《经济学人》双语：全球低生育率对世界经济有什么影响？

原文标题：
The baby-bust economy
Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences
低生育经济
全球生育率暴跌，产生了深刻的经济影响

What might change the world’s dire demographic trajectory?
怎样才能改变世界低迷的人口曲线呢？

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IN THE ROUGHLY 250 years since the Industrial Revolution the world’s population, like its wealth, has exploded.
自工业革命以来250年左右的时间里，世界人口和财富呈爆炸性增长。

Before the end of this century, however, the number of people on the planet could shrink for the first time since the Black Death.
然而，在本世纪末之前，地球上的人口数量可能会出现自黑死病以来的首次下降。

The root cause is not a surge in deaths, but a slump in births. Across much of the world the fertility rate, the average number of births per woman, is collapsing.
其根本原因不是死亡人数激增，而是出生人数锐减。在世界大部分地区，生育率（即每个妇女的平均生育数量）正在急剧下降。

Although the trend may be familiar, its extent and its consequences are not.
尽管人们对这一趋势可能习以为常，但对其程度和影响并不了解。

Even as artificial intelligence (AI) leads to surging optimism in some quarters, the baby bust hangs over the future of the world economy.
即使人工智能（AI）在一些圈子里引发了高涨的乐观情绪，但人口对全球未来经济仍存在巨大的不确定性影响。

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In 2000 the world’s fertility rate was 2.7 births per woman, comfortably above the “replacement rate” of 2.1, at which a population is stable. Today it is 2.3 and falling.

2000年，世界的生育率为每名妇女生2.7个孩子，远远高于人口稳定的 “更替率” 2.1。今天，它只有2.3，且还在下降。

The largest 15 countries by GDP all have a fertility rate below the replacement rate. That includes America and much of the rich world, but also China and India, neither of which together account for more than a third of the global population.
GDP最高的15个国家的出生率都低于更替率。这些国家包括美国和大部分发达国家，也包括中国和印度，这两国人口总和占全球人口的1/3以上。

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The result is that in much of the world the patter of tiny feet is being drowned out by the clatter of walking sticks.

其结果是，在世界大部分地区，婴儿的嗒嗒脚步声被老人的拐杖咔哒声淹没了。

The prime examples of ageing countries are no longer just Japan and Italy but also include Brazil, Mexico and Thailand.

老龄化的主要国家不再仅仅包括日本和意大利，还包括巴西、墨西哥和泰国。

By 2030 more than half the inhabitants of East and South-East Asia will be over 40. As the old die and are not fully replaced, populations are likely to shrink.

到2030年，东亚和东南亚的一半以上的居民将超过40岁。由于老年人的死亡人数不能被新生儿数量取代，预计人口将缩减。

Outside Africa, the world’s population is forecast to peak in the 2050s and end the century smaller than it is today. Even in Africa, the fertility rate is falling fast.
在非洲之外，世界人口预计将在2050年代达到峰值，且本世纪末人口数量将低于当前水平。即使在非洲，生育率也在迅速下降。

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Whatever some environmentalists say, a shrinking population creates problems.

不管一些环保主义者怎么说，人口的萎缩一定会带来问题。

The world is not close to full and the economic difficulties resulting from fewer young people are many.

世界还没有接近饱和，年轻人数量减少会导致各种经济困难。

The obvious one is that it is getting harder to support the world’s pensioners.

一个明显的例子是，养活世界上的退休人员将变得越来越困难。

Retired folk draw on the output of the working-aged, either through the state, which levies taxes on workers to pay public pensions, or by cashing in savings to buy goods and services or because relatives provide care unpaid.

退休人员依赖适龄工作者的劳动产出，要么是通过国家向工作者征税来支付公共养老金，要么取出存款来购买商品和服务，或者有亲属提供无偿护理。

But whereas the rich world currently has around three people between 20 and 64 years old for everyone over 65, by 2050 it will have less than two.

目前在发达国家，大约有三个20-64岁的中青年人养着一个65岁以上的老年人，而到2050年，这个数字低于两个。

The implications are higher taxes, later retirements, lower real returns for savers and, possibly, government budget crises.
其影响是导致更高的税收、更晚的退休年龄、更低的储蓄实际回报率，以及潜在的政府预算危机。

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Low ratios of workers to pensioners are only one problem stemming from collapsing fertility.

劳动工作者与退休人员比例过低只是生育率下降造成的问题之一。

Younger people have more of what psychologists call “fluid intelligence”, the ability to think creatively so as to solve problems in entirely new ways .
年轻人拥有更多心理学家所谓的 "流体智力"，即创造性思维以及用全新方式解决问题的能力。

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This youthful dynamism complements the accumulated knowledge of older workers. It also brings change.

