Global demographic explosions are mixing with population busts—and the consequences could be serious. As some countries get older and others younger, will demography be the key to the wars of our century?
Wars for oil? Food fights now seem more likely, because we’re paying the price for not keeping up with rising emerging-market demand. Yet there’s light at the end of the tunnel—increasing supply isn’t an impossible task.
Barring the contingency of utter catastrophe, we can already estimate, often in surprising detail, what lies in store for East Asia in demographic terms over the next fifteen to twenty years.
