#379 Demographic Future of Russia, China and the United States - Bradley Schurman

Bradley Schurman (0:00)

We have to reconsider what we consider to be normal, because right now, what do we tell people? You're 65 years old, you're done. We no longer need you to work, you can go into retirement. And a lot of people believe this. They believe that that's their stopping point. They don't realize that they might have another 20 or 30 years, at least of life on average.

Siim Land (0:19)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. I'm your host, Siim Land, and today our guest is Bradley Schurman. Bradley is an expert in geopolitics and demographics. He's the author of the book, The Super Age, Decoding Our Demographic Destiny, and the CEO of the Super Age Consulting Firm.

The only way to truly know your health status and mortality risk is to measure your blood work. That's why I'm excited to have Insight Tracker as today's sponsor. Insight Tracker is an at-home biomarker service that you can use to test up to 43 different biomarkers, like lipids, liver enzymes, inflammation, sex hormones, and much more. The process is simple. You order the test kit to your home, use the little finger prick device to give your blood, send it back, and you get your results to your online dashboard or app. You can get a 20% discount off all their tests if you head over to insighttracker.com forward slash siimland. That's insighttracker.com forward slash siimland, and the code is siimland.

Bradley, welcome to the show.

Bradley Schurman (1:21)

Thanks, Sam, good to be here.

Siim Land (1:23)

Yeah, I'm very excited to have you on the podcast because, you know, my channel and the podcast is mostly about longevity and anti-aging, but I've never really covered the aspect of demographics and like life expectancy, which is, yeah, I'm like super glad to have you on the podcast because you have a very interesting book called The Super Age that talks about the future of demographics pretty much across the entire world and life expectancy as well. So I'm like really excited to talk with you, but I got into longevity and the demographic side because of wanting to see how long humans can live and try to extend the healthy lifespan. But what made you write the book on this particular topic?

Bradley Schurman (2:08)

I got involved in it almost the opposite way, trying to make sense of a world in which there were all these older people around that weren't there before.

We're in a period of disruptive demographic change, the likes that we've never experienced before as a population.

The TLDR on this is that we're having fewer kids year on year. Our birth rates have essentially collapsed. At the same time, we've had this radical extension of human longevity. And that's not to say that there haven't been older people before. We've always had old people in society. In fact, the upper age limit, at least for now, is around 120 or 122 But what's different about this period is there's just so many of them. Real investments that we made in protecting life during the 20th century and the 21st century have really gotten us to this point where more and more people year on year are able to live a long and healthy life.

Siim Land (3:16)

Yeah, I think most people have heard that the people, at least the population in the western world, at least is getting older and older. There's more people in the senior category, and there's less people or less children being born all the time. At least in Estonia, it's a very big crisis. I think the average, I don't know the exact number, but it's like 1.2 or 1.3 children per woman are being born. And they are estimating that eventually, at some point later in the century, the Estonian ethnicity is going to be extinct in a lot of ways. But Estonia is one of the worst in terms of the demographic side.

Bradley Schurman (3:56)

Well, certainly in Europe, but it's certainly not the worst in terms of the world. This is a global phenomenon that's happening now. In fact, the lowest birthrate in the world now is in Korea, where each woman has on average 0.78 children. So Estonia has nearly twice as many babies as Korea. So it is a real big change.

And life expectancy, of course, varies from country to country. In some nations, in Western Europe, it's pushing past 80

In places like Japan, it's pushing upwards of 81, 82 In Monaco, it's nearly 87 Really, really amazing stuff. But I think as we get in this conversation today, one of the things that's interesting about longevity is that it is just that.

It's a marathon, not a sprint. So investments that are made over the course of the lifetime really do add up to really positive outcomes, or negative incomes, meaning early death.