年轻人的活力与老年人积累的知识相辅相成。它也带来了变化。

Patents filed by the youngest inventors are much more likely to cover breakthrough innovations.

年轻发明家申请的专利更有可能涵盖颠覆性创新。

Older countries—and, it turns out, their young people—are less enterprising and less comfortable taking risks.

老龄化国家--事实证明，他们的年轻人--不太有进取心，也不太愿意承担风险。

Elderly electorates ossify politics, too. Because the old benefit less than the young when economies grow, they have proved less keen on pro-growth policies, especially housebuilding.

老年选民也使政治僵化。因为当经济增长时，老年人比年轻人受益更少，所以他们对促进增长的政策（尤其是房屋建设）并不热衷。

Creative destruction is likely to be rarer in ageing societies, suppressing productivity growth in ways that compound into an enormous missed opportunity.
在老龄化社会中，颠覆性创新可能会更少，这抑制了生产力的增长，从而导致错过巨大机会。

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All things considered, it is tempting to cast low fertility rates as a crisis to be solved.

综合考虑，很容易把低生育率视为一种需要解决的危机。

Many of its underlying causes, though, are in themselves welcome. As people have become richer they have tended to have fewer children.

不过，它的许多潜在原因本身是受欢迎的。人们越富有，新生儿就越少。

Today they face different trade-offs between work and family, and these are mostly better ones.

如今，他们在工作和家庭之间面临着不同的权衡选择，而其中大多是更好的选择。

The populist conservatives who claim low fertility is a sign of society’s failure and call for a return to traditional family values are wrong.

那些声称低生育率是社会失败的标志，并呼吁恢复传统家庭价值观的民粹主义保守派是错误的。

More choice is a good thing, and no one owes it to others to bring up children.
更多的选择是一件好事，人家没有义务为了他人来养育孩子。

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Liberals’ impulse to encourage more immigration is more noble. But it, too, is a misdiagnosis.

自由主义者推动和鼓励更多移民的做法更为崇高。但是，这也是一种误判。

Immigration in the rich world today is at a record high, helping individual countries tackle worker shortages.

今天，发达国家的移民人数创下历史新高，帮助个别国家解决劳动力短缺问题。

But the global nature of the fertility slump means that, by the middle of the century, the world is likely to face a dearth of young educated workers unless something changes.
但是，全球生育率下降意味着，除非有什么改变，否则到本世纪中叶，全世界可能会面临年轻的、受过良好教育劳动力的短缺问题。

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What might that be? People often tell pollsters they want more children than they have.

今后会有哪些变化呢？人们经常告诉民意调查员，他们想要的子女比他们实际拥有的要多。

This gap between aspiration and reality could be in part because would-be parents—who, in effect, subsidise future childless pensioners—cannot afford to have more children, or because of other policy failures, such as housing shortages or inadequate fertility treatment.

这种愿望和现实之间的差距，部分原因是准父母——他们实际上是在为将来没有孩子的退休人员提供补贴--负担不起更多的孩子，或者是因为其他政策的失败，如住房短缺或生育治疗不足。

Yet even if these are fixed, economic development is still likely to lead to a fall in fertility below the replacement rate.

然而，即使这些问题得到解决，经济发展仍有可能导致生育率下降到替代率以下。

Pro-family policies have a disappointing record. Singapore offers lavish grants, tax rebates and child-care subsidies—but has a fertility rate of 1.0.
崇尚家庭的政策有一个失败案例。那就是新加坡提供了丰厚的补助金、退税和儿童保育补贴，但其生育率却只有1.0。

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Unleashing the potential of the world’s poor would ease the shortage of educated young workers without more births.

在不增加出生率的情况下，释放世界贫困人口的潜力将缓解受过良好教育年轻劳动者短缺的问题。

Two-thirds of 25- to 34-year-olds in India have not completed upper secondary education. Africa’s pool of young people will continue to grow for decades.

印度有三分之二25-34岁的人没有完成高中教育。非洲的年轻人群体将在几十年内继续增长。

Boosting their skills is desirable in itself, and might also cast more young migrants as innovators in otherwise-stagnant economies.

提高他们的技能本身是可取的，而且还可能使更多的年轻人移民到停滞不前的国家，成为那里的创新者。

Yet encouraging development is hard—and the sooner places get rich, the sooner they get old.

然而，鼓励发展也很困难——并且，一个地方越早富裕起来，就会越早进入老龄社会。

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Eventually, therefore, the world will have to make do with fewer youngsters—and perhaps with a shrinking population.

因此，最终，世界将不得不接受年轻人越来越少的事实——及全球总人口减少的事实。

With that in mind, recent advances in AI could not have come at a better time. An über-productive AI-infused economy might find it easy to support a greater number of retired people.

