网帖翻译

“ADAM IS A special child,” says the voice-over, as the camera pans across abandoned classrooms and deserted maternity wards. “He’s the last child born in Italy.” The short film made for Plasmon, an Italian brand of baby food owned by Kraft-Heinz, a giant American firm, is set in 2050. It imagines an Italy where babies are a thing of the past. It is exaggerating for effect, of course, but not by as much as you might imagine. The number of births in Italy peaked at 1m in 1964; by 2050, the UN projects, it will have shrunk by almost two-thirds, to 346,000.

“亚当是一个特别的孩子，”旁白声说着，镜头在废弃的教室和空旷的产房中扫视着。“他是意大利出生的最后一个孩子。”这部为开利-亨氏旗下的意大利婴儿食品品牌Plasmon制作的短片设定于2050年，想象了一个没有婴儿的意大利。当然，它夸张了效果，但并不像你想象的那么夸张。根据联合国的预测，在1964年，意大利的出生人数达到了100万，而到2050年，这个数字将减少近三分之二，仅剩下34.6万人。

Plasmon knows what side its fortified biscuits are buttered: a shortage of babies is not good for sales of baby food. But the rapid ageing of many countries around the world will be bad not just for certain industries, or for governments whose costs rise as their revenues decline. The falling number of educated young workers entering the labour market will also reduce innovation, sapping economic growth across the board. Over time, this effect may prove the most economically damaging result of the greying of the rich world, eclipsing growing bills for pensions and health care.

Plasmon知道自己的饼干是靠哪些群体吃饭的：缺乏婴儿对婴儿食品的销售不利。但全球许多国家的快速老龄化不仅对某些行业或成本下降，也对政府不利，同时，进入劳动力市场，受过教育的年轻工人数量下降也将减少创新，消耗整个经济增长。长期来看，这个影响可能会成为富裕世界，最具经济破坏性的结果，超过养老金和医疗保健的不断增长支出。

Italy and Japan, in particular, are the poster pensioners for demographic decline and its economic consequences. In both countries the fertility rate (the number of children a typical woman will have over her lifetime) fell below 2.1 in the 1970s. That level is known as the replacement rate, since it keeps a population stable over time. Anything lower will eventually lead to a declining population, something both Italy and Japan have suffered for about a decade. The median Italian is now 47; the median Japanese 49. Earlier this year, Kishida Fumio, Japan’s prime minister, warned that the country is “on the brink of being unable to maintain social functions” because of its baby bust.

特别是在意大利和日本，他们是人口减少及其经济后果的范例。在这两个国家，生育率（典型女性一生中拥有孩子的数量）在20世纪70年代降至2.1以下。该水平被称为代际置换率降低，因为它可以使人口长期稳定。任何低于此水平的水平最终都将导致人口下降，这是意大利和日本都在遭受了约十年的问题。意大利的中位数年龄现在是47岁，日本的中位数年龄为49岁。今年早些时候，日本首相岸田文雄警告称，由于婴儿潮退潮，该国“处于维持社会功能的边缘”。（代际置换率（Intergenerational Replacement Rate）是指一个代际的人口数量与下一代的人口数量之间的比率。它通常用于描述一个国家或地区的生育率水平。）

But Italy and Japan are no longer the most extreme examples of demographic decline. In 2022 South Korea had a fertility rate of just 0.8. A rate below one means that the next generation will be less than half the size of its parents’. As recently as 2012 the UN projected that South Korea’s population would shrink by only a fifth or so by the end of the century, from 52m today to 41m by 2100. More recent forecasts, however, suggest that the population will fall by more than half over the same period, to just 24m (see chart 1).

