Today, the world’s population is more than three times larger than it was in the mid-twentieth century. The global human population reached 8.0 billion in 2022 from an estimated 2.5 billion people in 1950. Understanding this population trends and anticipating the related demographic change are crucial for national development planning and for implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Countries, where population growth has slowed or stopped, must prepare for an increasing proportion of older persons and, in some cases, decreasing population size. Similarly, those countries where fertility levels remain high should prepare to meet the needs of growing numbers of children and young people. While, countries where a decline in fertility is creating an opportunity for a demographic dividend need to invest in human capital by ensuring access to health care and quality education at all ages and also creating opportunities for productive employment.
Countries with ageing populations should take steps to adapt public programmes that are tailored to the growing proportion of older persons.
Rapid growth of a country’s population, can throw a major challenge in eradicating poverty. Poverty can weaken the opportunities for individuals, resulting in higher fertility and child bearing, which in turn results in a continued growth of population.
This will act as a bottleneck in attaining the goals for sustainable development. In recent decades, fertility has dipped in many countries. Around two-thirds of the world’s population lives in a country or area where lifetime fertility is under 2.1 births per woman, which is the level needed for no growth in the long term for a population with low mortality, according to the U.N.
The World Population Day is observed every year on July 11, to draw the attention towards the issues of growing population. The theme for 2023 is—Unleashing the power of gender equality: Uplifting the voices of women and girls to unlock our world’s infinite possibilities.
Global projections for 2100
Population forecasts and predictions can become important tools for governments and becomes crucial for planning, health care needs, environmental and economic changes.
Future fertility patterns are important tools to estimate the future population size but these are mired with diverse methodologies for estimation and forecasting that can lead to differences in global population projections.
According to an article published in Lancet in 2020,by 2100 over 80s will outnumber under 5s around the world by two to one. As fertility falls and life expectancy increases worldwide, the number of children under 5 years old is forecasted to decline by 41% from 681 million in 2017 to 401 million in 2100, whilst the number of individuals older than 80 years is projected to increase six-fold, from 141 million to 866 million.
The changing population size and age structure can have profound economic, social and geopolitical impacts in several countries. Policy options need to adapt around structures that have low fertility and a strong reproductive health.
The article mentions that both global and super-region life expectancy forecasts showed a future slowdown, particularly in the latter half of the century, compared with past values from 1990 to 2017. The slowdown was more evident in the high-income; south Asia; southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania; and Latin America and the Caribbean super-regions. By contrast, the slowdown was less noticeable in the sub-Saharan Africa; north Africa and the Middle East; and central Europe, eastern Europe, and central Asia super-regions.
The Lancet paper says that India was forecasted to have a continued steep decline in the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) until about 2040, reaching a TFR of 1·29 in 2100.
China’s TFR was forecasted to decline moderately to 1·42 around 2030, increasing slowly afterwards to 1·47 by 2100. The United States was forecasted to decline to a TFR of 1·53 in 2100, whereas Indonesia declined to 1·51 and Pakistan to 1·31 in Japan was forecasted to stay stable, with a TFR of 1·32 in 2100, and Russia was forecasted to moderately decline to a TFR of 1·43 in 2100, contributing to population declines that led them to no longer be forecasted to be among the ten most populous countries in 2100.
The authors maintain that based on robust statistical models of fertility, mortality, and migration, suggested that global population will peak in 2064 at 9·73 billion and then decline to 8·79 billion in 2100.
A UN report however, says that the global population is likely to reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100. With roughly 83 million people being added to the world’s population every year, the upward trend in population size is expected to continue, even assuming that fertility levels will continue to decline, the World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision, published by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs says.
Globally, the number of persons aged 80 or over is projected to triple by 2050, from 137 million in 2017 to 425 million in 2050. By 2100 it is expected to increase to 909 million, nearly seven times its value in 2017.Among the ten largest countries worldwide, Nigeria is growing the most rapidly. Consequently, the population of Nigeria, currently the world’s 7th largest, is projected to surpass that of the United States and become the third largest country in the world shortly before 2050.
According to the World Population Prospects 2022–the fertility level, or the average number of births per woman over a lifetime, has fallen markedly over recent decades in many countries. Two-thirds of all people globally live in a country or area where fertility is below 2.1 births per woman, which is roughly the level required for populations with low mortality to stabilise in the long run.
Global life expectancy at birth reached 72.8 years in 2019, an improvement of almost 9 years since 1990. According to current projections, further improvements in survival are expected to result in an average length of life globally of around 77.2 years in 2050. Because the global population is growing and also ageing rapidly, the number of deaths worldwide is expected to increase over the next decades, from 67 million in 2022 to 92 million in 2050.
The report mentions that long-range population projections are highly uncertain, especially for high-fertility countries still in the early stages of the demographic transition. There is a probability of 95 per cent that the size of the global population will lie between 9.4 and 10.0 billion in 2050 and between 8.9 and 12.4 billion in 2100.
Thus, the size of the world’s population is almost certain to rise over the next several decades, as is the degree of uncertainty associated with these projections. Later in the century, there is about 50 per cent chance that the world’s population will peak—that its size will stabilise or begin to decrease— before 2100.
Way forward
New data reveals that population challenges have a broad base and the governments are adopting policies to maintain the fertility rates. But efforts to influence fertility rates are very often ineffective, according to UNFPA’s State of World Population report.
The report ‘8 Billion Lives, Infinite Possibilities: the case for rights and choices’ calls for a rethink on how population numbers are framed – urging the various stakeholders including the government to abandon overblown population narratives.
Population dynamics are the root causes of multiple, intersecting challenges facing our world. Challenges like climate change, economic upheaval, conflict and COVID-19 have made it essential to collaborate and work in partnership to tackle the issues of population.
There is a growing need to redesign our perspectives on population and fertility rates. The various perspectives that surround the population growth have to be reframed. The government and various stakeholders should widen the choice of women to freely make their reproductive choices. Considering the rapidly changing global demographics, there is a need that the policies should centre on gender equality and issues related to reproductive health services.
The policy makers should design policies that allows individuals to realise their own reproductive ideals and well being through a broad spectrum that includes education, health-care, sanitation and more. The changed dynamics which includes low fertility rates, longer life expectancy calls for a need to rethink on its policy and spending priorities.
India overtakes China
India has surpassed China as the world’s most populous country, according to UN population estimates. This shift in global demographics is highly significant since it is for the first time that a country has overtaken China since the United Nations began recording the population data since 1950.
According to the UN’s projections, which are calculated through a variety of factors including census data and birth and death rates, India now has a population of 1,425,775,850, surpassing China for the first time. India’s population has consistently grown faster than China’s for decades, according to the World Bank.
India has the world’s largest young population and a high fertility rate. However, the fertility rate has been steadily falling from more than five births per woman in the 1960s to two in 2022. India’s population according to projections and estimates is likely to stabilise around 2064.
The population growth of India has brought with several challenges which includes rural urban divide, growing climate change, food and housing problems, pollution issues.
The growth of population in India has not been evenly distributed. Some states have witnessed a high growth than others. There is a need for state-centric policy making, more education on the advantages of family planning.
Source: CNBCTV18