FACT: U.S. employment of biotech scientists has grown by 45,000 since January 2021.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. biotechnology researchers* –

* Bureau of Labor Statistics

WHAT THEY MEAN:

It is seventy years since Watson & Crick worked out the DNA molecule’s double-helical structure (1953), fifty since Cohen & Boyer produced the first “recombinant” DNA cell (1972); and 40 since the first biotech medicine launch (human insulin from an E. coli cell, 1982). For 2022, here’s a Food and Drug Administration announcement about a salmon, genetically engineered for rapid growth, which went on sale last year:

“AquAdvantage Salmon has been genetically engineered to reach a growth marker important to the aquaculture industry more rapidly than its non-GE farm-raised Atlantic salmon counterpart. It does so because it contains an rDNA construct that is composed of the growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon under the control of a promoter (a sequence of DNA that turns on the expression of a gene) from another type of fish called an ocean pout. … The salmon cannot be raised in ocean net pens: instead, the approval allows for them to be grown only at specific land-based facilities: one in Canada [Prince Edward Island], where the breeding stock are kept, and Indiana, where the fish for market will be grown out using eggs from the Canada facility. [A third site is getting ready in Ohio.] Both the Canada and Indiana facilities have multiple and redundant physical barriers to prevent eggs and fish from escaping, including metal screens on tank bottoms, stand pipes, and incubator trays to prevent the escape of eggs and fish during hatching or rearing. The tanks also have covers, nets, jump fences, and screened overflow tanks to prevent escape over the sides of the tanks or incubators. The facilities in Canada are indoors. All tank drains and stand pipes have covers or sleeves permanently attached to them. In order to prevent eggs or small fish from passing through the pipes or plumbing, there is a closed septic system and additional screens and chlorine pucks are used to kill any escaped fish or eggs in the main drain area.”

Product of Massachusetts-based AquaBounty, the salmon was the second major biotech fish launch, following the 2005 introduction of Florida-farmed glow-in-the-dark aquarium fish.  Both in turn are the output of a U.S. biotech world reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to employ 286,000 R&D scientists, up 45,000 from the BLS’ January 2021 tally and double the 134,000 counted in 2012. The OECD’s most recent measurement of research commitments finds the U.S. contributing about $88 billion of about $115 billion in known private-sector biotech R&D as of 2020. (Note though OECD’s figures don’t include government research, and also don’t try to estimate the possibly substantial R&D commitments in China, India, and Russia.) A quick rundown of current biotech products and plantings:

(1)  Medicines:  The FDA reports suggest 117 biologic medicines were on the market by 2000 and 334 (if we’re counting correctly) are available now. Roughly speaking, then, the array of biotech medicines grew by about 6 per year from 1980 to 2000, accelerating to about 10 per year since the turn of the century. Examples from the 2022 approval list include a hepatitis C medicine, a blood coagulant, mRNA vaccines, thalassemia, and a relapsed leukemia treatment.

(2)  Agriculture: U.S. farmers grow biotech crops on about 175 million acres of farmland, up from 4 million acres in 1995 and accounting for about a third of the world’s 470 million acres of biotech planting.  They produce 11 biotech crops — alfalfa, apples, canola, corn, cotton, papaya, pineapples (pink variety), potatoes, soybeans, summer squash, and sugar beets — and U.S. planting has risen from 4 million acres in 1995 to 175 million acres over the last decade, and includes 93% of U.S. corn, 95% of U.S. cotton, and 95% of U.S. soybeans. Worldwide, the U.S. is the largest of 29 biotech producers, accounting for about a third of 470 million acres in world biotech planting as of 2019, according to the most recent count by biotechnology industry group ISAAA.** Latin American countries — Brazil and Argentina in particular — combine for about 206 million acres, with smaller totals (see below) in Canada, India, China, Pakistan, and South Africa. Their initial survey in 2003 found 17 countries and 167 million acres.

* A pig, a rabbit used to produce treatments for hemophilia, a goat, and a chicken along with the AquAdvantage salmon and the aquarium fish.

** “International Service for Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications”

FURTHER READINGS:

A fish –

Producer AquaBounty.

And the FDA’s January 2022 approval note (which follows some litigation).

Data — 

OECD stats on private-sector biotech research by country (as noted above, covering OECD members only, meaning no data for China, India, Russia, Brazil, etc.).

U.S. regulators –

The Food and Drug Administration’s biologicals list.

Also from the FDA, a look at agricultural biotech.

And USDA on biotech in American farming.

Agriculture –

An overall summary from ISAAA’s on biotech agriculture worldwide.  By their count, eight of the 29 biotech-using countries account for about 93% of world biotech planting (by acreage) in 2019, as follows:

ISAAA.