但是，意大利和日本已经不再是人口减少的最极端例子了。到2022年，韩国的生育率只有0.8。低于1的水平意味着下一代人将比其父母的一半还要小。就在2012年，联合国预测，到本世纪末，韩国的人口将仅下降约五分之一，从今天的5200万人降至2100年的4100万人左右。然而，更近期的预测表明，在同一时期内，人口将下降一半以上，仅为2400万（见图表1）

South Korea may be an exceptional case, but demographic decline is becoming commonplace. In 2010 98 countries and territories recorded fertility rates below 2.1. By 2021 the number had grown to 124, more than half of the places for which the UN collects data (see map). By 2030 it expects the tally to reach 136.

虽然韩国可能是个例，但人口减少正在变得普遍。到2010年，98个国家和地区的生育率低于2.1。到2021年，这个数字已增长到124个国家，超过联合国收集数据的地方的一半。到2030年，预计这个数字将达到136个。
Total fertility rate: the average number of live births per woman. (总生育率：每位女性的平均生育数量。)
Where have all the babies gone? (所有婴儿都去哪了？)

Matthias Doepke, an economist who studies the financial causes and effects of changes in fertility, notes that falling birth rates are no longer limited to richer countries or to wealthier families within a given country. “There’s a global convergence in women’s aspirations for careers and family life,” says Mr Doepke. Fertility rates for women with fewer years of formal education have fallen towards the levels of their more educated peers. In fact, women in America with exactly 16 years of schooling (mostly those with undergraduate degrees) have marginally fewer children on average than those with more schooling.

研究生育率变化的金融原因和影响的经济学家Matthias Doepke指出，降低出生率不再仅限于富裕国家或给定国家内更富有的家庭。“女性在事业和家庭生活方面的愿望正在全球趋同，”Doepke先生说。教育程度较低的妇女的生育率已经降至与受过更高教育的同龄人相同的水平。事实上，在美国，16年正好受过教育（大多数是拥有本科学位的人）的妇女平均有的孩子比受过更高教育的人稍少。

By the same token, low fertility rates have spread from rich countries such as Italy and Japan to middle-income ones such as Thailand (1.3) and Brazil (1.6). Even more notably, India’s fertility rate recently fell below 2.1 and is expected to keep falling. Since it accounts for a fifth of the world’s population, that will have global repercussions. The 15 biggest economies in the world, including Brazil, China, India and Mexico, all have fertility rates below 2.1.

同样地，低生育率已经从富裕国家如意大利和日本扩散到中等收入国家如泰国（1.3）和巴西（1.6）。更值得注意的是，印度的生育率最近已经降至2.1以下，并有望继续下降。由于印度占世界人口的五分之一，这将产生全球影响。包括巴西、中国、印度和墨西哥在内的世界前15大经济体的生育率都低于2.1。

In 2021 there were 782m people aged between 21 and 30 in countries where fertility is below the replacement rate. By 2050 this group, in effect the potential number of home-grown entrants to the workforce, is expected to have dropped by a fifth, to 619m. This fall is not some subjective and questionable forecast: most members of that generation have already been born, and fertility rates do not tend to change rapidly. In countries in which the fertility rate is below 1.5, which includes almost all of East Asia and much of Europe, the decline will be more extreme, with the same cohort contracting by 37%.

2021年，在生育率低于置换比率的国家，年龄在21岁至30岁之间的人口达到了7.82亿。预计到2050年，这一人群，即潜在的国内劳动力的数量，将下降五分之一，至6.19亿。这种下降不是某种主观且可疑的预测：大多数那一代人已经出生，生育率不会迅速改变。在生育率低于1.5的国家，几乎包括所有东亚和大部分欧洲国家，下降将更为极端，同一群体的人会下降37％。

Instead of a population structure shaped like a pyramid, with each new generation bigger than the one that preceded it, or even a pillar, with all generations similar in size, these countries will become inverted pyramids, with older generations replaced by smaller and smaller cohorts. In parts of the world this has already happened: the number of Chinese aged between 21 and 30 has already fallen from 232m at its peak in 2012 to 181m in 2021. The decline will accelerate rapidly in the 2040s, leaving China with fewer than 100m people in the same pool in the mid-2050s. The population of Europe in the same age category will fall from around 85m to below 60m over the same period.

