Throughout these Newsletters I have used Japan as a role model for an ageing and declining population. It is perhaps too easy to think that “it can’t happen here”. That Japan is far away and a different place. Bradley Schurmans suggests we look much closer to home. He says that our own rural communities are the “Canaries in the Mine”. In the old days miners would take caged canaries down the mines as gas detectors. If they died it meant there was explosive or noxious gases. They were the early warning system.
The countryside now resembles the future. Most of the changes have not come from declining fertility and longevity. They are having their effect but no more than in the towns. The countryside population is declining because the young are moving to the City. Urbanization is leading to depopulation and ageing. The effect is the same. They should be our own early warning of what the future might look like.
The Rural Exodus
Across many parts of the world younger people are moving from the countryside to the cities. In 2013 the UN announced that for the first time there were more people living in cities than the countryside. The economic draw of the city is huge. It is the young that go, leaving communities behind top heavy in older people.(See Newsletter #32 The Power of the Cities). They often cannot leave. Their wealth is tied up in their properties that no one wants to buy. Property prices are falling in many rural areas. Selling up would not leave enough for a move to the city or long-term care.
Over one third of US rural counties are experiencing significant population decline. In states such as Iowa that increases to two thirds. The rural population of Germany is forecast to decline by 7.3% in this decade. Italy’s will fall by 15%. The more rural the community, the further from a town, the greater the decline. The populations that remain are getting older. In the US three quarters of over 65s in the South and Midwest live in rural communities. These people are retired or working in lower paid jobs. This depresses the local tax revenue.
The Farmers
Across the world farms are owned and run by families. In the US, 96% of the 2.2m farms are family owned. In the UK 97% and Germany 96%. The impact of the exodus on them is profound. There is an estimate that 70% of US farmers will retire before 2040. Many want to pass the farm to the next generation. Unfortunately, that generation now lives in the city. In England the number of farms fell by 21% in the last twenty years.
That missing generation is not shopping in the small towns. They do not need banks. There are no children to go to the schools. No hospitals if they are sick. The collapse in the tax revenues means that all kinds of public services disappear. It is a vicious circle. Without the services there are no jobs for the young, no way to make a life and no reason for them to stay.
The Vicious Circle
When my daughter first started School, she went to a small English village School. There were classes with mixed age groups. Small numbers in each class and a family atmosphere. We were upset when it was forced to close after two years. The local Council said it was not economic for the number of children.
Across the world the story is the same. Rural Schools become uneconomic and close. When they go they take with them the community of parents. Those that met at the gate every day and supported all of the after-School activity. The UK recently gave up on the idea that fertility would bounce back to 1.9 children per female. The result was that the ONS now expects there will be 11.6m children of school age (under 16) by 2030. This is 1.5m less than the forecast made in 2014(See Newsletter #46).
Health care suffers as well. The population needs more care because it is older. Unfortunately it is also smaller. In the decade before COVID, 120 hospitals in the countryside closed in America. By 2020 there were 1844 rural hospitals so the 120 was a significant drop. Like Schools they were often consolidated with neighbouring communities. The result of course was longer journeys to get to basic services. This pushes people to move to the larger towns even if they stay in the rural area. Even if there are hospitals will there be doctors and nurses? The population of both is ageing. Fewer and fewer professionals are attracted to leave the cities.
Can the Circle be broken?
There are extreme solutions. Nagaro is a small town is in rural Japan . The last baby was born there 20 years ago. The Schools are deserted. The population is less than 20 people. The youngest person still living there is 60. To compensate they have filled the town and the School with full size dolls dressed as the residents used to be. The mayor of Cammarata, in Sicily, offered empty houses in the town for sale at 1 euro each. The only condition was that renovation had to start within a year.
More pragmatic solutions have come from people recognizing the opportunity. In Japan Uber put their first operations in rural areas. There was strong demand for transport and a ready supply of (older) drivers. Airbnb offers to help Japanese owners of rural properties to rent their properties to tourists. Old Schools are being renovated as care homes for the elderly all over the world. In France the postal service is offering “Watch Over My Parents”. This service is targeted at isolated, older people. It tries to avoid the impact of loneliness.
In China the migration to the cities has been fast and furious. So much so that in 2013 the Government had to pass a law. It required the young to take care of the ageing parents they left behind in the country!