The world population continues to grow at a rate that poses gigantic challenges to humanity —of the economy, health, education and sustainable development—, but it does so at a slower rate than a few decades ago —in 2020 it fell below 1% per year for the first time. time since 1950—and with changing geographic patterns.
Thus, the UN, in its eagerness to anticipate demographic challenges, highlights in its studies how, despite the fact that Asia will continue to be the most populous continent in the coming decades —India will surpass China for the first time—, the great focus Attention shifts to Africa, which will concentrate more than half of the population growth until 2050. On the other hand, in Europe the forecast is that the census of the continent will begin to decrease in the next decade.
“Reaching 8,000 million inhabitants is a milestone to be welcomed, because it reflects the fact that we live longer lives, but also a wake-up call, since our planet will only be able to support 8,000 million people if we behave in ways that allow a sustainable use of our resources”, warns the vice-president of the European Commission for Democracy and Demography, Dubravka Suica.
The following is a tour of those keys that are redefining the demographic challenge of a planet where 8,000 million people already live, which will foreseeably be 8,500 million in 2030, 9,700 million in 2050 and around 10,400 million by 2080.
Asia: one in three inhabitants of the Earth will be in China and India
Just over 200 years ago, in 1800, the majority of the world's population was already concentrated in Asia;
it was 68%, according to data from Our World in Data, a website developed by the University of Oxford.
Today, Asians are still the majority, but less: they make up 60%.
Although the East has experienced rapid population growth in the last five decades (4.7 billion people live on this continent, and by 2050 there will be 5.3 billion), experts predict a decline by the end of the century, precipitated by the aging of the population and the decline in the birth rate.
For now, next year there will be a change that will undoubtedly upset the global demographic collective imagination: the UN predicts that India will surpass China as the nation with the largest number of inhabitants on the face of the Earth.
Thus, with one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, China will give up that first place four years earlier than previous estimates announced and after centuries holding that position.
The latest data published by the National Statistics Administration (2020) reveal that the country's total fertility rate (the average number of children that would be born per woman if she had given birth in all her reproductive years) is 1.3, well below the 2.1 that is needed for the population to remain stable.
This situation comes even after the Chinese government abolished the one-child policy in 2016, allowed up to three from 2021, and continued to announce incentives to encourage couples to have children.
Despite Beijing's efforts, getting married and being parents is no longer among the priorities of most young people in big cities, who, aware of the expense this entails, prefer to prioritize their own personal development.
In the midst of this deep demographic crisis, analysts predict that the Asian giant will experience negative growth before 2025. According to government data, in 2022 the Chinese population grew at its slowest rate since the 1950s. The National Health Commission warned in August that, by 2035, more than 30% of the Chinese population is expected to be over 60 years of age.
An older population with a longer life expectancy (76 years), added to a lower number of births and younger workers, threatens to have a strong impact on economic prospects,
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Humanity exceeds 8 billion people
Meanwhile, the Indian population continues to increase.
Although the government announced a population control bill in 2019, India decided on a script change this year after a rapid decline in fertility rates: from an average of six children per woman in 1960, it went to 2.5 in 2010 and 2.1 in 2020. The 2019 plan proposed a two-child-per-couple policy and sought to incentivize their adoption through educational benefits, free healthcare, better employment opportunities, housing loans, and tax cuts. .
Economists and health specialists affirm, however, that the country urgently needs to reform its educational, economic and social policies.
Already in 2011, half of the population was of working age, a figure that will be maintained for the next two decades.
In fact,
The UN predicts in its report
World Population Prospects 2022
that more than one in three people on Earth will live in China or India by the year 2030, when the world population reaches 8.5 billion.
However, the number of people residing in these two countries will continue to be much higher than the rest of the nations, since no other will have a population greater than 360 million in 2030. In the text, it is also mentioned that the Philippines will be one of the eight countries that will contribute the most in the coming decades to the increase in the global population.
From the United Nations Population Fund in this Southeast Asian country, they emphasize that the biggest demographic challenge for the Philippine government will be the empowerment of girls and women, as well as adolescents in the country, who account for 20% of the population.
Africa: the unstoppable push of the youngest continent
Africa is the great world demographic engine: until 2050, more than half of the growth of the planet's population will come from this continent, where five countries show a specialty of vitality, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania.
It has about 1,400 million inhabitants, but in the year 2100 the figure will reach 4,300 million.
“Many countries are going to double their population in a very short period of time, around 30 years.
The big question is how they are going to manage the needs of all these people in education, health, employment or security.
It is a huge challenge”, says Gilles Yabi, PhD in Development Economics and founder of the African think tank Wathi.