这些国家的人口结构将不再像金字塔形状或柱形状，新一代人比前一代更多，或者所有的世代都大致相同；相反将变成倒金字塔形状，年长辈的人口逐渐被更小的一代人所替代。一些地区已经出现了这种情况：中国21岁至30岁的人口数量已经从2012年的最高峰232万人下降到2021年的181万人。这种下降将在2040年代加速，使得中国在2050年代中期同一年龄群的人口少于1亿人。同一时期，欧洲在同一年龄组的人口将从约8500万人下降到不到6000万人。

The obvious way to compensate for dwindling birth rates is immigration, which is on the rise in much of the rich world, despite the political tensions it has generated in recent years. But as demographic decline affects more and more countries, educated migrants will become harder to find, even as the shrinking of the native-born population accelerates in many rich countries. For China, with a population of some 1.4bn, the notion that enough immigrants could be found to reverse the effects of dwindling birth rates is fanciful. Although India’s population is still growing, it will peak in the 2060s, if not sooner. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region of the world that seems likely to be a big source of potential migrants for many years to come. But even there, birth rates are falling more quickly than past projections predicted. Although immigration will continue to temper demographic decline in many countries for decades, in the long run, it cannot fully compensate for the baby bust in big economies.

应对出生率下降的明显方法是移民，在许多富裕国家移民数量正在增加，尽管最近几年它产生了政治紧张局势。但随着人口下降影响越来越多的国家，受过教育的移民将变得更难找到，即使在许多富裕国家，本土人口也在迅速缩小。对于拥有14亿人口的中国来说，找到足够的移民以扭转人口下降的影响是不切实际的。尽管印度的人口仍在增长，但如果不是更早的话，到2060年代就会达到顶峰。撒哈拉以南非洲似乎是未来许多年潜在移民的主要来源地区。但即使在那里，出生率下降的速度也比过去的预测更快。尽管移民将继续在许多国家缓解人口下降数十年，但从长远来看，无法完全弥补大型经济体的人口下降。

Some of the consequences of these demographic shifts are well known. An ever greyer population will mean higher spending on public pensions and health care, but there will be fewer people of working age to pay the taxes required. The rich world currently has around three people between 20 and 64 years old for every one over 65. By 2050 this ratio will shrink to less than two to one. That will necessitate later retirement ages, higher taxes or both.

这些人口变化的一些后果是众所周知的。人口日益老龄化将意味着更多的养老金和医疗保健支出，但是缴纳所需的税款的工作年龄人口将减少，发达国家当前每65岁以上的人口中，约有3名年龄在20至64岁之间的人。到2050年，这个比例将缩小到不到2分之1.这将需要推迟退休年龄，增加税收或两者兼而有之。

The economic consequences of demographic decline are not only fiscal, however. Labour is one of the three main determinants of growth, along with capital and the efficiency with which both are used (productivity). Shrinking workforces, other things being equal, automatically lead to lower economic growth. But demographic decline also has knock-on effects on capital and productivity that are much less well understood.

人口下降所带来的经济后果不仅仅是财政上的，劳动力是增长的三大主要因素之一，与资本和效率一起。在其它条件不变的情况下，劳动力的缩减会自动导致经济增长下降。但是，人口下降也会对资本和生产率产生连锁效应，这些效应远没有被充分理解。

Many economists believe that a smaller working population will push down interest rates in real terms (meaning, after accounting for inflation), because there will be fewer investment opportunities and a large stock of savings accumulated by those in or near retirement. But others, such as Charles Goodhart, a former official at the Bank of England, believe the effect will be the opposite. As more people enter retirement and so stop saving but continue to consume, there will be less funding for investment, pushing real interest rates up.

