We are 7 billions since few days. Such an important demographic growth will impact every aspects of life. As usual here, we will focus on the likely consequences on social aspects.

The demographic growth goes with huge disparities. The Chinese population is almost stable while the increase rate is very steep in India, Indonesia or Africa. Thus the population in china is starting to get older, while it remains very young in countries with strong demographic growth. As a result the teaching and education needs are proportionally much higher for these countries, with an almost direct consequence of lower education level. Another impact is the arrival of many young on the labor market. The countries’ economy has to create many jobs. But it is not so easy to create so many jobs even if some are naturally created to support the population growth (more food is needed as well as lodging…). With high unemployment rate (especially among young), political situation is soon unstable. It is a strong incentive for governments to support action in favor of the number of workers instead of promoting a better productivity.

Bangladesh and China experience are especially good example. Their economic growth is/was based on many cheap and poorly qualified jobs. Improving the productivity was not an assessment criteria. The usual sentence “One new operation, one new worker” has been the only known solutions for years. However, since few years, the situation is changing in China. Labor shortage is the new leitmotif. Thus factories start to work on productivity improvement and the government increase the labor cost as another incentive to improve the productivity. But productivity requires trained and educated workers. It also requires workers involvement which lead to hire social requests. It is the very shift of these last years in China even if the two approaches (cheap labor/productivity) are still coexisting and then we still have to be vigilant.

On the opposite, in countries with high demographic growth, the need for quick increase in the number of jobs lead to the creation of many cheap and low qualified jobs. The pressure on social conditions is then higher as it represent a proportionally higher cost. Basics as safety, workers rights… will remain important sources of concern for us. The local laws are not likely to improve either to promote the number of job creations. Focusing only on compliance to assess the risks of working with factories will then not be efficient.