Chart of the day

In 1963, there ware just 153 centenarians, total population 96 million (Source).

In 2025, total population 123 million. Source

 

The Overpopulation Panic Dates Back to Odysseus’s Time

Recommendable! Food for thought!

"... In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was a deadly conflict that Zeus orchestrated to fight human overpopulation. According to a surviving fragment of The Cypria (a prequel to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey):

There was a time when the countless tribes of men, though wide-dispersed, oppressed the surface of the deep-bosomed earth, and Zeus saw it and had pity and in his wise heart resolved to relieve the all-nurturing earth of men by causing the great struggle of the Trojan War, that the load of death might empty the world. And so the heroes were slain in Troy, and the plan of Zeus came to pass. ..."

"... A study published recently in the journal Sustainable Development recommends that humanity aim to more than halve the global population, to about 4 billion, in order to improve long-term sustainability." What a nonsense!

The Overpopulation Panic Dates Back to Odysseus’s Time "The Trojan War was, according to one ancient account, a population-control measure by Zeus."

Historic: Seniors Outnumber Young Kids Worldwide

Welcome to the Age of Gerontocracy! When will the young rebel? Demography is destiny!

"For the first time in recorded history, people 65 and older now outnumber children under 5 worldwide, according to a new U.S. Census report released this week. Falling birthrates and longer lives drove the milestone, which arrived earlier than demographers expected. ..."

Friday, September 4, 2026 - Join The Flyover

Faced with ageing population, Vietnam seeks to curb falling birthrate

So the communists governing this country since 1976 had a two-child policy and not a one-child policy like China?

(3) Faced with ageing population, Vietnam seeks to curb falling birthrate • FRANCE 24 English - YouTube

Emigration from Israel continues at peak levels at 270,000 from 2023-2025

Bad news! How serious is this trend?

However, the criterion of leaving for at least three months or more might be flawed:

• What about the intention for leaving? 
• What about the prospect of returning after three or more months? (see also 2nd chart below)

"... In previous years [before 2023], the number of Israelis who left the country according to this criterion (three months or more) was 30% lower, and averaged just 60,000 annually in 2010-2019. In 2024-2025, Israel had a negative migration balance for the first time in decades, that is to say, more people left than arrived. ...

The new study from Tel Aviv University and the Central Bureau of Statistics does not cover net migration as there are not yet enough data to examine this statistic for 2025. Data on the number of Israelis who left for twelve months or more, as measured by the group in previous studies ..."

"Not only has the number of Israelis emigrating from Israel increased in recent years, but their economic profile has also changed.

More high-income earners, tech employees, healthcare professionals, and people in the prime of their careers are moving abroad. This is according to a new study by the Israel Tax Authority’s Planning and Economics Division, which examined the income and tax payments of Israelis who emigrated from the country between 2015 and 2024. ..."

Emigration from Israel continues at peak levels - study - Globes "Analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics data by Tel Aviv University researchers finds that 90,922 people left Israel in 2025, similar to the numbers for 2024 and 2023."

Emigration from Israel Remains at Record Levels, New TAU Study Finds "Nearly 270,000 Israelis left the country over the past three years, as researchers warn the trend could have long-term economic and security implications."

Tax Authority warns higher income Israelis are leaving "A Tax Authority study indicates that not only did more Israelis leave the country in 2023 and 2024 but that they had a higher income than those emigrating in previous years."

Number of Israelis leaving Israel for three consecutive months each year between 2009 and 2025

Number of Israelis leaving Israel for at least three consecutive months and for a period of 12 months

Uzbeks in training in Uzbekistan to boost Japan's logistics industry as truck drivers

Recommendable! An aging and shrinking population in Japan.

Why is Japan not developing robo trucks? Instead of teaching Uzbeks to speak Japanese and to drive trucks?

(1829) Uzbeks in training to boost Japan's logistics industryーNHK WORLD-JAPAN NEWS - YouTube

Yale University: The unforeseen consequences of the ‘great aging’ of America or Gerontocracy in America

Update of 8/6/2026: Of course, the lefty Harvard University had to chime in.
Why we need to break the grip of ‘oldigarchy’ "Legal historian’s new book argues older Americans control power, wealth — and lack sense of urgency to fix nation’s most pressing problems"

Food for thought! What is democracy by elected representatives? A tyranny of the majority?

Is this Yale professor inciting/stoking an uprising/revolution of the younger against the elderly?

His chosen dichotomy is dubious and very simplistic! His prescriptions are even more dangerous and are calling for big government if not socialism!

According to Google Scholar this professor "Samuel Moyn

Professor of Law and History, Harvard University" has only a total citation count of 14521 (as of 7/30/2026 since 2021), but he has authored over 480 publications. Not very impressive!

Caveat: I did not read his book.

"Yale law professor Samuel Moyn’s new book argues that a “gerontocracy” now holds sway in America, with wealth and power disproportionately concentrated in the hands of older people. In a Q&A, Moyn explains how that happened, why it’s a problem, and how we might fix it."

