Although birth rates are falling and lifespans lengthening almost everywhere, differences in age structure and rates of change among countries and regions will lead to huge shifts in their relative sizes
in July that Elon Musk had fathered twins last year, the billionaire tweeted that “a collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilisation faces by far”. The UN’s population forecast, published today, should give him partial reassurance. True, birth rates are falling and the population of some countries. But the UN thinks the number of humans will reach 8bn on November 15th. Its best guess is that the global population will grow to 10.
In 1950 each woman bore five children on average. As families flocked to cities, and women gained education and access to contraception, that number started to fall. The global fertility rate plunged to 2.3 in 2021, and is expected to reach 2.1—roughly the rate at which births offset deaths in populations with low mortality—by 2050. The UN’s population forecast for 2100 is 500m lower than the projection it made in 2019, largely becauseare having fewer children than expected.
. India is expected to replace China as the world’s most populous country next year. East Asia, including China, will soon shrink, but South Asia—India’s region—will continue growing for decades. Europe began its demographic decline last year. By the end of the century Germany’s population is expected to be less than 70m, lower than in the 1950s . But there will be many more Africans, in part because the region’s population is still young.
Disasters, whether natural or man-made, have little lasting effect on birth and death rates. The UN’s boffins are treating today’s combination of calamities—covid-19 and the—as a “short-term disruption that has no long-term implications”, says Patrick Gerland, the UN’s chief being counter. Good policies, though, can have dramatic effects. In the past 40 years Bangladesh, which raised women’s literacy and employment, has cut its fertility rate from more than six to about two.
Falling birth rates can cause problems, as Mr Musk warns. Fewer workers will have to support more pensioners; societies may become less inventive. But fast population growth in some countries is also dangerous, especially if their economies do not expand quickly enough to employ the young productively. In Angola, where the population has grown by 3% a year since the 1970s, the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day more than doubled from 2008 to 2018.
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