No one can change the demographic outlook.

"It has a low birth rate, so without them it would have a bleak demographic outlook.

Ms. Scanlon said she believed that the demographic outlook for the region was essentially optimistic, since it pointed to stronger pressures to increase the number of people in the labor force.

Prof. Paul Kennedy of Yale makes this demographic outlook - the overwhelming of already overcrowded and poverty-stricken lands - a main focus of his new book, "Preparing for the Twenty-First Century."