"What Moyn calls “the great aging” has, he says, transformed America into a society in which older people control a disproportionate amount of political power and wealth [???] and “hoard” jobs and housing [???], depriving the young of opportunity and political say. 

Some of the statistics Moyn cites: The median age of congresspeople is more than 60. The median age of voters is 52; in some campaigns, donor ages average as high as 70.

Workers over the age of 55 now comprise nearly a quarter of the workforce, compared to 10 percent in 1990. ...

“If Americans deserve a society that is oriented to innovation and problem-solving, and equips and launches the young into the prime of life, the country is heading the wrong direction,” Moyn writes. ...

His book prescribes a host of possible strategies for wresting control from the aged, from making voting mandatory [???] and boosting public funding [???] of elections to reevaluating age-related tax breaks and bringing back mandatory retirements. Finally, he suggests that a more socialistic model of elder care in America would help reduce the angst around aging that compels older workers to cling to jobs and wealth. ..."

Yale Today

The unforeseen consequences of the ‘great aging’ of America

Poor countries are aging fast but can’t keep up with the cost. Really!

Maybe we need lots and cheap robots to assist the aging populations!

Maybe we need more machine learning & AI to quickly develop new medical treatments for older individuals!

"Developing nations like Thailand are growing old before they are growing rich [???]. Their societies are aging quickly but without the pension systems and personal savings that sustain older people in most rich countries."

The Wall Street Journal What's news

China shutters 30,000 preschools and primary schools in a single year

Wow! Signs of a shrinking and aging population! Demography is destiny!

China shutters 30,000 preschools and primary schools in a single year - Nikkei Asia "Prolonged demographic slump is reshaping the country's vast education system"

The pig in the python or how successive population cohorts influence economics and labor supply

Demography is destiny!

Like so many economic and social science theories, they explain historical data very well for a time and make reasonable predictions, but eventually they fail.

"In 1978, Richard Easterlin stood before the Population Association of America and predicted that the wages of young American men — falling since 1973 — would turn around by 1984.

He had earned the confidence. As we have discussed in the past, Easterlin’s relative cohort size hypothesis was the most successful applied demography of its era, and it had already explained the biggest population event in American history—the Baby Boom. He replaced the mysticism about returning GIs, swooning Rosie Riveters, and suburban optimism with actual social science. ...

Easterlin found the explanation for the unexpected Baby Boom in economics. The Depression produced small birth cohorts. Those cohorts came of working age in a booming postwar economy and immigration tightly restricted by the Immigration Act of 1924. The “lucky few” folks walked into a market starved for workers. They got high wages relative to what they’d grown up expecting, and so they married early and had a lot of children.

Tight labor markets and closed borders made the Baby Boom. That is the core of Easterlin’s thesis, and it is the part of his work that has aged best. ..."

From the significance and abstract:

"Significance

The large size of the baby boom cohort depressed economic opportunities for that generation as it flooded the labor force in the 1970s.

Contrary to the predictions of Richard Easterlin’s relative cohort size hypothesis, however, there was no rebound of opportunities with the advent of smaller cohorts in the mid-1980s; incomes of young adults remained depressed until the 2010s.

New measures of flows into and out of the labor force make it simple to assess the relative impact of retirement, female labor-force participation, and immigration in concert with the size of birth cohorts entering the labor force. The results suggest that the departure of baby boomers from the labor force will have profound implications for economic opportunities of new workers.

Abstract

This analysis revisits the relative cohort size hypothesis proposed by demographer Richard Easterlin in the 1960s.

Easterlin argued that the economic and social prospects of a generation are influenced by the size of the cohort relative to adjacent cohorts.

He hypothesized that relative cohort size affects wages, employment, marriage, and fertility decisions.

The theory fits the data well for the period from 1940 to 1980 but fails in later decades.

I present a more nuanced view of the impact of demographic factors on worker competition through the lens of a measure of decennial labor-force flows. This approach allows consideration of the effects of retirement, female labor-force participation, and immigration on labor-market competition.

I calculate these flows for the period from 1910 to 2040 and propose an index of employment competition. The results show that trends in labor-market competition are consistent with wage trends of young workers since 1940. Projections to 2040 show that we are on the verge of a radical reshaping of labor markets in which new workers will be in extremely short supply."

Breitbart Business Digest

The pig in the python: US decennial labor flows and economic opportunity, 1910–2040 (no public access)

South Africa says 53,000 foreigners deported in campaign

Good news!

"The South African government says more than 53,000 foreign nationals have been deported or repatriated since launching a "migration management" campaign five weeks ago.

Most were from Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, officials say, and the number is likely to rise as repatriations and deportations continue.

South Africa is carrying out one of its biggest crackdowns on undocumented migrants in years, following weeks of anti-immigration protests that have seen violence, intimidation and looting. ..."

South Africa says 53,000 foreigners deported in campaign

The Great Fragmentation: Why the institutions of liberal democracy must be reinvented

Recommendable! Food for thought!

