NEIL MACKAY'S BIG READ: What the fascinating science of demography says about Scotland's future, independence and the union

Morland has just brought out an essential guide to what demography reveals about the coming years of the 21st century called Tomorrow’s People: The Future Of Humanity In Ten Numbers. His thesis is stark: in the West, birth rates are failing, populations are ageing, and we either embrace mass immigration or drift into terminal decline. When it comes to Britain, the numbers are even more brutal for Scotland than the rest of the UK. Those statistics also play into the biggest political question facing the nation: the choice between independence or the union. The Herald on Sunday sat down with Morland, a scholar at St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, to discover just what destiny demography has in store for us.

The greying of UK

“THROUGHOUT the developed world,” he says, “countries are about to face the consequences of low fertility. In the UK, women have been having fewer than two children each for the best part of half a century.” The number two is key. In demography, it’s the effective “replacement level”. If people have less than two children, societies decline. The result: an ageing population where the number of elderly who don’t work outstrips the young who do. Soon, nations become top heavy with age, and there’s just not enough money for societies to function properly.

In Britain, that means “more people [are] likely to die than be born before many more years have passed”. Immigration has slowed decline in Britain. Morland says: “Brexit has certainly choked off inflows from the EU, but so far they’ve been supplemented by more arrivals from beyond. All the while, the UK Government talks of tougher migration restrictions. If they’re serious, we’re going to see population decline along with ongoing ageing. We’ll notice our smaller towns empty out and abandoned properties rot as is common already in parts of Japan.”

Demographically, Japan is a basket case with a rapidly greying population and low immigration.

“We’ll notice when we can’t fill up our cars because we’ve run out of tanker drivers, or we can’t get our taps fixed because we’ve run out of plumbers, or there’s nobody to look after mum in the care home or dad in the hospital or little Jimmy and Jemima in the playgroup.”

Scotland in trouble

“SCOTLAND,” says Morland, “is like the rest of the UK but more so. Its fertility rate is lower – it’s now below 1.3 children per woman while the rest of the country is just below 1.6. This means that Scots have even fewer children than the famously cradle-phobic Japanese. And while life expectancy for the UK as a whole is about 79 for men and 83 for women, Scots don’t live as long. Both men and women in Scotland live about two years less than their UK peers. Indeed, there are parts of Glasgow where men enjoy more than a decade-and-a-half less of life than men in the Gaza Strip. This is lamentable in itself – a piece of data that represents lives cut short by drink, drugs and despair. But it’s also a problem at national level – it further undermines the size of the Scottish population.”

Put these demographics together, says Morland, and the “lack of childbearing and consequent lack of young people mean that the median Scot is two years older than the median resident of the UK. At 42, that makes the average Scot quite old, although not quite as old as the average Italian or Japanese who’s half a decade older.”

The average person in Chad, in contrast, is just 16 which underscores Morland’s theory that Africa will dominate the future, and nations like Scotland will have to either up birth rates or depend on non-European immigration to survive. In terms of Scotland: “It’s no exaggeration to say the future is grey… expect schools to empty out – and old age homes to fill up.”

Scots migration

HOWEVER, there is one demographic trend keeping Scotland afloat: immigration from the rest of Britain, and beyond. “Once, Scotland leaked people to England where, often, economic prospects were brighter. Now, in net terms, about 10,000 come annually in the other direction, and twice as many come from overseas. So migration boosts Scotland’s population by about 30,000 a year, making up for those missing births and premature deaths.”

Morland adds: “As a result of migration, Scotland has become more diverse, but not all that much. At the start of the century, ethnic minorities constituted not much more than 2 per cent of the population of Scotland.”

By 2020, ethnic minorities made up around 10%, “a dramatic rise in less than a generation but still leaving Scotland significantly more ‘white British’ than the rest of the nation”.

Independence

“NO discussion of Scotland’s demography can be complete without some consideration of the independence question,” Morland says.

In an independent Scotland, “providing the free flow of population within Great Britain continued to be permitted, Scotland could face a drain of people southward if it introduced the higher-tax, higher-spend policies favoured by the SNP”. Morland adds: “On the other hand, we could also see a flow of people northward, attracted by a more egalitarian and redistributive approach … Scotland might become a haven for those in England and Wales disillusioned by the evermore Tory UK it would leave behind.

