VERY NICE
On Sat, Nov 29, 2014 at 2:02 AM, Mohamed Jaffer <mjkassam@gmail.com> wrote:
> The story below came in the Times (of London) today. It has bearing for
> population trends for next 35 years.
> I am putting a shortened version, which is still long.
>
> Leo Lewis
>
> 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.
>
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