Last updated at 12:01AM, November 22 2014 copyright The Times, London
By 2050, according to the United Nations, just nine countries — among them India, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia and the United States —
will account for half of the world's population increase. Also by 2050, Africa's population will be growing six times
as fast as Latin America's and 15 times more rapidly than Asia's.
Even the pace of growth in India, Africa and the Middle East, however, will not offset the overarching global trend of
slowdown, and the inexorable disappearance of the sibling. Today, the human population of the planet stands at
7.2 billion, and it is growing at the rate of 82 million a year. By 2050, say UN demographers, that
growth rate will have fallen below 50 million.
CHINA
China will lead a club that includes Germany, Japan, Russia and Thailand; a group of nations
whose fertility rates are locked well below replacement levels and are on a course of absolute decline.
With the Chinese fertility rate logged in 2010 at 1.18 children per woman of childbearing age, the
world's most populous country remains on course to start shrinking some time around 2028.
Liang Zhongtang, a retired demography expert at the Shanghai Academy of Social Science,
points out that challenges relating to demography require tectonic social shifts and decades of
changing behaviour to reverse. Efforts to engineer those changes are often painful.
RUSSIA
The calamity of Russia's population shrinkage has mesmerised demographers in recent decades.
Between 1992 and 2009 the population fell by almost seven
million people, or nearly 5 per cent of the total.
For most of the 23 years since the Soviet Union collapsed, the birthrate has been one of the
lowest in the world, and its effects have been accentuated by the unnaturally high death rate
among men — a scourge fuelled by alcoholism, high smoking rates, Aids and pollution.
In Russia, say demographers, a lower birthrate is not the rational choice of families on a
middle-class trajectory of career and wealth accumulation, but the result of a society ravaged by
a sense of hopelessness and disillusionment. President Putin has made reversing these demographic
trends a cornerstone of his leadership. Last year, according to figures that were allegedly vigorously
massaged by regional bureaucrats, the birthrate exceeded the death rate for t
he first time since 1987. It is a start, say demographers, but a fragile one.
Most demographers believe that the drawbacks of a shrinking population will far outweigh any
benefits. A shrinking workforce may have short-term benefits regarding wages, but it does not
take long before the economy faces skills shortages, and
such high competition for talent that margins are squeezed.
As long as life expectancy remains high, shrinking populations mean
average ages rise, and the burden on the young becomes intolerable.
JAPAN
Economies where young people are primarily working to sustain the old age of their parents
and grandparents do not have spare cash to invest in education, innovation or anything
else that might raise the growth potential. Perhaps the starkest example is Japan, which reached
a peak of 128.1 million in 2008, but since then has shed a million people. According to the
National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, the country's population will
fall below 100 million by 2048, and to 87 million by 2060. A third of the country,
more than 40 million people, will vanish in little more than half a century.
The symptoms of rapid ageing are to be found all over rural Japan, spreading slowly but
steadily towards the centre. Village schools close because they have run out of children, and
communities wither without young people. Those in their seventies
provide meals-on-wheels for people in their nineties.
EUROPE
Europe is on course to be one of the biggest demographic losers of the next 35 years as its
population ages and shrinks. Economic decline could begin in earnest before
2050 as the ageing population outstrips the workforce required to pay for them.
According to the Brookings Institution, median age on the continent will increase from 40 in
2003 to 52 in 2050, compared with 35 for the US. To reverse the trend, Europe would
have to accept a much higher level of immigration than is now politically acceptable.
INDIA
China is expected to lose its place to India as the world's most populous country
as early as 2028. Both countries will, at that point, have populations of about 1.45 billion.
Towards the end of the next decade, India will outstrip China as the world's most populous nation.
At the point where the two populations hit the same size,
the median age in China will be 40. In India, it will be 30.
With 364 million people aged between 10 and 24, India has by far the largest number of
young people in the world. More than half the population is under 25 years of age — creating a
gigantic opportunity of an expanding labour force, and the challenge of creating 15 million jobs a year.
MIDDLE EAST
Across the Middle East, rapid population growth is another issue on the list of
concerns for a region that is in turmoil. With 60 per cent of the Arab world under 25,
an employment crisis beckons. In parts of the region, growth rates are three times the
global average. Economists say that 100 million jobs will need to be created across the
region over the next 20 years, more than were generated in the whole of the last century.
AFRICA
By 2100, Africa's population will have grown to more than four billion, of whom roughly
25 per cent will be Nigerian. The perception that Africa is a densely populated continent is
not true yet — with 65 people per square mile, it is behind Europe,
Asia and Latin America, though Rwanda and Burundi are exceptions.
Many Africans celebrate the continent's growth and its youthful population. As well as
providing a pension plan for Africa's elderly, having plenty of young people
provides the country with a dynamic workforce and large markets with spending power.
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Keep_Mailing" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to keep_mailing+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to keep_mailing@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/keep_mailing.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/keep_mailing/CAGLz4tDpXj54OBekZCLGxDEA2FXNSEp%2BJoBb1i295j7A__1Dsg%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
No comments:
Post a Comment