{"id":24661,"date":"2011-10-24T08:00:46","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/fx\/2011\/10\/24\/the-decline-of-eastern-values\/"},"modified":"2011-10-24T08:00:46","modified_gmt":"2011-10-24T12:00:46","slug":"the-decline-of-eastern-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/2011\/10\/24\/the-decline-of-eastern-values\/","title":{"rendered":"The Decline of Eastern Values"},"content":{"rendered":"

By The Sizemore Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>If you browsed the title of this article quickly, your eyes probably played a trick you.\u00a0 Chances are good you saw \u201cWestern\u201d instead of \u201cEastern.\u201d<\/p>\n

It appears that the sentiment of moral decay in the West is a popular one.\u00a0 Doing a Google search for \u201cDecline of Western values\u201d returned over 30 million hits.\u00a0 Searching for \u201cDecline of American values\u201d returned over 37 million hits.\u00a0 It appears that we are all convinced that our culture is going to hell in a hand basket, and the inflammatory rhetoric that comes in a presidential election cycle certainly isn\u2019t helping.<\/p>\n

In addition to being the largest generation in history, the Baby Boomers were also one of the most radical.\u00a0\u00a0 As young people in the 1960s and 1970s, they shifted the political center of this country to the Left.\u00a0 Interestingly, now that they are in their 50s and 60s, they are pulling the center massively to the Right.\u00a0 The Boomers are proving the rule that we all ultimately become our parents.<\/p>\n

Certainly, the West has seen its share of social change in the past 50 years.\u00a0 On the positive side, institutionalized racism such as the forced segregation prevalent in the pre-1960s South has been all but eliminated in America and Europe.\u00a0 More liberal attitudes toward divorce and remarriage have enabled people to escape unhappy marriages.\u00a0 There is generally a more accepting attitude towards a person\u2019s privacy and an acceptance that people should be left to manage their own social lives without interference.\u00a0 Of course, the downside is that with all of this new-found freedom there has been a general breakdown of authority, an increase in broken families and children born out of wedlock, and a sense of anxiety that our society as we know it is in a state of decline.<\/p>\n

Still, much of the angst felt by Americans and Europeans is unfounded.\u00a0 Many of the babies born \u201cout of wedlock\u201d are born to cohabitating couples who are married in all but name.\u00a0 And even in cases where the father doesn\u2019t live with his children, there is an increased awareness of the need for parental responsibility.\u00a0 And perhaps most importantly, Americans, Britons, and French are still having children, even if they are forming families later in life.\u00a0 American births are at their highest levels since the original post-WWII baby boom.<\/p>\n

The same cannot be said for much of Asia.\u00a0 While the concept of \u201cfamily\u201d is evolving in the West, it is simply evaporating in much of the East.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Economist<\/em> ran an article on the decline of marriage in Asia (see \u201cThe Flight from Marriage<\/a>\u201d), but this means something very different than it would in America.\u00a0 Divorce and non-married cohabitation are still rare on the Asian continent.\u00a0 No, Asians instead are simply avoiding domestic life altogether or postponing it indefinitely into the future.<\/p>\n

The average age of marriage in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong is now noticeably older than in the United States.\u00a0<\/strong> Women in these countries now marry on average at the age of 29-30 and men at the age of 31-33.\u00a0 As a point of reference, the average age for American women and men is 26 and 28, respectively.\u00a0 If you include \u201ccommon law\u201d marriage or cohabitation\u2014which, again, is still rare in Asia\u2014the average age in America drops even further.\u00a0 And this average age does not take into account people who do not marry at all.<\/p>\n

People who do not marry (or do the modern common-law equivalent) are far less likely to have children.\u00a0 Already, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong have some of the lowest birthrates in the world, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman.\u00a0 We\u2019ve written about the consequences of this trend and of the coming Asian demographic crisis (See “The Land of the Setting Sun<\/a>“).<\/p>\n

A country without children is a country without a future.<\/strong>\u00a0 This is not moralizing; it is basic economics.\u00a0 The modern economy is not equipped to deal with aging and shrinking populations.\u00a0 To whom do you sell your products when your customer base gets smaller every year?<\/p>\n

The British economist Sir John Hicks emphasized the role of population growth in the modern economy, remarking that,<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0Expectation of a continually expanding market, made possible by increasing population, is a fine thing for keeping up the spirits of entrepreneurs \u2026 Perhaps the whole Industrial Revolution of the last two hundred years has been nothing else but a vast secular boom, largely induced by the unparalleled rise in population.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While Hicks might be a bit harsh in his analysis, he is right that a rising demographic tide lifts all boats.\u00a0 Now that the tide is retreating, the countries of East Asia are entering an uncertain future.\u00a0 It will be several more years before the full severity of this demographic crisis hits, and in the meantime we expect these countries to enjoy a demographic dividend from the rise of the new emerging market middle class. In fact, we have made investing in this trend a major focus of The Sizemore Investment Letter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But by the end of this decade, much of Asia will be in the early stages of a Japanese-style malaise from which they may never fully recover.\u00a0 And by that time, the United States and parts of Western Europe will be on the mend with a new demographic boom led by the Echo Boomers.<\/p>\n

Emerging Asia should enjoy its time in the sun today, because its future would appear quite doubtful.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in the Part II of the October 2011 HS Dent Forecast.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you liked this article by Sizemore Insights<\/em>, you\u2019d probably enjoy The Sizemore Investment Letter<\/em>, our premium members-only newsletter. Click here<\/a> for more information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By The Sizemore Letter If you browsed the title of this article quickly, your eyes probably played a trick you.\u00a0 Chances are good you saw \u201cWestern\u201d instead of \u201cEastern.\u201d It appears that the sentiment of moral decay in the West is a popular one.\u00a0 Doing a Google search for \u201cDecline of Western values\u201d returned over … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Decline of Eastern Values”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/fx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}