Poorer Countries Will Find It Harder to Get Richer
Declining birth rates are a challenge to economic growth everywhere, but especially in less developed nations.
Economies, like markets, need lots of people.
Photographer: PUNIT PARANJPE/AFPFor the billions of people around the world who live in countries that are not yet fully economically developed, I have some disturbing news: The very last chance for their nations to reach developed status might come in this generation.
And I do mean “very last chance.” Economists used to write about “convergence” — the idea that the gap between poorer countries and richer ones is narrowing — and indeed a lot of convergence has occurred, in such places as South Korea, Ireland and parts of China. But the conditions for such growth are more and more rare. It is already the case that poorer countries are not growing more rapidly than wealthier countries, contrary to trends in the 1990s.