双方都同意，人口老龄化将减少储蓄和投资，但意见不一，哪个将更快地下降。但根据证据，实际利率将降低：许多发展中经济体仍有几十年的储蓄积累，退休人员经常保留储蓄而不是消费它们。无论哪种方式，人口结构变化都将对市场产生巨大影响。总体而言，低实际利率对那些已经积累资产的人有益，但对那些仍在努力储蓄的人，包括逐渐进入退休年龄但储备不足的工人数量越来越多的人则不利。

Both sides agree that an ageing population will reduce both savings and investment, but disagree about which will decline more quickly. But the balance of evidence points towards lower real interest rates: many developing economies still have decades of savings accumulation ahead of them, and retirees often cling to their savings rather than running them down. Either way, demographic changes will have huge implications for markets. Broadly speaking, low real interest rates are good for those who have already accumulated assets but bad for those still trying to save, including the increasing numbers of workers approaching retirement with inadequate nest eggs.

双方都认为人口老龄化将减少储蓄和投资，但在哪一个方面下降得更快存在争议。但证据表明，实际利率会下降：许多发展中国家仍有几十年的储蓄积累，退休人员通常会坚持储蓄而不是花费。无论哪种情况，人口结构变化都将对市场产生巨大影响。广义而言，低实际利率对已经积累资产的人有利，但对仍在努力储蓄的人（包括越来越多的面临退休的工人）则不利，他们的存款可能不足。
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But it is on productivity that demographic decline may have the most troubling effect. Younger people have more of what psychologists call “fluid intelligence”, meaning the ability to solve new problems and engage with new ideas. Older people have more “crystallised intelligence”—a stock of knowledge about how things work built up over time. There are no precise cut-offs, but most studies suggest that fluid intelligence tends to peak in early adulthood and to begin to decline in people’s 30s. Both types of intelligence are useful: companies, industries and economies need both youngsters able to respond to new challenges and seasoned veterans with a detailed understanding of their trade. But the two are not of equivalent value when it comes to innovation.

但是，人口老龄化最令人担忧的影响可能在于生产率。年轻人有心理学家所称的"流体智力"，即解决新问题和接触新思想的能力。老年人具有更多“结晶智力”，即随着时间的推移所积累的关于事物如何工作的知识库。虽然没有明确的分界点，但大多数研究表明，流体智力在早年成年时达到顶峰，并开始在30多岁时下降。两种类型的智力都很有用：公司、行业和经济体需要既能够应对新挑战的年轻人，又具有详细了解其行业的经验丰富的老手。但是当涉及到创新时，两者价值不相等。

In research published in 2021, Mary Kaltenberg and Adam Jaffe, both economists, and Margie Lachman, a psychologist, used a database of 3m patents filed over more than 40 years to explore the relationship between innovation and age. Depending on the scientific discipline, the authors note that patenting rates peak in a researcher’s late 30s and early 40s. The rates of patenting then decline only gradually through their 40s and 50s.

在2021年发表的研究中，经济学家玛丽·卡尔滕伯格和亚当·贾菲以及心理学家玛吉·拉赫曼使用了一个超过40年的300万项专利数据库，探讨了创新与年龄之间的关系。根据科学学科的不同，作者指出研究者的专利申请率在其30多岁到40岁之后达到顶峰，然后在他们的40多岁和50多岁期间仅缓慢下降。

But for disruptive innovations, which fundamentally change a scientific field, the picture is very different. The researchers used a measure of disruptiveness based on the number of citations of a given invention in future patents. If a particular patent is cited by subsequent inventors, but that patent’s technological predecessors are not, it is categorised as a disruptive rather than an incremental innovation. For instance, the work of Kary Mullis, a Nobel-prize-winning biochemist, on polymerase chain reactions underpins much modern genetic and medical testing. After Mullis published his work, citations of prior technologies in the same field nosedived. Mr Jaffe, Ms Kaltenberg and Ms Lachman find that patents filed by the very youngest inventors are much more likely to be completely novel, discipline-changing innovations, and that as inventors age the patents they file become increasingly incremental.

