Thursday, June 23, 2005 - The Chronicle Herald

Two-thirds of truth about almost everything

By JIM MEEK

DAVID FOOT'S got us dead by the numbers.

Foot - the University of Toronto economist who brought his road show to Halifax this week - also has a gift for prophecy.  He knew that we baby boomers would give up minivans for SUVs once the children got older.

And he predicted we'd lavish attention on our pets after the kids emptied the nest. After that, we'd end up spending money on gardening, expensive walking shoes, eye-care products and luxury automobiles.  Foot was also right that we'd abandon tennis - and other gladiator sports - once our knees went wobbly and our bodies went south.  Golf - and less-irksome forms of hiking - would become activities of choice.

And let's not forget that we're also going to the birds - either by walking and watching, or by attracting them to our feeders. Today, he said, Canadians and Americans spend more money on birdseed than they do on pro-sports tickets.

In short, Foot - the author of the best-selling book Boom, Bust & Echo - has been maddeningly right about future trends. Demography really is destiny. (Or as he told me Tuesday, population trends don't tell the whole truth about nearly everything - just about two-thirds of it.)

Looking backwards, demographic analysis seems like easy stuff. It's simple to see that interest rates spiked in the early 1980s because all those boomers were trying to mortgage their first houses at the same time. This is simple supply and demand. But the Aussie-born, Harvard-educated Foot is perplexed by current government policies that ignore demographic trends.

The Canadian government, for instance, is intent on implementing a national day-care policy just as the nation's birth rate falls through the floor. (Great program, no clients.) At the same time, Ottawa is deepening economic links with Russia (where the population is already declining) and Germany (where it is about to decline). Foot says, audaciously, that these two countries will not sustain their status as economic superpowers in the face of low birth rates.

He also thinks we've got the burgeoning economic superpowers of India and China all mixed up. They should never be mentioned in the same breath, and almost always are.

China will not sustain its status as a low-wage economy because a low birth rate will result in future labour shortages. India's population, by contrast, will continue to grow rapidly, producing generation after generation of low-wage workers and sustaining an economy based on them.

Now, Foot is a founding father of demographic Calvinism and, like all people of faith, he delivers some serious messages - even if he does so in a high, wry, style.  Which European nation will soon have the largest population? Islamic Turkey. Other fast-growing nations include Iran and Pakistan, also Islamic states.

Foot says recent history should tell us that you either give large, young populations economic opportunity or risk the consequences.

In the absence of opportunity, young people in East Germany brought down the Berlin Wall. Revolutions - in virtually all the old Soviet satellite states - followed course. In the Islamic states, we either help build economies and develop sane diplomatic ties, or face the consequences - large, restless populations of young people that serve as ideal recruiting targets for terrorists.

Under it all, then, Foot warns that we ignore demographics at our peril. This message certainly captured the attention of the 300 or so people at the Halifax luncheon put on by NovaKnowledge - an organization that wants us to build the province's knowledge economy because pretty soon that's the only one we'll have.

I should mention that Foot did provide a little policy guidance to Nova Scotia while he was in town. Aging boomers - looking for a quieter lifestyle - will want to settle in rural parts of the province. Foot's advice: Welcome them here and tax them to death.

He also reminded those of us in the room - intent on progress and maybe too focused on Nova Scotia's problems - that this is already a darned good place to live. Or to die.

Speaking of which, if you're a married woman in Nova Scotia, you're likely to live seven years longer than your husband. You'll be five years older when you die, and you were probably two years younger than him when you married.

There was some suggestion in the room that many women might enjoy those final seven years of independence. But I think I'll leave that one alone.

What's important, as I already said, is that David Foot's got us dead by the numbers.

Jim Meek is a freelance journalist based in Halifax. He is also editor of The Inside Out Report, a quarterly journal based on public opinion research.

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