Tsunami alert

Tides in the affairs of men

You are walking on the seashore, say in Oregon. Suddenly the ocean retreats, baring the seabed for hundreds of yards to the west.

Do you: a) take out your phone to photograph the remarkable scene? b) follow the ebbing ocean west to examine what is usually covered with water? c) run for your life to the east?

If you went to school in Oregon and were paying attention, you would know that the correct answer is c. You are witnessing the trough that arrives ahead of a tsunami. Your only hope is to reach high ground before the tsunami hits.

I have been fortunate to have a career in education. Most of it has been in higher education. The job market has often been been tight, but mostly from oversupply of history PhDs rather than a decline in the number of students.

This is changing. The trough is already evident in the distance and it is approaching inexorably. There are 4.5 million 18-year-olds in the United States today. There are only 3.6 million 6-year-olds. Leaving aside recent disillusionment with the value of a college education, this means there will be 20 percent fewer college freshmen in 12 years than there are today. And roughly 20 percent fewer jobs for their teachers.

The numbers are grimmer in other countries. China’s student population will fall by 25 percent during the same period. South Korea’s will lose 33 percent. Declines are seen across much of the world.

I’m often approached for advice by students considering a career in higher education. I relate the unfavorable arithmetic. But then I add that the arithmetic will be unfavorable in many parts of the economy.

The tsunami analogy gets us only so far. Behind the population trough is no surge. If anything, the population decline will feed on itself.

In fact, the surge has already passed. In South Korea and China, the number of 65-year-olds is substantially larger than the number of 18-year-olds. In the United States, the 65-year-olds are about as many as the 18-year-olds. In these and many other countries, the number of elderly will continue to grow for decades, even as the number of children will decline.

Certain developments could mitigate the effects of the demographic decline. In countries where immigrants are welcome, they can offset the drop. Yet if lower birth rates continue to spread across the globe, this will eventually be a zero-sum game.

The population decline occurs as artificial intelligence causes concern regarding employment. How this will play out is unclear. AI and robots might help the larger elderly cohort cope with a declining supply of human caregivers. But if AI enters the classroom, it will aggravate the shortfall in demand for teachers. Likewise in other sectors.

It should be noted that the demographic decline is entirely self-inflicted. Historically, human populations have fallen regionally as a result of war, epidemic and famine. But they rebounded as humans procreated. Humans today are choosing not to procreate with anything like the frequency of their forebears. Humans tomorrow might behave differently, though there’s no compelling reason to believe they will.

But if they do, the tsunami metaphor will be more complete. The trough will be followed by a surge. Fortunately for societies that have to deal with them, waves in population occur much more slowly than tsunamis in the ocean. We’ll have time to prepare.

People don’t like ocean tsunamis, for ample reason. By contrast, a population rise after a long fall will seem a good thing to many people—starting with prospective teachers.