indicator, which in an highly transparent way shows the upcoming trends, is the full Fertility Rate (TFR). This is about the number of children a statistical female will have throughout her life. In order for the next generation to be as many as the erstwhile generation, it should have 2 children. More specifically, it should be a small more (2,07–2,15) depending on the country, due to the fact that not all children live up to age, and more boys are born than girls. The value of 2.07 is for developed countries, and 2.15 for poorer countries, as the mortality rate is higher. If the CWD (TFR) is 3.0, then the next generation will be larger than the erstwhile generation. What if this indicator is below 2.0?
To make it easier, it takes 2 children to replace generations. With a CWD of 2.0, if we have 100 people in the first generation, the next will be the same number.
1.75 for 100 people = 87.5 people
1.5 for 100 people = 75 people
1.4 for 100 people = 70 people
1.3 for 100 people = 65 people
1.2 for 100 persons = 62.5 persons
1.0 for 100 people = 50 people
By analyzing CWD, we can immediately measure the future of a given nation, a given population. In our country this rate fell below 2.0 in 1990. Since then, the birth rate has not exceeded that value in any year. For 31 years there has been no simple replacement of generations in Poland (see tab. 1.).
In 2003, CWD amounted to 1.23, and in 2004 to 1.24. This level of surviving is simply a disaster. The next generation has only 62% of the erstwhile generation. Interestingly, specified dramatic indicators have not sparked widespread debate, and this is crucial to the biological endurance of the nation. Poland then joined the European Community and the main subject at the time was the anticipation of young Poles going abroad. Mass emigration was presented as a blessing and a dying nation was encouraged to leave abroad in the accession referendum. It is not known whether our country has left 2 million or 3 million young people – that is what children are born in Poland for 6 to 8 years. Even earlier in the 1980s, about 1 million people were exiled abroad.
Why in Poland, despite specified a low fertility rate, more people were born than they died over the years? The answer is simple – people live longer. At the same time, their grandparents live with their children and sometimes their great-grandparents. frequently it is many years before the appropriate failure of the population begins after the birth rate has fallen. In the case of Poland it was 23 years, Japan – 33, and Taiwan – 35 years.
Due to the low CWD and emigration rate, Poland has been shrinking since 1998, which is the 4th century. What's ahead of us in the coming years? Despite very low fertility, the predominance of death over births to date has been comparatively low – from respective to respective 1000 per year. In 2020, the population declined significantly. 479,000 Poles died and only 359,000 were born. The difference was almost 120,000 people. It's a real disaster. In – the worst so far – 2019 35 000 people died more than was born. Of course, a coronavirus pandemic was given as the origin of this condition. Under specified circumstances, stress and deficiency of optimism did not encourage offspring. As I mentioned, 359,000 children were born in 2020, and in 2017 it was inactive 402,000 born.
However, there is more to this disastrous decline. So what's going on? Currently, the years of post-war boom are advanced (see tab. 2). In 1946, 623 1000 people were born in Poland and 763 1000 in 1950. They are presently 70–74 years old. In turn, the number of births falls due to the fact that women who came into the planet during a time of demographic decline enter reproductive periods. We are so faced with 2 worrying trends at the same time: expanding deaths and falling births. The failure of the population will so gradually increase and the process will accelerate. Over the next fewer years, it will be 150–300 1000 people a year. The last year of women's second demographics from the 1980s. The 20th century reaches a age that excludes the birth of children. Poland had a unique chance to reverse negative demographic trends, having this high. However, the possible was not used, and unfortunately not as many children were born as it could, and hundreds of thousands were sent, possibly even over 1 million women of childbearing age, abroad. In the UK alone in 2004, 20,495 children were born. We should include at least the second so many born in another European countries, specified as Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. And that was just the beginning of the mass emigration of our fellow countrymen to Western Europe.
The rate of ageing of the Polish population is unprecedented. Nowadays, Poles age faster than average residents of the Old Continent. In 1950, the average age of the country was 25.9 years, in 1990 it was 32.3 years, in 2000 it was 35.4, and in 2020 it was 41.1 years. The percent of people aged 65 and over is presently 18.1%. It is higher than the percent of children aged 0–14 who indicate 15.3%. In 2010, there were 13.5% of people over 65 years old. The rate of ageing is so alarming. Yet in 1985 Poland had 1 of the youngest populations in Europe. Only Slovaks, Maltese and Albanians were younger.
