- Restricted growth… - 8th December 2025
- Comedy of errors - 4th December 2025
- All in the mind - 3rd December 2025
Once again our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry is intrigued by fresh evidence in new books emerging that population growth is going into reverse, because its expansion has driven many of his stories during 23 years with the BBC, and 42 years in journalism.
Policy-makers are worried, but journalists like me should be too.
More and more evidence is emerging today, that people are having fewer children, so the world’s population is growing at a slower rate.
In Japan for example (which has a REAL problem), there is a greater production of nappies for incontinent older people than for babies, and there is a burgeoning industry in cleaning properties owned by pensioners who have died without living relatives.
This may be miles away from Wales, or even seem incredibly boring, but actually these are only extreme instances of what is happening everywhere to a lesser or greater extent.
The problem is less severe here, as the population of Wales doubled from 587,000 in 1801 to 1,163,000 in 1851 and had reached 2,421,000 by 1911.
It now stands at over 3.1 million.
Even so the long term future is not good if the population growth slows, because it will mean fewer (in relative terms) younger people to pay the pensions of those older.
There may be other major financial problems, too, because younger people tend to SPEND, whereas older people tend to SAVE, so the economy could be badly affected.
Businesses rely on consumers parting with their cash (perhaps using credit), rather than hanging on to it.
Around the world it is acute.
In South Korea from 2019 to 2023 the saving rate of over-65s was 29 per cent, and in Australia in 2022 people saved 14 per cent of their income.
In Germany from 2017 to 2022 the saving rate rose to 22 per cent, and in Japan (where the nappy and cleaning properties issues prevail!) the old-age saving rate is soaring.
But it isn’t simply economic issues which are of concern.
For journalists it could also result in a decreasing number of good stories, as so much that has been revealed in the past, have had at their root problems of demography, or, to be specific, whether a population is growing or not.
This is a very real challenge for people like me, because it is a big factor driving many of the stories I cover.
Families being forced into sub-standard accommodation because they are the only places available to rent?
Demography.
Overcrowding in housing leading to appalling examples of domestic violence?
Demography.
A stretched police force trying to monitor growing levels of crime in an expanding area, resulting in terrible mistakes?
Demography.
These are all examples of stories which have been thrown up by a population growing, but if that growth is DECLINING, it will prompt a very different sort of story.
Other world leaders (unlike, it seems, the First Minister of Wales [FMW] Eluned Morgan), are extremely concerned.
Asked what keeps him awake at night, Vladimir Putin identified as a major problem; that Russia’s relative population decline threatened his country’s economy.
Mr Putin, speaking at a news conference as he was massing troops along the border with Ukraine, said the birth rate had dropped hugely in the early 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, leading to significant shortages in the labour force.
He admitted: “From a humanitarian point of view and from the perspective of strengthening our statehood, and from the economic point of view, the demographic problem is one of the most important”.
Even Mr Putin doesn’t try to spin this information, because it is freely available worldwide, and he is only too aware of the scale of the issue, as the figures don’t lie.
The month before Mr Putin spoke, it was reported that Russia’s population had undergone its largest ever decline, compared with other nations, during peacetime.
Mr Putin is far from being alone in worrying about demographic issues affecting his country.
The populations of Japan, Italy, South Korea and many other nations are all expected to shrink relatively at an incredibly fast rate over the next two decades.
In Spain the fertility rate is just 1.2 per cent, one of the lowest in the world.
In fact the fertility rate is falling in many countries (as Mr Putin has alluded to), so a relatively smaller number of young people have to support a larger number of older people.
For example, if China’s old people formed their own country, it would be the fourth most populous in the world, right behind America.
This silver-haired state would be growing fast, too, China’s over-60 population sits at 297 million, or 21 per cent of the total.
By 2050 those figures are expected to reach 520 million and 38 per cent. Demographers describe China’s future as greyer – and smaller.
For while the country’s oldest cohorts are growing, younger ones are not.
China’s total population declined for the second year in a row in 2023, and the country’s labour force has been shrinking for most of the past decade.
So a population not growing provokes another set of problems, which will have to be covered by journalists across the globe.
It’s not just policy-makers who will need to adapt..!
Phil’s memories of his extraordinary award-winning career in journalism (when demographic changes drove a lot of his stories) as he was gripped by the incurable disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in the major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
It would make a good Christmas present – Nadolig Llawen!
Tomorrow – how shocking news that ANOTHER star of hit BBC show Strictly Come Dancing has been arrested on suspicion of rape, puts centre stage concerns that the new boss will be inheriting a poisoned chalice, as well as their REFUSAL to answer The Eye’s questions about the huge number of scandals which have engulfed the corporation.