One of the factors that explains this growth is the population pyramid.
Africa is the youngest continent in the world, with an average age of 18.6 years compared to 31.2 for Asia or 41.7 for Europe, according to Our World in Data.
In Niger, Chad or the Central African Republic it is below 15 years of age.
This element is combined with the other great differential fact: the highest fertility rate in the world.
African women have an average of 4.7 children compared to 2.5 worldwide, according to United Nations data.
Once again, it is the countries of the central region that are in the lead, with Niger and its 7.1 children on average leading the statistics.
A recurring debate is the commitment to measures that slow down growth.
Precisely in Niger, where three out of four women are married off by their families before the age of 18, according to Unicef, President Mohamed Bazoum advocates strengthening the schooling of girls.
Family planning has been gaining ground, especially in urban areas, but in many communities it remains inaccessible to women or taboo.
“This debate, which is healthy and necessary, cannot be separated from the discussion on the living conditions and status of women in many African countries.
The choice to have many children is explained by economic factors and those related to poverty that cannot be forgotten”, adds Yabi.
Due to its population weight, Nigeria concentrates all eyes.
It has almost 220 million inhabitants but in 2050 there will be 400 million, only behind India and China.
But today the giant faces a complex crisis in terms of crime, terrorism and community conflicts.
The situation is repeated in other countries where poverty, the impact of climate change or violence are the daily bread.
“The problems are so urgent that the authorities dedicate all their efforts to trying to solve them and work less on planning.
But the demographic debate is emerging”, comments Yabi.
In Tanzania the population has increased by 37% in just a decade and its president, Samia Suluhu, issued the alert: "We have to draw up development projects and introduce political reforms to deal with these figures."
Although the growth rate will slow down from the 2040s, when it reaches 39 million per year, the population increase in Africa is unstoppable.
In 2100, four out of every ten inhabitants of the planet will be African, with a special incidence in cities: if the trend continues, the three largest megacities in the world at the end of the 21st century will be on the continent, according to the Global Cities Institute: Lagos ( Nigeria) with 88.3 million, followed by Kinshasa (DRC) and Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania).
An older Europe with less influence
Faced with the demographic explosion of other regions, Europe, with a continually declining birth rate, is increasingly living up to its label of
the old continent
: according to the European Commission, it is not the only region with a larger population, but it is where this process is "more advanced", causing a brutal gap with other continents such as Africa: in Europe, the average age is 42.5 years, more than double that in Africa.
And the trend is going to worsen: by 2070, 30% of Europeans will be over 65, compared to the current 20%, and the proportion of citizens over 80 will double to 13%.
At the same time, the active population (20-64 years) will gradually decline: in 2070, it will be up to 18% less than today, while fewer children will continue to be born (the current average is 1.55 births per woman, when to replace naturally to its population must be at least 2.1).
The figures confirm what experts have been warning for years: that the European way of life and quality of life, beginning with the pension system and health coverage, cannot be sustained with this inverted demographic pyramid that affects employment, productivity and the ability to a country or region to take care of their own.
A trend from which Spain does not escape, immersed in a process of population aging "produced by a medium and long-term trend of very low fertility, and on the other, by the increase in life expectancy, which in the In recent decades it has been almost linear, with an increase of 2.5 years each decade”, explains Diego Ramiro, director of the Institute of Economics, Geography and Demography of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC).
On the other hand, Spanish births continue to decline.
“Fertility is one of the lowest in Europe, it is at the same levels as Italy and other southern countries.
Almost the entire continent is below replacement level, ”he adds.
Thus, in the coming years there will continue to be more deaths than births.
Spain will grow exclusively due to immigration.
The INE population projections predict that in 15 years Spain will gain more than four million inhabitants, if current trends continue, and in 50 years the country could reach 52.9 million people.
Ramiro points out, however, that this variable is "subject to many economic fluctuations, if you have an economic depression, population inflows will affect you."
But Europe is not only aging, it is also losing political weight: its proportion in the world population is decreasing and, if in the 1960s it accounted for 12% of the planet's inhabitants, in 2070 it will constitute slightly less than 4% of the world population, with potential geostrategic implications of which Brussels has been warning for some time.
“Its share of the world's population and GDP will be comparatively smaller.
With this perspective, it is even more necessary for Europe to be united, stronger and have a greater strategic weight”, warned in 2020 a report on the effects of demographic change in Europe.
Even so, the vice-president of the Commission considers that this challenge can have a positive effect.
According to the Vice President of the European Commission for Democracy and Demography, Dubravka Suica,
With information from
María Sosa Troya
(Madrid).
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