Professor Elam

Monday April 28 2014

These countries are experiencing a net outflow of population.  It seems to me that a graph of the number of people rather than the percent would have been more informative. While the percentage leaving the Cook Islands is huge, I suspect that the number of people exiting Russia is much larger than anything happening on a Pacific Island. In 2066 only 20,000 people lived in the Cook Islands.

I read further in Business Insider and found just what I was looking for a graph in numbers rather than percentages. Countires wih aging populations but smaller replacement populations are hard pressed to maintain the promised social security safety net. There simply are not enough workers to provide the money. The truth is there are not enough workers making enough money in the US to do this either, for the promised benefits to retirees, but the politicians will not admit it.