但对于基本上改变科学领域的颠覆性创新来说，情况则截然不同。研究人员使用了一种基于未来专利中给定发明的引用次数的打扰度度量方法。如果特定专利被随后的发明者引用，但该专利的技术前身未被引用，则将其归类为颠覆性创新而不是渐进性创新。例如，诺贝尔化学奖得主卡里·穆利斯在聚合酶链反应方面的工作是现代基因和医学检测的基础。穆利斯发表他的工作后，同一领域的先前技术的引用量暴跌。贾菲先生、卡尔滕伯格女士和拉赫曼女士发现，年轻发明家提交的专利更有可能是完全新颖、颠覆性的创新，而随着发明家年龄的增长，他们提交的专利越来越渐进。
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This matters, because innovation raises productivity. Improvements to existing processes and the invention of entirely new ways of doing things enable more to be produced with the same amount of labour and capital. In the long term, it is only by raising productivity that standards of living can be lifted. Demographic decline will chip away at that contribution over time by reducing the number of novel ideas stemming from the fluidly intelligent minds of young workers.

这很重要，因为创新提高了生产率。对现有流程的改进和全新的做事方式的发明都可以在同样的劳动力和资本下生产更多。从长期来看，只有通过提高生产率，生活水平才能提高。随着流体智力强大的年轻工人数量的减少，人口老龄化将逐渐减少创新对生产率的贡献。

Even a fractionally lower rate of productivity growth will compound over the years to make an economy significantly smaller. During the particularly rapid post-war boom in economic growth in the rich world, between 1947 and 1973, productivity growth accounted for about 60% of the rise in output per worker in America, Britain, France, Italy, Japan and West Germany. America has grown much faster than the rest of the rich world since the global financial crisis of 2007-09, thanks in large part to its bigger gains in productivity.

即使生产力增长率稍低，也会在多年后使一个经济体的规模大大缩小。在战后富国经济增长特别迅速的时期，即1947年至1973年期间，生产力增长占美国、英国、法国、意大利、日本和西德工人人均产出增长的60%左右。自2007-09年的全球金融危机以来，美国的增长速度远远超过其他富裕国家，这在很大程度上要归功于其更大的生产力增长。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

If the decline in fertility was confined to a few countries, or a particular region, the impact on innovation might not be so severe. Technologies invented in one country eventually spread to others. The spinning jenny and the computer chip didn’t have to be reinvented in every corner of the world to improve productivity globally. But the fact that fertility is declining simultaneously in a large proportion of countries means that the consequences in terms of reduced innovation will be felt globally.

如果生育率下降仅局限于少数国家或特定地区，对创新的影响可能不会那么严重。一个国家发明的技术最终会传播到其他国家。纺车和计算机芯片不必在全球各地重新发明，就可以全球提高生产率。但事实上，生育率在大部分国家同时下降，这意味着创新减少的后果将在全球范围内感受到。

Some researchers believe such a demographically driven reduction in innovation is already under way in parts of the world. James Liang, a Chinese economist and demographer, notes that entrepreneurship is markedly lower in older countries: an increase of one standard deviation in the median age in a country, equivalent to about 3.5 years, leads to a decrease of 2.5 percentage points in the entrepreneurship rate (the proportion of adults who start their own business). That is a huge effect, considering the global entrepreneurship rate was around 6.1% in 2010.

一些研究人员认为，这种人口老龄化引起创新减少的趋势已经在世界某些地区正在发生。中国经济学家和人口学家梁建章指出，创业精神在年长的国家明显较低：一个国家中位数年龄增加一个标准差，相当于约3.5年，会导致创业率（自己创业的成年人的比例）下降2.5个百分点。考虑到2010年的全球创业率约为6.1%，这是一个巨大的影响。

What is more, this relationship does not seem to be simply a function of the relative lack of young people in ageing societies. Young people in such countries also seem to start businesses at lower rates than their peers in less wizened societies.

