Nicholas Eberstadt
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and other improvements in human productivity have led to a long-
term decline in the price o natural resources and basic commodities
such as food. At the same time, they have greatly increased the re-
turns to skilled labor. In fact, most global economic growth since
World War II can be attributed to two factors: improvements in hu-
man capital—a catchall term for education, health, nutrition, training,
and other factors that determine an individual worker’s potential—
and favorable business climates, which allowed the value o those hu-
man resources to be unlocked. Human capital, in particular, has an
extraordinary impact on economies. For each year o increased life
expectancy today, for instance, a country sees a permanent increase in
per capita income o about four percent. And for each additional year
o schooling that a country’s citizens obtain, the country sees, on aver-
age, a ten percent increase in per capita ³²¡.
Vast disparities between human capital development in dierent
countries have produced gaps in economic productivity that are larger
today than at any previous point in history. For example, in 2017, ac-
cording to World Bank estimates, Ireland’s per capita ³²¡ was roughly
100 times as high as that o the Central African Republic (when ad-
justed for relative purchasing power). Yet such disparities are not set
in stone: thanks to technological breakthroughs, nations can now aug-
ment their human capital faster than ever before. It took Sweden from
1886 to 2003 to raise its life expectancy from 50 years to 80 years;
South Korea accomplished the same feat in less than hal the time,
between the late 1950s and 2009.
Despite the possibility o such rapid and often unexpected im-
provements in human capital, demography as a whole is a fairly pre-
dictable social science. Unlike economic or technological forecasts,
population projections tend to be reasonably accurate for at least a few
decades, since most o the people who will be living in the world o
2040, for example, are already alive today. And although such projec-
tions cannot predict the future, they can oer a rough guide to the
emerging contours o international politics—the changing realm o
the possible in world aairs. Policymakers who want to plan for the
long term should be paying attention.POPULATION PROBLEMS IN THE PRC
Today, the international arena is dominated by one superpower (the
United States) and two great powers (China and Russia). Recent