A reason Asia is doing so well that isn't being talked about

I was talking to family back home for my birthday and the inevitable questions on how long I was going to stay in Korea came up. Not that I mind, but the truth is I don't know. I was reading that of the 22000 new jobs that were supposed to be created in Canada, only around 1500 were. With most of these being low end retail the urge to stay in Asia, where I can get an MA, make good cash and have a great lifestyle at the same time all make sense. But why is Asia doing so well when the west is tanking?

Answers range from "bailouts for billionnaires" to "the incredible sense of entitlement westerners have" to "overseas colonialism" to "unsustainable social spending" to "destruction of middle class jobs in globalization" and all are huge factors for sure, but there's a huge one that seems left out.

Demographics.

I don't just mean because there are 1.3 billion Chinese or 45 million South Koreans or 23 million Taiwanese but it's their age. There are 1.3 billion Chinese, but 700,000,000+ are young Chinese (say 18-40). Remember that after WWII westerners had babies, and man did they have them. Between 1945 and 1965 there were so many babies that they were the baby boomer generation. By 1980 the number of people 18-40 outnumber the other by 5-1 (really, when these numbers were first realised back in the 60's the Doors wrote a song about it). You had huge numbers of people paying in to the social system and most people were spending and earning. Fast forward to 2012 and those baby boomers are now between 50-65 (or 47 to 67 to be exact) and are retiring or already retired. You now have one or two people working and spending to five who are retired. You do the math. Remember that Japan is teh one Asian nation in the same boat as the west, and their economy is far worse off than the US.

China, Taiwan and Korea in contrast, didn't START their baby boom until around 1960. In China WWII drove the Japanese out but allowed for five years of constant warfare between the Nationalists and the Communists. After the Nationalists moved to Taiwan they initiated a decade of terror and combined with the huge flood of people coming in and no way to house/feed them all Taiwanese weren't having babies. After Mao won the war the cleanup began which then hit his creative agricultural programmes which ensured most babies born before 1956 starved to death. Then in the early 60's he told everyone to start having babies, lots and lots of babies. Those 1965-1985 boomers are what, 27-47? Korea had WWII followed by the Korean war and the rebuilding so that the Koreans didn't start having babies again until around 1955. Now there was no boom in Korea as there was in other places, but there really isn't much of an older generation to speak of, at least demographically.

I think the west has some VERY tough times ahead, and so for me I'll anchor here in Korea and start my MA program this fall but for all of the growth here, I wonder what it will look like 30 years down the line when all the young people here decide to retire. Korea is demographically stable enough that it may transition. Japan's population is estimated to go from 135 million to 65 million by 2050 just because no one is having babies and emigration to Japan long term is virtually impossible unless you are married to a Japanese national. China will be the interesting one, as 5-1 are enviable numbers for them and in 30 years when there boomers are the age ours are now they will face massive problems supporting them. Add to that the fact that the boom ended with the (albeit somewhat ineffective) one child policy and you have a situation where a small number of people are caring for a LOT of older people.

I will be interesting to live through.