此外，这种关系似乎并不仅仅是由于老龄化社会中年轻人的相对缺乏。这些国家的年轻人似乎也以较低的比率创办企业，低于那些年轻人在不那么老龄化的社会里。

This phenomenon, according to Mr Liang, may be the cause of Japan’s “entrepreneur vacuum”. As recently as 2010, Japanese inventors were the biggest producers of patents in 35 global industries, according to the World Intellectual Property Organisation, a UN agency. By 2021 they were the leaders in just three. Japan has fallen behind not only China, which now occupies most of the top spots, but America too.

据梁先生称，这种现象可能是导致日本“企业家荒漠”的原因。根据联合国机构世界知识产权组织的数据，仅在2010年，日本的发明家就是35个全球产业中最大的专利生产者。但到2021年，他们仅在三个产业中处于领先地位。日本不仅落后于现在占据大部分前列的中国，还落后于美国。

Looking only at the most novel fields, in which radical new innovations are most likely, makes the picture no better. In an analysis published by the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance, Antonin Bergeaud and Cyril Verluise note that Japan’s contribution to genome editing and blockchain technology has shrunk to almost nothing. Once-leading roles in hydrogen storage, self-driving vehicles and computer vision (a form of artificial intelligence that trains computers to interpret images) have been reduced to supporting roles behind America, China or both (see chart 2).

仅看最新的领域，即最有可能出现激进创新的领域，并不会改善情况。在伦敦政治经济学院经济表现中心发布的分析中，Antonin Bergeaud和Cyril Verluise指出，日本在基因组编辑和区块链技术中的贡献几乎为零。在氢能储存、自动驾驶车辆和电脑视觉（一种训练计算机解释图像的人工智能形式）等领先角色方面，已被美国、中国或两者所取代（见图表2）。
Japan, % of total patents filed：日本所占据的专利申请总数的百分比
Hydrogen storage：氢气储能
Computer vision：计算机视觉
Self-driving vehicles:自动驾驶车辆
Blockchain：区块链技术
Genome editing：基因组编辑
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Governments are largely powerless to reverse declining birth rates. Attempts in various countries to prod women to have more children have typically yielded meagre results. Research on the expensive support provided by governments in Hungary and Poland, in the form of income-tax credits and flat payments respectively, suggests a limited effect on fertility. Singapore offers large grants to the parents of new children, which now run to S$11,000 ($8,300) for the first two children, and S$13,000 for any more, on top of tax rebates and child-care subsidies. Parents are given priority over other buyers in subsidised apartment sale schemes. But Singapore’s total fertility rate is just 1.0: whatever the effect of the policies, it is nowhere near big enough to avert demographic decline.

政府很难扭转出生率下降的趋势。各个国家鼓励妇女生育的尝试通常都只有微薄的效果。在匈牙利和波兰政府提供的昂贵支持措施方面的研究中，分别是通过所得税减免和平坦支付。研究表明，对生育率的影响有限。新加坡为新生儿的父母提供大量津贴，现在对于前两个孩子可达到11000新加坡元（合8300美元），对于更多的孩子可达到13000新加坡元，再加上税收减免和儿童保育津贴。在补贴的公寓销售计划中，父母有优先权。但新加坡的总生育率仅为1.0，无论政策的影响如何，都远远不足以避免人口下降。

Of course, birth rates are not the only, or even the main determinant of productivity. If they were, some of sub-Saharan Africa’s poorest economies would be the world’s most dynamic. Levels of education, the reliability of legal and financial systems and the existence of networks of innovators interacting with one another all matter. Japan is still more innovative than many rich countries with a lower average age. But demography can magnify or muffle a country’s underlying potential.