“But ultimately, however welcoming it may be to migrants from the rest of the UK or beyond, and however the independence question resolves itself, Scotland has work to do both in encouraging the creation of new life and extending existing life if it doesn’t wish to be the sick, old man of Europe.”

For independence, Catalonia’s demographics provide an interesting case study. In Catalonia, those in their 40s “far outnumber” those in their 20s. “Decades of sub-replacement fertility rates and lengthening life expectancy – now at over 83, one of the world’s highest – have resulted in a population that’s exceptionally old”. Did demographics, with older voters more inclined to the status quo, scupper Catalan independence?

Ageing populations also tend not to get nasty when it comes to politics. When a society is dominated by the young, then political conflict might well erupt into violence – as it did in 1930s Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. However, despite some ugly scenes during the Catalan referendum, the constitutional question was dealt with mostly peaceably by a now predominately middle-aged population.

So, there’s little chance, if Morland’s theory holds, of Scottish politics ever turning ugly. Ageing, he points out, “sapped much of the energy from the conflict in Northern Ireland … When civil war broke out in Yugoslavia, the median age in Bosnia was less than 30 – today it’s over 40. The rise of the Nazis [was] accompanied by a surge in the number of young men in the German population.” Conflict rarely, if ever, breaks out “in countries where 55% or more of the population is aged over 30”.

It’s pretty clear, anyway, to most people in Scotland that we will settle the constitutional question completely peacefully, and any extremism here, although it exists, is a minority activity. As Nicola Sturgeon won’t hold an “illegal” referendum, the chances of social unrest seem infinitesimally small. Sturgeon, Morland points out, “is the product of a society that’s old and cautious”.

However, if demographics switched and Scotland was much younger, politics might be less calm. “I’d like to think that as in Catalonia we aren’t going to end up with violent conflict. Now, had that been the case when the median age of Scotland was 30, that might have been different.”

Age v youth

What’s not so clear is how age might effect the outcome of any referendum. Older people are mostly less radical. Opinion polls show older voters favouring the union. Morland, though, sees the growth in the Yes movement as not necessarily linked to youthful radicalism. He puts it down to “the waning of British identity, British power, the British empire – the things which tied Scots together with the other peoples of the UK and which have dissipated”.

Counterintuitively, when Scotland was younger “back in the 1930s, it was a very unionist country”.

It is also unclear whether being for or against the union is a rigidly “generational belief”. In other words: that support for independence is a “young” position and that as people age they shift to supporting the “status quo”, which in Scotland’s case is the union. Perhaps constitutional positions are “cohort” beliefs – meaning a set of people born at a particular time will always hold a specific opinion on independence or the union.

“In other words,” says Morland, “do you say ‘more old people like the status quo, there are going to be more old people over time, therefore the status quo will be reinforced?’ … So is it as you get older you get more unionist? Or is it a shift between cohorts, so that people born in the 1990s, 80s and more recently are inherently more nationalist – and the generation of people who were unionist is going to die out?”

Brexit and

Tory England

MORLAND adds: “The same is true of British politics, so today the Tory vote in England is overwhelmingly old, the Labour vote is overwhelmingly young. Now, do you conclude that young people when they get old become Tory, the country is getting older and [therefore] the Tories will be in power forever? Or do you conclude that people born more recently are a cohort that won’t shift to the right as they become older – they won’t necessarily be more radical but they’ll be more likely to support Labour.”

On Brexit, Morland points out that “it was even said within a few years that if you just lopped off the people who would have died and added in the people who would have become voters” the outcome may have been very different. He adds: “Brexit is a really good example of a ‘cohort thing’. I don’t think that people today in their 20s are going to be more reconciled to Brexit as they get older.”

The decline

of the West

PULLING the focus back from Scotland and Britain, the big demographic story is that the West, in particular, is in the grip of low fertility rates, rising age, and set for population decline. “You’ll have the choice to either live with that or have mass immigration and ethnic change,” Morland explains.

Meanwhile, “given the massive growth in population in Africa and the shrinkage everywhere else, we’ll become much more African”. By 2080 there will be one European to every five Africans. In 1980, the figures were two to one. “That changes culture, geopolitics, the balance of power and economics,” Morland adds.

