International Issues

World Population May Fall

Some of the world's best demographers reportedly think it is possible that the world's population, rather than continuing to increase in the next century, will peak and then begin to decline.

The 1996 Revision of World Population Prospects, published by the United Nations Population Division, includes "low variant" projections that anticipate zero population growth for the world as a whole by 2040 and negative growth -- depopulation -- thereafter.

  • Life expectancy at birth will rise to 81 in more developed regions of the globe and to 72 in least developed countries -- from 75 and 52, respectively, today.

  • Births per woman in developed areas would fall from today's 1.5 to 1.4 in a decade -- and in the least developed areas from over 5 this decade to below 4 by 2010 and to below 2 by 2035.

  • Based on these assumptions, global depopulation would commence in a little over four decades -- falling by about 85 million between 2040 and 2050.

  • From then on, world population would shrink by about 25 percent with each successive generation.

The trend toward depopulation would not come about from an ecological disaster, but from social and economic progress; the report specifically assumes that there will be no major wars, famines or new epidemics.

Demographers say that lifetime fertility rates -- the number of children women have during their lifetimes -- can drop quickly once it begins to decline.

  • Between the early 1960s and early 1990s, Thailand's estimated fertility rate plunged from over six births per woman per lifetime to less than two.

  • Even fairly poor societies today have fertility rates so low that not all who die will be replaced by newborns -- as is the case in China, Cuba and possibly Sri Lanka.

  • Fertility rates in less developed regions averaged an estimated 3.3 births per each woman's lifetime in the early 1990s, but have dropped to just below three today.

And fertility rates can remain below replacement for prolonged periods -- fertility rates fell below replacement in Japan more than 40 years ago and have gradually dropped further.

In fact, in the more developed regions -- such as North America and Western Europe --the "net reproduction rate" is already down to about 0.7, meaning the next generation may be about 30 percent smaller than the current one.

In the world of 2050, barely 2 percent of the world population would be under five years old, but more than 40 percent would be 65 or older. The median age of the world's population would shift from about 25 today to over 42 by 2050.

One consequence of these trends, analysts say, is that social insurance systems (Social Security) that depend on each generation of workers paying for the benefits of the last will collapse if they aren't scrapped.

Source: Nicholas Eberstadt (American Enterprise Institute), "World Population Implosion?" Public Interest, Fall 1997, and "The Population Implosion," Wall Street Journal, October 16, 1996.

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