It’s not an exact science. It may have happened weeks or months ago, or it may not have happened yet. But the fact is that humans are abundant on this planet and our population is on the rise. At least until the end of the century. In the UN’s World Population Prospects 2022 report, the international body said it expects the population to reach somewhere around 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, 10.4 billion in the 2080s and remain at this level until 2100. Between 1804 and 1927, the world’s population grew from one billion to two billion. After that it took 33 years to reach three billion. Since then, it has taken about 12.6 years to add another billion people. But at least one population expert is skeptical about this UN projection. “This is the last time we’re probably going to talk about getting to another billion,” said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs and a fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
“Where will we end up”
“Somewhere between eight and nine billion is where we’re going to end up [by the end of the century]said Bricker, who co-authored Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline. “The reason it’s not going to rise more than that is because … China is now having the lowest birth rate in history. India has just dropped below replacement for its birth rate. That’s 36 percent of the world’s total population as it is now does not replace or replace birth rates at replacement level’. And once it reaches eight or nine billion people, he said, it’s likely to drop even lower. Patrick Gerland, head of population estimates and projections at the UN’s population division, thinks the agency’s numbers are good, but agrees that the population will balance out at some point in the relatively near future. “If you look at some of the results from some of the alternative projections that some other research groups have produced, the alternative future scenarios that different researchers have produced tend to be even more conservative, to expect this overall decline to happen a little earlier and in the end a little faster than we expected,” he said. Gerland said the $10.4 billion projection is more of an upper range than a lower one. Why is there a discrepancy between what Bricker predicts and the UN predictions? “The UN always seems to be playing a cover-up game. And I’ll give you a great example: They did their last major recalculation of human fertility rates in 2017, which is about five years ago. Since then they’ve revised their population down from 11.2 billion people by the end of the century to 10.4 billion,” Bricker said. And that 800 million reduction is big, he said. While there are certainly exceptions, he said globally, it’s the same: people are just having fewer children. “You know what I say when I go and give presentations about it?” Bricker said. “Every time I say, OK, that’s a lot of big numbers. Stop. Think about your grandparents. How many siblings did they have? Now think about your parents? How many siblings do they have? Think about you? How many brothers and sisters do you have? Think about your children? How many siblings? and do they have sisters?”
Birth rates are falling almost everywhere
You don’t have to look far from home to see declines in population growth. In Canada, the annual growth rate has fallen from about three percent in the late 1950s to about 0.7 percent in 2020. In the U.S., from just over two percent in the late 1950s to about 0, 2 percent in 2020. Africa, which had high birth rates, is also showing a decline. Between 1950 and 1980, the continent had about 6.5 live births per woman. However, it is now about 4.4 live births per woman. It may not look like a sharp drop, but that’s because not all parts of the continent are seeing the same rate of decline in births. However, two of the biggest examples are found in two of the most populous countries: China and India. China has population about 1.4 billion people; India, slightly lower. But both countries have seen declining fertility rates. “The single biggest factor [for population levelling off] fertility rates are going down,” Bricker said. “If you go back to places like India, their breeding peaked sometime in the 1970s. And since then it has been decreasing.” As for China, it is policy for one child — an effort by the Chinese government in the 1970s to curb population growth — stopped in 2016, but the annual growth rate is stagnant to zero percent, a sharp contrast to nearly 3.5 percent in 1963. “China today is very different than it was a generation ago,” Gerland said. “These kinds of transformational changes happened within a generation. So the story is basically that many, many, many countries and regions are facing a certain kind of problem that is already starting to get bigger and bigger. [challenging because] of population aging”.
Challenges ahead
The UN report also found that in 2021, the average global fertility rate was 2.3 births per woman, down from five births per woman in 1950. This rate is projected to decline further to 2.1 by 2050. It also noted that the global growth rate fell below one percent for the first time since 1950. At the same time, life expectancy is increasing. In 2019, it reached 72.8 years globally, an increase of almost nine years since 1990. The UN expects it to increase to about 77.2 years in 2050. Bricker said both of those things — declining birthrates and an aging population — will present challenges we haven’t seen yet, particularly financially. “When you’re dealing with an aging population, you’re basically dealing with people who are past the consumer part of their lives,” he said. “The only thing they’re going to consume now — more — is probably health care and entertainment services. Are they going to buy a lot of new cars? No. They’re going to buy that new big family house where they’re going to have all kinds of swings and baby walkers and all kinds of other things to buy? The answer is no.” And that’s something he believes governments need to keep in mind as they look ahead as the population declines. “I think we’re sleepwalking into a future that’s going to be very difficult to manage,” Bricker said. “And that there are going to be all kinds of challenges that we have to start thinking about today.”