考虑到这一点，最近人工智能推陈出新来得正是时候。人工智能驱动的超高生产力经济可能使照顾更多退休人员变得容易。

Eventually AI may be able to generate ideas by itself, reducing the need for human intelligence. Combined with robotics, AI may also make caring for the elderly less labour-intensive. Such innovations will certainly be in high demand.

最终，人工智能可能会自己产生想法，减少对人类智能的需求。与机器人技术相结合，人工智能可以使照顾老人的劳动密集度降低。这类创新肯定会有很大的市场需求。

If technology does allow humanity to overcome the baby bust, it will fit the historical pattern.

如果技术确实能帮助人类解决低生育难题，那是符合历史规律的。

Unexpected productivity advances meant that demographic time-bombs, such as the mass starvation predicted by Thomas Malthus in the 18th century, failed to detonate.

超出预期的生产力进步意味着人口定时炸弹并未引爆。如托马斯.马尔萨斯在18世纪预测的大饥饿并未出现。

Fewer babies means less human genius. But that might be a problem human genius can fix.
出生率更少意味着人类天才更少。但或许只有人类天才才能解决这个问题吧。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量1088左右,有删减）
原文出自：2023年6月3日《The Economist》Leaders版块

精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路
本文翻译整理: Irene本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来自于网络）
工业革命Industrial Revolution指的是从18世纪末到19世纪中叶，欧洲和北美等地区发生的一场经济、社会、人口和技术的深刻变革。这场变革的标志是机器生产的兴起和工业化的加速，它最开始出现在英国，并在19世纪逐渐扩展到欧洲和美国。这一时期，工业生产方式从手工业和家庭手工业逐渐转变为机械化的大规模生产，这种生产方式的优势在于效率和生产力的大幅提升。

黑死病Black Death，又称鼠疫或瘟疫，是欧洲历史上最致命的疾病之一。该病最早在14世纪中期从中亚地区传入欧洲，随后在欧洲迅速传播，导致了大量人口死亡和社会动荡。黑死病的主要症状是高热、淋巴结肿胀和皮肤上出现黑色病斑。传播途径主要是通过老鼠和跳蚤，而且传染力非常强。在欧洲流行的期间，黑死病的死亡率非常高，甚至高达70%以上。这一疫情不仅造成了人口大量减少，而且对欧洲社会和经济产生了深远的影响。

流体智力Fluid Intelligence是指人在解决新问题、应对新情境时所需要的智力能力。它是人类智力的一个重要组成部分，与生物学、神经科学、心理学等学科有着密切关系。流体智力与固定智力是不同的。固定智力是指人们在学习和经验积累过程中获得的知识、技能和经验。而流体智力则是人们通过分析、推理、抽象思维等方式，快速处理新的信息和新的情境的能力。

托马斯·罗伯特·马尔萨斯（Thomas Robert Malthus，1766年2月13日－1834年12月23日）是18世纪末19世纪初英国经济学家、政治家、人口学家。他的代表作《人口原理》提出了著名的“人口爆炸论”，认为人口的增长速度将超过粮食的增长速度，导致人口贫困和社会灾难，因此提出应该采取措施限制人口的增长，以避免这种危机的发生。其中马尔萨斯陷阱是指一个国家或地区在人口增长过快的情况下，由于食物生产无法跟上人口增长的速度，导致人均粮食供应不足，从而引发贫困、饥荒和人口死亡的一种危机。

生育治疗Fertility Treatment是指一系列医疗技术和手段，旨在帮助那些因为生理或生化原因无法自然受孕的夫妇实现生育。这些治疗方法包括：生殖药物治疗，人工授精，体外受精（IVF），胚胎移植，卵子或精子移植，代孕，以及使用捐赠的卵子或精子等方法。生育治疗通常由专门的生殖医生或生殖科医生进行，旨在提高夫妇受孕的成功率。

【重点句子】（3个）
The root cause is not a surge in deaths, but a slump in births. Across much of the world the fertility rate, the average number of births per woman, is collapsing.
其根本原因不是死亡人数激增，而是出生人数锐减。在世界大部分地区，生育率（即每个妇女的平均生育数量）正在急剧下降。

The implications are higher taxes, later retirements, lower real returns for savers and, possibly, government budget crises.
其影响是导致更高的税收、更晚的退休年龄、更低的储蓄实际回报率，以及潜在的政府预算危机。

Creative destruction is likely to be rarer in ageing societies, suppressing productivity growth in ways that compound into an enormous missed opportunity. 
在老龄化社会中，颠覆性创新可能会更少，这抑制了生产力的增长，从而导致错过巨大机会。