global demographics

This has little or nothing to do with bicycles, soccer, urban studies, or any of my other usual topics for this blog. But it's been a month since I posted anything, and I had written this up for my Human Geography students anyway, so I thought I'd might as well share with all. Specifically, this is a summary of some of the more interesting and significant points that I found in the United Nations' most recent "World Population Prospects" report.

World population growth is expected to continue until at least 2050, but fertility rates (and thus growth rates) are declining fast and population growth is thus slowing down. Nonetheless, our population of 6.5 billion today is expected to be approximately 9 billion in 2050, with virtually all of this growth occurring in less-developed countries. Indeed, the fastest growth is happening in the 50 or so “least” developed countries, which are primarily located in Sub-Saharan Africa. This growth is driven by traditionally high fertility rates, which more than offset the fact that death rates are actually rising in many of these countries due primarily to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which infects as many as 20, even 30, percent of the people in some places.

We, in fact, are in the middle of a century (1950-2050) of astounding population growth on a global scale, with (again) that growth primarily happening in the less-developed regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Note, for example, the changing roster--and their corresponding populations--of the twenty largest countries (defined by present-day boundaries) in the world.

1950	2005	2050 (projected)
1. China 555 million 2. India 358 3. USA 158 4. Russia 103 5. Japan 84 6. Indonesia 80 7. Germany 68 8. Brazil 54 9. United Kingdom 50 10. Italy 47 11. France 42 12. Bangladesh 42 13. Ukraine 37 14. Pakistan 37 15. Nigeria 33 16. Spain 28 17. Mexico 28 18. Vietnam 27 19. Poland 25 20. Egypt 22	1. China 1.32 billion 2. India 1.1 billion 3. USA 298 million 4. Indonesia 223 5. Brazil 186 6. Pakistan 158 7. Russia 143 8. Bangladesh 142 9. Nigeria 132 10. Japan 128 11. Mexico 107 12. Vietnam 84 13. Philippines 83 14. Germany 83 15. Ethiopia 77 16. Egypt 74 17. Turkey 73 18. Iran 70 19. Thailand 64 20. France 60	1. India 1.59 billion 2. China 1.39 billion 3. USA 395 million 4. Pakistan 305 5. Indonesia 285 6. Nigeria 258 7. Brazil 253 8. Bangladesh 243 9. DR Congo 177 10. Ethiopia 170 11. Mexico 139 12. Philippines 127 13. Uganda 127 14. Egypt 126 15. Vietnam 117 16. Japan 112 17. Russia 112 18. Iran 102 19. Turkey 101 20. Afghanistan 97

Typically-recognized MDCs are shown above in bold.

This population growth is of course fuelled by high fertility rates. Indeed, the UN estimates that as many as five different countries still have a fertility rate of more than seven: Niger (7.9), East Timor (7.8), Afghanistan (7.5), Guinea-Bissau (7.1), and Uganda (7.1). Needless to say, there are many others--primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa--that have fertility rates above six. The good news, at least if you’re concerned about rapid population growth, is that fertility rates are expected to decline dramatically, so that by 2050, all countries will be well below four. Specifically, Niger is expected to remain at the top, but with a rate of just 3.6, more or less the same rate as existed at the peak of our 1950s-centered Baby Boom here in the United States.

While population growth will remain the primary global story well into the future, many regions and countries face a rather different demographic challenge: population decline. Fertility rates have dropped well below the replacement rate in several countries, primarily in Europe but Japan and South Korea as well. Add declining life expectancies (higher death rates) in much of post-Soviet eastern Europe, and the expected population decline is shocking. Between 2005 and 2050, for example, Russia is expected to lose 31 million people, a full 22% of its current population. Even more dramatic is Ukraine, whose expected population loss of 20 million amounts to 43% of its current population. Yikes! Other countries expected to lose at least three million people during the next 45 years are Japan (16 million); Italy and Poland (7 million each); Germany (4 million); and South Korea, Belarus, and Bulgaria (3 million each). While their absolute losses won’t be as great, a number of additional eastern European countries are also expected to lose at least 20% of their population; they include Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Moldova, and Georgia.

These slow-growth and negative-growth countries in Europe already have some of the oldest populations in human history. Indeed, the ten oldest populations in the world all have a median age between 40 and 43 years. In order, they are: Japan, Italy, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Belgium, Croatia, Austria, Bulgaria, and Slovenia. And most of these countries are expected to get older still. South Korea, for example, is expected to have a median age of 54 (!) in 2050, with Italy (53) and Japan (52) and several others close behind. Imagine living in a country where more than half the people are over age 50. You think the AARP is a powerful political lobbying force today; as they say, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Actually, the USA has a remarkably young population compared to our European and East Asian peers. Our median age today is a sprightly 36--which is rather depressing for me since it places me, albeit just barely, among the older half of Americans--and in 2050, half our population will remain under the age of 41. Still, that’s a far cry from most Sub-Saharan African countries today, where the median age--get this--is only 16! (And in Uganda, the median age is under 15.) Think about it, that’s an entire region of the world where most of the people alive today were born after the Berlin Wall fell down and the Soviet Union began to fracture apart, and the only U.S. Presidents they have ever known are named Bush or Clinton.

While China and India are infamous for sex-selective abortions (or even infanticides), with families purposefully choosing to raise boys rather than girls, they are not the most gender-unbalanced countries on the planet. They do indeed have more males than females (106 males for every 100 females in China, 105:100 in India), but that is nowhere near the imbalance seen in a few other countries--most of them on the Arabian peninsula. For every 100 females in their respective countries, there are 117 males in Saudi Arabia, 128 males in Oman, 132 males in Bahrain, 150 males in Kuwait, and a whopping 206 males in Qatar. But that isn’t even the top of the list, as the UAE checks in with 214 males for every 100 females. Why? Well, these traditional societies certainly have their share of gender-discriminating practices, but the real issue here is migrant labor. All of these oil- and construction- focused economies are home to millions of male immigrant workers, primarily from South Asia. Indeed, while it makes sense to describe the UAE as an “Arab” country--that’s what the “A” stands for after all--most of the people (men) who live there are of South Asian origin (India, Pakistan, etc.).

On the other end of the spectrum are countries--mostly in eastern Europe--where women outnumber men, in large part because old and not-so-old men there have been dying at alarming rates while relatively few boys (or girls) are being born to replace them. Indeed, the seven lowest male-to-female ratios in the world are all former republics of the Soviet Union: Latvia (84 males per 100 females); Estonia and Ukraine (85); Armenia, Lithuania, and Russia (87); and Belarus (88). The United States, in comparison, is a more balanced place, with 97 males for every 100 females--women outnumbering men by a small degree simply because they tend to live longer, by about a decade on average.

Finally, one last quick note regarding migration. There presently is an average annual net migration of 2.5 million people from LDCs to MDCs. The two largest out-migrating regions are Asia (1.2 million) and Latin America (700k). The two largest centers of net in-migration are North America (1.3 million) and Europe (900k). It is thus no accident that the two fastest-growing Census Bureau categories in the United States are "Hispanic" and "Asian-Pacific Islander".