On 3 November 2019, Geopolitics & Empire interviewed Taco Dankers, the Editor of the GEFIRA Global Analysis Bulletin who discussed how the forthcoming global demographic crisis is threatening to negatively impact the global economy, and how mass migration will create social tensions that threaten different societies, which in turn will exacerbate the economic crisis.

For Dankers, most of the world’s major economies are facing major population decline issues. He states that “if you look at the G20 countries, the twenty largest economies in the world, at least 80% of them are already in decline, at least in terms of native population.”

Looking at advanced Asian economies, Dankers takes issue with the United Nations’ conservative projections on Japanese demographic decline. Data from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research paints a far starker picture of the coming collapse of the total population of Japan.

“If you look at the data from the Japanese Government, you see a completely different story, and start to understand the scale of the changes we are in. We are now at 128 million people, and at the end of the century it will be less than 50 million. So it will decline, according to the Japanese Government, by 60%.”

Explaining why mass migration is unlikely to provide a cure to demographic decline in advanced economies, Dankers gave the example of labour participation rate statistics for Dutch, Moroccan and Turkish men in the Netherlands in 2015, which showed that in every age group, non-native male workers are far less likely to be economically active.

“The Netherlands has no historical relationship with Morocco or Turkey. We have a historical relationship with Indonesia. […] But we started to invite labour migrants out of Turkey and Morocco in the seventies and eighties. If you look at the labour participation of the men … you can see that Moroccans in the age group of 25 to 35, 60% are active in the labour force. It’s a shockingly low number. Forty percent are not active in the labour force.”

Criticising the statistical approach of the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, he added:

“[The Central Bureau of Statistics] come up with the total number and they say the labour participation of native Dutch is the same as Moroccans and Turks at around 60%, but they people from 15 to 75, but at 75, no Dutch person is working at 75. And they compared with the Moroccans and Turks til 55. So they compared two groups, and said they do the same…”

You can view the full interview below here: