Not too conversational here, I hope for a change. Anyway, I study demograhic changes and the United States and Western Europe is aging. One cliam is that Italy with a low birth average age is going to be 57 in 2025. So, that means that regular swimming for those in age group or elite swimming will have less competitors,while master swimming will have more because more people will be in many countries average ages in the 40's to 50's.What do you think?.
My competition seems to be getting deeper and deeper as the PMS LMSC population grows. The people with whom I already have been competing, are still there and more join. I wouldn't expect this trend to do a 180.
They will prolly just enter some older peeps... But, I'm sure, almost positive, that the Frenchies or German doods can muster up a couple young swimmers to show up at the 2020 Olympic games. If not.... Then maybe they can hire some Americans to swim for them.... you know dual citizenship, couple bucks, its all good. Now Italy is another story... they swim forever. That one dood on the water polo team... BenChevenga (or however you spell his name....) was Thirty Freakin Seven years old!!! And they still kicked our butts. Yeah... I wouldnt worry too much. I mean, we have "SPECTACULAR" threats of terrorism right here at home.... and you're worrying about who the hell is gonna swim for the Frenchies in 2020 ?!?! Uhh.....
Shinob- Out
They will probably have some young people to swim. But with a smaller young people will the quality suffer. The most serious problem with an aging population is that young people in the United States and Europe are going to have to shell out a lot of money to keep social security or old-age pensions afloat. In the long term that may be a more serious problem than terrorism.
Probably, the overall population in places like the bay area will not age as fast because of a pretty good level of immirgration. Immirgates tend to be younger than the average american. On the other hand. rural areas that have low immirgration and are losing people to other states population will age faster. I was thinking in regards to Western Europe and Eastern Europe that have low birth rates and even a more older population than the United States. Who will they send to the olympics in the future since the population is getting older? This will be more of an impact more by 2020. As I stated how many good swimmers is Italy going to have by 2024, if the average age is around 57 years old. Also, should the United States and the European countries place more of an emphasis on adult swimming since this group is going to get bigger in another 10 to 20 years.?
I don't think we need to worry about a shortage of children or teenagers of prime swimming age.
The average age of the population is going up (mostly because people are living longer, but also because the "baby boom" generation was so much larger than the ones immediately before and after), but the total population is still increasing. This means that younger people are a smaller percentage of the total population, not that there are fewer young people.
In fact, I recently read in an article about college admissions that "Generation Y" is the largest group of teenagers ever and the next generation ("Z"?), who are now preteens, will be even bigger. The "aging population" may affect social security, pensions and health care but it shouldn't affect swimming.
Much of the children increase in US population is thanks to immirgation. The average non-hispanic white is 40 years old in most places in the us but the average hispanic is around 25 years. So hispanics are more at the prime childbearing years. In case anyone has not notice there is absence of asian and hispanics at the top levels of swimming. In the case of some asians it might be the case of physical size and interest. There has been Michelle Kwan in figure skating but no recent swimminer of asian descent I can think of has made it at the top levels. Hispanics, on the other hand, it might have to do with economics. Upper middle class hispanics such as Pablo Morales made it to the olympics. But poorer hispanics with more of an indian background also tend to be shorter as well as lack money. Anyway, the US has a slightly higher birthrate among the native born and a high rate among some immirgrant groups compared to Europe By 2025, a lot of the kids will look like Pablo Morales in California rather than Ms N. Couglin, so getting more hispanics in the sport will help. Europeans have low birthrates except of course the immirgants in their countries too but witout high immirgantion the Europeans will eventually lose populaton probably by the middle of the 21st century. As for Europe I think swmming will suffer at the younger levels because of a lack young people. In the United States it depends upon how hispanics and asians and some blacks become involved with the sport at a higher level because the non-hispanic whites will make more and more of the older population and less of the younger as time goes by.