A trade dispute: With Mexico raising questions about accepting U.S. biotech corn, a laconic U.S. Trade Representative comment.

A biotech Hawaiian papaya, designed to fend off a virus.

History –

The Chemical Heritage Foundation on Berg, Boyer, Cohen, and the first recombinant DNA experiments in 1971.

And the National Institutes of Health look back at the first biotech controversy (a six-month ban on lab research, imposed by Cambridge (MA) in 1976).

And last – 

Designed in Singapore and raised in Florida ponds, “Glofish” are available online at $25-$150 for barbs, danios, miniature sharks, bettas, and tetras in “Electric Green,” “Cosmic Blue,” “Galactic Purple,” “Moonrise Pink,” “Starfire Red,” and “Sunburst Orange”.

The FDA’s comment.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007).  He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: China’s population likely began to fall this year.

THE NUMBERS: Median ages by country –

WHAT THEY MEAN:

A demographic note from Science* last January:

“China’s population could begin to shrink this year, suggest data released yesterday [i.e. January 17, 2022] by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. The numbers show that in 2021, China’s birth rate fell for the fifth year in a row, to a record low of 7.52 per 1000 people. Based on that number, demographers estimate the country’s total fertility rate — the number of children a person will bear over their lifetime — is down to about 1.15, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 and one of the lowest in the world.”

The Science article finds short-term explanations in reduced child-bearing and collapsed immigration during the COVID crisis, plus an unenthusiastic Chinese public reaction to various incentives for childbirth. Demographers, though, have predicted a downward turn for some time; and the Chinese experience looks like part of a larger tectonic shift, in which the world’s population center is moving southwest, away from the Pacific littoral to south Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

By way of context, about half the world’s people today live in Asia. China remains (probably) the world’s most populous nation at 1.42 billion, 200 million people live in Japan and Korea, and the ten ASEAN countries are home to 700 million. A bit southwest, India is close to 1.4 billion and will probably surpass China next year; Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal combine for about 500 million. Among the rest, Africa is at about 1.2 billion, Europe and North America 1.1 billion, Latin America/Caribbean 650 million, and the Middle East 500 million. Put another way, the “center” of world population might be somewhere around Guangzhou or Yunnan.

East Asian societies, however, are already on average “older” (by median age rather than history) than most. In Japan, the world’s “oldest” major economy, the median person is a 48-year-old, perhaps with a child already out of college and thinking about retirement. Korea’s median is a slightly younger 42, Taiwan’s 41, and China’s 38. And as the Science anecdote suggests, wealthy Asian societies are aging rapidly in comparison to equally mature western Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as they not only have few children but permit little immigration. Japan’s population accordingly began a slow decline about a decade ago, falling from a 128.5 million peak in 2009 to a current 125 million; UN demographers suggest it will be around 105 million by 2050. Korea is down about 100,000 from 52 million in 2020, and will likely be 45 million in 2050. ASEAN countries (mainly the Philippines and Indonesia) will offset some of East Asia’s population drop, but only partially.

Meanwhile trends in Europe are slightly down (stable in the north, dropping sharply in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe), while trends in the western hemisphere are slightly up. And the populations of much “younger” countries in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa are surging — the hypothetical median-age African is just out of high school and preparing for her 19th birthday — and likely to account for 90% of the next generation’s population growth. The UN’s projections for population changes to 2050 look like this:

By that point, India — now either just below or just above China at 1.4 billion — is likely to reach 1.7 billion people by 2050. (The entire world population in 1950 was 2.5 billion.) Moving westward, Pakistan will grow from 230 million to 365 million, Egypt from 104 million to 160 million, and Ethiopia from 105 million to 215 million. Nigeria is expected to reach 375 million — tying a still-growing United States as the world’s third-largest by population — and the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 95 million to 215 million. All this suggests a next-generation “center” of population perhaps in northern India or Karachi, with patterns of consumer demand, youth culture, and goods production as different as today’s are from those of 1990.

* Magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

FURTHER READINGS:

AAAS’ Science on China’s population downturn.

The UN’s “Population Prospects 2022”.

… and tables by country, with predicted population change and other demographics:

The CIA’s World Factbook has median age by country.

An alternate perspective –

Lebanese warrior/poet Usama ibn Munqidh reflects glumly in his autobiography (1186) on turning 90:

“My strength has become weakness … I creep about, a cane clutched in my hand, whose custom was to wield a spear or an Indian blade in war.”