“So I think an Africanisation of the world is coming. That might lead to immigration and Europe becoming more African, or not. It depends on whether Europeans wish to continue having very small families. And if they do, how they want to live with that – whether that means economic decline, lack of workers, or whether they’re prepared to import workers.”

The rise of Africa

Of course, Africa could well become a major power in its own right, mimicking the China experience. China didn’t see huge numbers of its people immigrate as it rose to prominence. There’s danger for Africa, though.

When Europe reached its peak around 1900, it was about to embark on two apocalyptic world wars. Could Africa tear itself apart as it rises to power? Either way, as the West becomes more “grey”, we’re going to see the world becoming “more black, or, if you like, less white”.

The future will also be greener. Although the world’s population continues to grow, growth is slowing so environmental pressure will lessen. “We can see a green light at the end of the tunnel,” Morland adds. “Humanity isn’t growing at 2% a year anymore, it’s more like 1% and falling.” World population is now 7.8 billion, by 2100 it is estimated to be 10.8 billion.

The trilemma

THE West faces what Morland calls “the trilemma of the three Es: ethnic continuity, economic growth, and egotism”. By egotism he means the shift to having less children. He points to Japan as an example. “They want ‘ethnic continuity’ – they don’t want mass immigration. They want the egotism of very small families. They pay the price of labour shortages and a stagnant economy”. In Britain, if we hadn’t “given up the E of ethnic continuity”, Morland warns, our economy would be “an awful lot worse. We’ve got massive ethnic change, massive immigration”.

Israel bucks the Western trend as “people have three or four children”, so the country isn’t dependent on immigration while remaining a “dynamic economy”.

Morland feels Britain will “continue rapidly to become much more ethnically diverse. People grumble about immigration and they’ve every right to but they need to understand what the consequences are and the choices if they don’t produce enough children to replace themselves”. He adds: “In a way, it’s a luxury that we can turn on the immigration tap.” He points to other greying nations like Bulgaria which don’t attract immigrants and so have far less rosy prospects.

Sexless youth

“THE big question for Britain is: can we replace ourselves or do we replace ourselves through immigration? I see very little sign that generation Z [those born in the mid/late 1090s] are going to have an uptick in their fertility rate. They’re not ‘anti-child’ but they’ve a set of attitudes which don’t correlate with early marriage and large families.” Millennials – those born between 1981/96 – have been called “the generation that stopped having sex”. House prices, job insecurity, views on marriage, and the role of women have led to a steady decline among younger generations having children. This could well store up pain for millennials and gen Z. Who’s going to keep the economy running when they age? Morland cautions against thinking “the robots are coming to save us”.

He adds: “There’s a cost to creating the next generation. It should be born more equally. If you don’t have any kids you’ll still expect the tanker driver to bring petrol to the petrol station.” If one family has children – with all the financial and personal costs that entails – but another family doesn’t, then the family without children “will be relying on the labour of future generations and it’s not fair they bear none of the costs of creating that future generation”.

Childlessness tax

MORLAND suggests creating a “tax and welfare system that’s a little more geared around more equal support creating the next generation – a little higher tax for those who don’t have children, more tax relief or benefits for those who do”.

He is aware that demography is an uncomfortable subject, particularly for those on the liberal-left. But he warns that not talking about the issues openly as a society “leaves the field to the nutters of the far right and that’s very dangerous”. We should be unafraid, he says, to debate whether we “want a very ethnically diverse country, do we want our economy to slow down – do we need to have more children? How can we incentivise that? Should we have a national demographic policy and strategy?”.

Many on the left fear the discussion, he says, as they think “it’s either racist, of it’s The Handmaid’s Tale or the Holocaust is back”. Morland points out that he is “the child of Jewish refugees from Germany”, and as the father of two successful, highly-educated daughters he is clearly not promoting a “patriarchal” future.

“If the mainstream left doesn’t engage in the discussion, the thing that worries me is the real potential for a populist backlash. People need to understand the facts and have the opportunity to debate it. How do we manage to be a liberal, progressive, well-educated and prosperous country and not have fertility rates that mean we’re doomed? That’s the big question for humanity.”