The consequences of this will be very serious for us. We are faced with 2 more negative trends: an accelerating failure of the population and an ageing population. Poles will be little and more older. We can see the effects now. Recordingly low unemployment and deficiency of hands to work is not the consequence of a thriving economy that has created many jobs, but of a evidence number of people retiring and a tiny group entering the labour market. However, seniors who are very crucial in all society are little prone to hazard and more conservative. It is usually young people who make start-ups, fresh technologies or ideas that are more creative. Older people value security, invest their money more carefully or want to save. This will further exacerbate the economical downturn. little young people besides mean less soldiers, and this in turn determines the defence capabilities of the country – whether utilizing professional language – the ability to task force. In addition, there is simply a intellectual aspect. Mothers of only children are more afraid about the destiny of their sons than mothers with 7 descendants.
You don't request that many homes in a shrinking society. In 20 years, it's not going to be a problem to have an apartment, it's going to be what we're going to do with empty homes. In 40 years, the main task of construction workers will be not to build fresh buildings, but to demolish old ones. For example, we can feel it in the erstwhile GDR, where blocks are demolished. Expenditure on wellness care and older people will gradually increase in Poland. The cost of treating the patient falls to the last 2 years of his life.
Imaginations that less people are traffic jams, cleaner air, empty beaches, and happy life are not real. Indeed, the movement will most likely be smaller, but the appearance of our country will change greatly. Thousands of villages and tiny towns will vanish from Poland. The population will be concentrated in respective large urban centres and the average age of the resident will increase significantly. Already now the average age of Poles is 41.1 years. In little than 2 decades, she'll be 50. The percent of older people will increase steadily and could scope up to 50% in 2070. The question is, how will those sick old men pay back the debts incurred by our country in the future? Poland presently has a permanent budget deficit with a comparatively large percent of active people, and public debt increases all year. How will society, made up of large numbers of non-working people, repay these obligations?
The consequences of demographic change will affect even language. There are countries like South Korea, where fertility has fallen to under 1 kid per woman. In 2020, this value was precisely 0.84. The Koreans seriously wonder whether their vocabulary will vanish from specified concepts as brother or sister. So what future awaits Samsung with this fertility rate? Of course, shrinking the vocabulary has complex causes. There is simply a strong tendency to save effort, but the decline in births contributes to pooring the language.
Returning to the demographic themes – we utilized to usage concepts specified as uncle, uncle, uncle, uncle, nephew, son-in-law, son-in-law, prastra, aunt, saint, etc. In tiny families, those words cease to be right. It can be concluded that the solution is simple – mass immigration. However, as another countries have shown, it does not solve demographic problems. Despite the mass influx of foreigners into Italy, the population of this country is dying out at a rate of over 200,000 people per year. The same applies to Germany, Spain and many another countries, even as exotic from a Polish position as Singapore. Not to mention the problems specified migration causes. 1 of them is an additional decline in fertility among natives at the time of the influx of a large number of foreigners. I'll tell you more about the remainder of this book.
There is another, nowhere undiscounted, origin concerning emigration. In the case of population movements, we can talk about 2 forces: attraction and repulsion. The country must be attractive to visitors, should be better than the country of origin. Just due to the fact that Poland is now specified a place for Ukrainians or, for example, people of Bangladesh, does not mean that it will be like this in 50 years. Why do we presume that migrants will want to come to Poland – a country inhabited by the masses of mediocre pensioners? Will wages in a country where the vast majority of people do not work be attractive to them? Let us go further: will the Banglians mentioned above want to pay off debts incurred by Poles? It may turn out that it is the younger demographic Bangladesh that will make better surviving and working conditions than the ageing and depopulated Poland.
A fragment of Radom Nowakowski's book "Depopulation. Poland and the planet in the Face of Demographic Disaster", which was published by PROHIBITA.
The book is available for sale at Multibook.pl bookstore
https://multibook.pl/pl/p/Radomir-Nowakowski-Depopulation.-Poland-and-world-in-calculation-demographic-catastrophe-/13947