Oh well! As they say, better than the alternative. A look at demographics suggests a lot of us will be thinking similar thoughts in the coming decades. It isn’t correct to say that “half of world population growth will be among the elderly” — these people are all alive now — but by age, if the U.N. estimates are correct, by 2050 the over-65 population will more than double (from today’s 770 million boomers to 1.6 billion cane-clutching millennials) as total world population rises by 1.75 billion. Over-65s will remain relatively scarce in some parts of the world — 4.7% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, 8% in the Pacific islands, 12%-13% in the Middle East and South Asia — but will make up more than a quarter of the populations of Europe and East Asia.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007).  He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: Taiwanese (on average, according to the U.N.) are the happiest people in Asia.

THE NUMBERS: U.N. 2022 World Happiness Report rankings –

1. Finland, 7.821
2. Denmark, 7.636
3. Iceland, 7.557
16. United States, 6.977
23. Costa Rica, 7.257
26. Taiwan, 6.512
54. Japan, 6.039
59. Korea, 5.395
72. China, 45,585
81. Hong Kong, 5.425
144. Zimbabwe, 2.995
145. Lebanon, 2.955
146. Afghanistan, 2.404

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Can you put a number on happiness? The United Nations is trying. The 10th edition of its “World Happiness Report,” out last March, ranks 146 countries and territories by a four-digit “happiness” score. This is a number drawn from annual polling by the Gallup organization on immediate emotions (“did you smile or laugh yesterday?”; “are you anxious or worried?”, etc.) plus longer-term assessments of satisfaction with life. Accepting a lot of uncertainty* in such matters, a look at the survey results on their own and against some more easily measured things:

Happiest: The happiest people in the Report’s list live in northern Europe. Finns are at the very top with a score of “7.821,” followed closely by Danes, Icelanders, Swiss, and Dutch. All of the 20 happiest countries are wealthy democracies, including Australia and New Zealand, Israel, Canada and the U.S. (in 16th, just below “7”), the U.K., France, Germany, Belgium, and Czechia.

Least happy countries: The lowest numbers are those assigned to least-developed and war-torn or autocratic countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East. Three countries get happiness numbers below “3.000”: Afghanistan, whose 2.404 is the lowest in the Report, with Lebanon 145th and Zimbabwe 144th occupying the next two notches up. Eight countries fall between “3.000” and “4.000,” with Rwanda, Botswana and Lesotho occupying the next spots. India turns up at 136th, with a 3.777, making it the least-happy democracy in the Report’s list.

Regional exceptions: The five East Asian polities in the list seem glummer than one would predict by income alone. Within this group, Taiwanese are clearly the “happiest” and Hong Kong people least, while Japanese and Koreans should probably cheer up.** Latin American democracies, by contrast, punch well above their per-capita-income weight for happiness: Costa Rica, which ranks 67th in the world for Gross National Income per capita, places 23rd in the Report’s happiness table; likewise, but on a larger scale, Brazil ranks 87th for per capita income but 38th for happiness.

A couple of thoughts here:

The top end of the Report’s rankings looks a lot like the top ends of three other indexes. One is the World Bank’s annual “GNI per capita” list, where Switzerland is 2nd (behind Bermuda, not included in the Happiness Report), Norway 3rd, and the U.S. 7th. Another, Freedom House’s “Global Freedom” index, puts Norway, Sweden, New Zealand and Canada at the top. And Transparency International’s “Corruption Perceptions Index” likewise has Denmark first, Finland second, and New Zealand third. On the other hand, the happiest-countries list does not much resemble a list of countries with especially equal incomes. In the World Bank’s Gini Index database, the five most “income-equal” countries are all Central and Eastern European countries — Slovakia, Belarus, Slovenia, Armenia, and Czechia — which spanning the range from “wealthy liberal democracy” at the western Prague end, which ranks 18th for happiness, to “impoverished dictatorship” in Minsk in the east in.

Likewise at the bottom of the list, poverty, autocracy, and corruption appear to be unsurprisingly strong generators of unhappiness, though the strongest correlation seeming to be with poverty. The 11 countries with happiness numbers below “4.000” include 7 least-developed countries, only three rated by Freedom House as “Not Free.” Again income inequality seems at least less powerful than these; the World Bank’s least equal economies as measured by Gini are a mix of southern African states with relatively low U.N. happiness scores, and Latin American countries with relatively high ones.

* For example, even if the theory of happiness ranking works, are surveys reliable in authoritarian or very rural and least-developed countries? Does a given question take on a new emotional resonance when translated into a different language? Etc.
** Asia-wide, the “South Asian” region generally comes off as very down — Pakistan 121st, Sri Lanka 127th, India 137th, while ASEAN members vary from 27th-place Singapore through the Philippines and Thailand at 60 and 61, to Burma/Myanmar at 126.

FURTHER READINGS:

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007).  He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week