"The received wisdom held that the world was converging. Globalisation, the internet, mass migration — all were supposed to flatten differences and draw humanity toward a shared modernity. Yet the reality unfolding around us tells a fundamentally different story. Our societies may be converging in many respects. Yet, at the same time, they are fracturing in much more others. The forces reshaping the modern world are producing not homogenisation but an accelerating diversification of values, identities, and ways of life. The institutions we rely on to hold them together were designed for a world that is rapidly disappearing.

This is not a political observation but a structural one, with implications that go far beyond the culture wars dominating our current moment.

Technology Divides as Much as It Connects ...

Institutions Built for a Different World ..."

The Great Fragmentation - by Institute of Economic Affairs

Over 8.5 Million Ukrainian refugees Abroad Since 2014

This is huge! The current population of the Ukraine is estimated at about 39.5 million.

In 2014, Putin the Terrible annexed Crimea and President Obama and the rest of the West did not do much about it! Very regrettable and a huge mistake!

Over 8.5 Million Ukrainians Displaced Abroad Since 2014, Ombudsman Warns "Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets announced that 8.5 million Ukrainians have fled abroad since the onset of Russian aggression in 2014. Speaking at the Global Ukrainian Summit, Lubinets cited UN data showing that more than 5.7 million of these departures occurred after the 2022 full-scale invasion began. The Ombudsman called for the continuation of international temporary protection statuses until active hostilities end, while condemning illegal foreign seizures and adoptions of Ukrainian children."

Japan's fertility rate at record low; 10th straight year of decline

When will the Japanese people go extinct? No more Sushi, Samurais and Sumo wrestler! Just kidding!

Demography is destiny!

Japan's fertility rate at record low; 10th straight year of decline - Nikkei Asia "Births in 2025 lowest since survey began in 1899" (behind paywall)

Source

So gesund fühlen sich Senioren in der EU

Ein erstaunliches Gefälle zwischen den Mitgliedsländern der EU! Ziemlich unerwartet!

Wie gross ist der Unterschied zwischen gesund fühlen und tatsächlich gesund sein? Eine ungeklärte Frage!

So gesund fühlen sich Senioren in der EU - iwd.de "Fragt man die Älteren in den EU-Mitgliedsstaaten, wie es ihnen gesundheitlich geht, erhält man je nach Land positivere oder pessimistischere Einschätzungen. Die Senioren in Deutschland halten sich, wenig überraschend, für vergleichweise krank."

Lifestyle, Zeit, Geld, Karriere: Hund statt Kind

Auch ein Thema, dass seit mehreren Jahrzehnten immer wieder aufgegriffen wird.

"Regen, Kälte, Wind. Noch einmal sich hochraffen, um mit dem Hund Gassi zu gehen, eine letzte Runde vor dem Schlafen. Für jeden Menschen ohne Vierbeiner klingt das womöglich schon wie eine Last, viel Mühe und Einschränkung. Für Menschen mit Kindern muss es lächerlich wirken. ..."

Große Teile der Wirtschaft setzen nicht mehr auf Bundesregierung

U.S. Records Net Negative Migration Across Every Metro Area With illegal border crossings at their lowest level since the 1970s

Good news! Massive illegal immigration like under the administration of the senile and demented 46. President finally came to an end!

"The United States has achieved a historic turnaround on immigration, with net migration falling across every single metropolitan area in the country last year. ... 

With illegal border crossings at their lowest level since the 1970s, the U.S. recorded net negative migration last year for the first time in at least 50 years — reversing decades of open border failures that undermined American workers, strained public resources, and eroded national sovereignty. ..."

America First in Action: U.S. Records Net Negative Migration Across Every Metro Area – The White House

Remote work by couples may help boost fertility

Closeness makes a difference! Just one touch away! :-)

Governments of so many countries around the world are struggling to get the birth rate up of their population to counteract e.g. aging populations. How about tax incentives for couples to work from home and their employers? :-)

"A new working paper suggests that remote work may help boost fertility. Using survey data from 38 high- and middle-income countries, the researchers found that couples who work from home at least one day a week have about 0.32 more children on average than those who don’t."

Doomslayer: Progress Roundup

130,000 individuals Missing or about 1% of population: Inside Mexico’s Escalating Disappearance Crisis with Palki Sharma

Bad news! Horrible! And the disappearances have accelerated in recent years (like under President AMLO).

How much is due to organised crime or policing activity?

(242) 130,000 Missing: Inside Mexico’s Escalating Disappearance Crisis | Vantage with Palki Sharma - YouTube

Switzerland to Vote in referendum on Capping Population at 10 Million with Palki Sharma

Palki's arguments are screwed up in more than one way! Switzerland is a small, wealth country. Thus a 10 million population limit is not a bad idea! No the population will not shrink! Switzerland is too attractive!

I think, Palki is not familiar with robots who will assist an aging population!

(256) Switzerland to Vote on Capping Population at 10 Million | Vantage with Palki Sharma - YouTube