当然，出生率不是生产力的唯一决定因素，甚至不是主要决定因素。如果是这样，撒哈拉以南非洲的一些最贫穷的经济体将成为世界上最有活力的经济体。教育水平、法律和金融体系的可靠性以及创新者网络的存在都很重要。日本仍然比许多平均年龄较低的富裕国家更具创新性。但人口结构可以放大或掩盖一个国家的潜在潜力。

That suggests ways to counteract the effects of demographic decline on innovation, by focusing on other factors that increase productivity. The most obvious is education, which allows ageing societies to make better use of the dwindling pool of young people. Especially in middle-income countries such as Brazil and China, there are millions who do not receive proper schooling, and whose contribution to the economy is therefore small. The same is true, albeit to a lesser extent, in much of the rich world. No matter how intelligent they are, uneducated workers cannot hope to come up with groundbreaking ideas in medicine or computing, say. As the potential workforce shrinks, maximising the output of everyone in it will become essential, and could help offset the effects of an ageing population for some time, at least in the realm of innovation.

这表明，通过专注于增加生产率，可以抵消人口下降对创新产生的影响。最明显的是教育，它允许老龄化社会更好地利用不断减少的年轻人群。特别是在巴西和中国等中等收入国家，存在着数百万没有受到适当教育的人，他们对经济的贡献因此很小，在富裕世界的很多地方也是如此。不管多么聪明，未受教育的劳动者都无法希望在医学或计算机等领域提出开创性的想法。随着潜在的劳动力逐渐减少，最大化其中每个人的产出将变得至关重要，并且在创新领域中可以帮助抵消老龄化人口的影响。

Technology can also provide ways to cope with demographic change, from telemedicine to the increased use of robots in service industries. Such innovations can undoubtedly ease the difficulties presented by an ageing society, whether by directly contributing to the care of the elderly or by automating the roles of young workers. But the shrinking number of innovative young thinkers will, ironically, reduce the number of such valuable new ideas.

技术也可以提供应对人口变化的方法，从远程医疗到服务行业中机器人的增加使用。这样的创新无疑可以减轻老龄化社会带来的困难，无论是通过直接为老年人提供护理还是使年轻工人的角色被自动化取代。但是，创新的思想家的数量正在减少，更讽刺的是，这将减少这些有价值的新想法的数量。

A shortfall in human innovation may also be less damaging if offset by new ideas conceived by artificial intelligence. There seems no doubt that machines will soon be working out how to make incremental improvements in existing processes—indeed, in some spheres, they already are. Whether machines will ever learn how to generate disruptive new ideas, however, remains a matter of debate.

如果增加人类创新的不足可以通过人工智能的新思维来弥补。毫无疑问，机器很快就会开始在现有流程中不断改进——在某些领域中，它们已经开始这样做。但是，机器是否会学会如何生成颠覆性的新想法，仍然是一个有争议的问题。

Plasmon’s film, about the last child in Italy, ends with a discussion of children as a symbol of hope. It directs viewers to a website that suggests policies to promote bigger families. The website, in turn, asks readers to sign a petition calling for action. Scarcely 8,000 have done so. As the number of Italians continues to shrink, and especially the number of young ones, it is not just buyers of baby food who will be in short supply. Plasmon will struggle to find creative talents to dream up clever advertising campaigns, much less devise new policies to reverse the baby bust.

普拉斯蒙的影片讲述了意大利最后一个孩子的故事，以对儿童作为希望象征的讨论结束。它将观众引向一个网站，该网站提出了促进扩大家庭的政策。该网站反过来要求读者签署一份呼吁采取行动的请愿书。仅有8,000人这样做了。随着意大利人的数量继续减少，特别是年轻人的数量，不仅仅是婴儿食品的买家将面临短缺。普拉斯蒙公司将很难找到创造性的人才来构思巧妙的广告活动，更不用说制定新的政策来扭转婴儿的问题。