Earth is expected to be home to 8.8 billion people in 2100, 2 billion fewer than UN projections, according to a major study published yesterday that foresees new global power alignments shaped by declining fertility rates and graying populations.
By century’s end, 183 of 195 countries — barring an influx of immigrants — would have fallen below the replacement threshold needed to maintain population levels, an international team of researchers reported in The Lancet.
More than 20 countries — including Japan, Spain, Italy, Thailand, Portugal, South Korea and Poland — would see their numbers diminish by at least half. China’s numbers would fall nearly that much, from 1.4 billion people today to 730 million in 80 years.
Yet sub-Saharan Africa would triple in size to about 3 billion people, with Nigeria alone expanding to almost 800 million in 2100, second only to India’s 1.1 billion.
“These forecasts suggest good news for the environment, with less stress on food production systems and lower carbon emissions, as well as significant economic opportunity for parts of sub-Saharan Africa,” said lead author Christopher Murray, lead author and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
“However, most countries outside of Africa will see shrinking workforces and inverting population pyramids, which will have profound negative consequences for the economy,” he said.
For high-income countries in this category, the best solutions for sustaining population levels and economic growth would be flexible immigration policies and social support for families who want children, the study said.
“However, in the face of declining population there is a very real danger that some countries might consider policies that restrict access to reproductive health services, with potentially devastating consequences,” Murray said. “It is imperative that women’s freedom and rights are at the top of every government’s development agenda.”
Social services and healthcare systems would need to be overhauled to accommodate much older populations.
As fertility falls and life expectancy increases, the number of children under five is forecast to drop by more than 40 percent, from 681 million in 2017 to 401 million in 2100, the study found.
At the other end of the spectrum, 2.37 billion people — more than one-quarter of the global population — would be older than 65 by then. Those over 80 would balloon from about 140 million today to 866 million.
Sharp declines in the number and proportion of the working-age population would also pose huge challenges in many countries.
“Societies will struggle to grow with fewer workers and taxpayers,” said Stein Emil Vollset, a professor of global health at the IHME.
The number of people of working age in China, for example, would plummet from about 950 million today to just more than 350 million by the end of the century — a 62 percent drop.
In Nigeria, by contrast, the active labor force would expand from 86 million today to more than 450 million in 2100.
The difference between the UN and IHME figures hinges crucially on fertility rates. The so-called “replacement rate” for a stable population is 2.1 births per woman.
UN calculations assume that countries with low fertility today will see those rates increase, on average, to about 1.8 children per woman over time, Murray said.
“Our analysis suggests that as women become more educated and have access to reproductive health services, they choose to have less than 1.5 children on average,” he said. “Continued global population growth through the century is no longer the most likely trajectory for the world’s population.”
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