Think of global population problems and you might think of the growing number of people in the world – currently about 8 billion – and our collective toll on the planet. But due to people having fewer children as countries become more prosperous, the real demographic problem may turn out to be falling populations.
Projecting from current trends, demographers have now predicted that, within about 25 years, three-quarters of countries will have birth rates that are too low to maintain their populations. While this may be good news for the environment, having fewer working-age people to support those who are older presents a huge economic challenge.
The latest projections also indicate that there will be a sharp divide between countries with low birth rates and generally high incomes – such as most European nations – and a smaller number of countries, mainly in Africa, with higher birth rates and low incomes.
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“We are facing staggering social change through the 21st Century,” researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle said in a statement. “The world will be simultaneously tackling a baby boom in some countries and a baby bust in others.”
Maintaining economic and societal stability in the face of these stark differences will be one of the key challenges of this century. So what should countries be doing to prepare for this demographic time bomb?
While the trend of a rising global population has long caused environmental concerns, demographers also knew it wouldn’t continue indefinitely. Estimates vary, but we seem on course to hit “peak people” sometime between 2060 and 2080, with a head count of 9.5 to 10 billion people, falling thereafter.
The latest projections from Vollset’s team are broadly in line with previous predictions from bodies such as the United Nations in terms of global trends. What is new is a more detailed breakdown of how things will change country by country, based on the latest data on birth rates for five-year age groups from those aged between 10 and 54, projected to the year 2100.
Countries generally require a birth rate of 2.1 children per woman for their populations to stay constant. Vollset’s team found that, by 2050, the birth rate will have fallen below this level in 76 per cent of countries. By 2100, this is forecast to reach 97 per cent.
At the same time, people are living longer, so populations as a whole have fewer people of working age who can provide for older people and others who are economically inactive. An ageing population cannot be avoided, says at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo. “However, one should try to make the transition slow in order to better be able to prepare for this process.”
To slow falling birth rates, high-income countries should attempt to make it easier and more attractive for people to have more children, for instance by improving access to housing and fertility treatments, says Skirbekk.
Countries also need to plan to cope with their shrinking and ageing populations by building more hospitals, updating transport systems and having fewer schools, says at the University of Oxford. “Cities are focusing on getting people to schools and to work. They might have to focus more on getting them to shops and hospitals,” she says.
at the Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington DC, says companies also need to make it easier for older people to stay in work for longer, for instance, on reduced hours. “We have this binary view that you’re either working or not, but that doesn’t have to be the case,” she says.
A minority of countries, however, face the opposite challenge of having a higher birth rate than the 2.1 replacement level. The new study finds this will probably still be true even in 2100. Most such nations will be in sub-Saharan Africa and are projected to account for one in every two children born by 2100.
In these countries, better access to contraception and education for girls have been shown to reduce birth rates, says Sciubba. Migration from high-birth-rate and low-income countries is also likely to continue, which could lead to competition between richer countries for migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, the authors of the new study say in their paper. “However, this approach will only work if there is a shift in current public and political attitudes towards immigration,” they say.
The Lancet
