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CIAO DATE: 8/01
World Population Prospects: The Shape of Things to Come
On The Issues
April 2001
The latest population projections from the United Nations suggest that many countries, especially in the West, face a decline in population and an unprecedented "aging explosion." Fortunately for Americans, the outlook for the United States is more encouraging.
On February 28, the United Nations Population Division (UNPD) released highlights of a major new report on world population prospects for the next half century: an exhaustive effort laying out detailed projections for growth—or in some instances, decline—for nearly 190 countries and territories between now and the year 2050.
There is, of course, an inescapable touch of the surreal about projections of anything out to 2050. As a rule, exercises in "futurology" do not age well, and while demographic conjectures are less vulnerable to an author's imagination (or lack of it) than other sorts of speculation about the long-term future, the plain fact is that we have no way of knowing how many babies the currently unborn are likely to bear.
Be all that as it may, the UN's Population Division (unlike its badly politicized Population Fund) is staffed by careful, world-class demographers. Their work strives for accuracy, not shock effect. And iterative population projections—unlike some other adventures in "forward thinking"—are, by design, internally consistent. It is informative—possibly even useful—to see what the UNPD suggests might lie in store for us and our descendants.
Obviously, many of the computed outcomes in the new report pivot upon the particular assumptions embodied within them. The UNPD, for example, offers diverse scenarios in which the global population in the year 2050 happens to be shrinking, or instead growing vigorously: To opt among them, just choose the postulated future "fertility variant" you prefer. A number of the report's prospective trends, however, are decidedly less dependent upon specific or debatable assumptions. Four of these more "invariant" results deserve special attention.
Global Aging
The first of the robust global trends underscored by the UNPD report is the impending aging of national populations, which will likely be both profound and pervasive. Since the coming wave of population aging is mainly the consequence of worldwide "health explosions" (global life expectancy jumped by almost two decades over the past half century and is expected to continue upward over the next fifty years), only a catastrophe of truly Biblical proportions would forestall it.
Thus we are positioned for a new type of "population explosion": a global surge of older persons. By the UNPD's "medium" scenario, the pace of growth for the world's sixty-plus group would be almost three times the overall rate of population growth between now and 2050; for the eighty-plus cohort, roughly four times that overall rate. (Since all of the senior citizens of 2050 are already alive today, estimating their numbers involves rather less surmise than most long-range forecasts.) By these projections, on a global basis, persons sixty and older would slightly outnumber children under fifteen half a century hence; last year, by way of comparison, about three times more children than older people inhabited the world.
The aging revolution stands to transform the population profile of today's "developed regions" most radically. Under the UNPD's "medium" scenario, Europe's median age half a century hence would be just shy of fifty. Some nations would be even more elderly: Japan's median age would be fifty-three; Italy's, fifty-four; and Spain's, an amazing fifty-five. In a number of the contemporary world's most affluent and productive countries, the sixty-plus grouping would account for over two-fifths of total population. In this version of the future, indeed, octogenarians would account for over 10 percent of total population for five members of the current G7: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Among today's less developed regions, some places are likely to remain quite youthful for generations to come: In 2050, for example, Africa's median age may still be under thirty. In other low-income areas, though, social aging will hurtle forward with breathtaking speed. Take China, where relatively low mortality currently conjoins with subreplacement fertility. In the UNPD's "medium" scenario, China's median age in 2050 is placed at about forty-five years—roughly a decade and a half higher than today. Over a third of the citizens of that future China would be sixty or older. By those UNPD projections, in fact, China's population half a century from now would be more elderly than the future populations of such nations as Denmark, Finland, and Norway—even though those Scandinavian countries are already "gray" today.
This unprecedented, and virtually unavoidable, "aging explosion" will doubtless strongly shape social relations in rich and poor countries alike. No less important will be its economic consequences. All around the world, enhancing the potential of older citizens to contribute economically will almost surely be a key to material progress in the decades ahead.
The Diminution of the West
For the past quarter century, overall fertility levels in the "more developed regions"—Europe (including Russia), the U.S. and Canada, Japan, and Australia and New Zealand—have been below the level necessary for long-term population stability. At the moment, Western fertility is far below replacement: Under current patterns, all other things being equal, each generation would be 25 percent smaller than the one before it. With prolonged and pronounced subreplacement fertility, indefinite population decline becomes an entirely plausible prospect. As UNPD projections emphasize, even with an upswing in fertility and continuing immigration from abroad, the population of the more developed countries might well be lower in 2050 than it is today.
In the late 1990s, according to the UNPD, the current "total fertility rate" for Western countries averaged 1.57 births per woman per lifetime. (Roughly 2.1 births per woman per lifetime are required for population stability.) The Western fertility rate, furthermore, still seems to be going down. By the UNPD's reckoning, it is only a matter of months until deaths come to exceed births within the Western collectivity: The report anticipates the crossover to occur in 2003.
The UNPD's "medium" scenario posits a 25 percent increase in Western fertility over the coming half century—without any supporting evidence, we might note. Even so, today's more developed populations would register 125 million more deaths than births over the next fifty years. Under such circumstances, only massive immigration could stave off long-term population decline. But immigration flows may not do the trick: Even though the "medium" scenario presumes net inflows averaging 2 million immigrants a year as far as the eye can see, total Western population falls between now and 2050.
Remember, though, that the numbers of old folks in developed countries are poised to swell. Even with immigration and a major increase in fertility, the numbers of Western-world children and younger adults are therefore set to fall significantly over the next fifty years. By the UNPD's "medium" scenario, the "more developed countries" would have one-sixth fewer kids under fifteen, and about a fifth fewer potential workers fifteen to fifty-nine, than today. Thus, barring some monumental upheaval, a demographic "twilight of the West" would seem to glimmer on the horizon.
The Eclipse of Russia
While more-developed countries as a grouping are positioned for decline, Russia is slated for an especially brutal descent.
Today the Russian Federation displays one of the world's very lowest fertility levels: an estimated rate of 1.14 births per woman per lifetime. Its appalling mortality levels, by UNPD estimates, currently hover between those of the Dominican Republic and North Korea. Even with the increases that the UNPD's "medium" scenario assumes in life expectancy and fertility levels for Russia over the next fifty years, the country's population plummets precipitously.
By that telling, the Russian Federation's population falls from 146 million in 2000 to a mere 104 million in 2050—roughly the same level recorded in 1950, a century before. Only half as many people in the younger working ages (fifteen to fifty-nine) would be in Russia in 2050 as live there now. And whereas Russia is the world's sixth most populous country today, it would be only number seventeen in 2050—smaller than Vietnam, Iran, or even demographically challenged Japan and only slightly larger than Turkey. It should be understood, furthermore, that this UNPD reading of Russia's population future is relatively optimistic: Less sanguine projections would show the country shriveling even faster.
Between 1950 and 2000, Moscow moved out from the center of the global stage toward its edge. Demography may not be destiny, but Russia's adverse population prospects will hardly aid the Kremlin's ongoing campaign against geopolitical irrelevance.
American Exceptionalism
Given the almost gravitational pull of social aging and population decline on Western population profiles during the coming generations, one of the most surprising findings of the UNPD report is how very resistant the United States looks to these common trends. America's demography looks very different from that of other developed countries—thus, in important respects, America may not share their demographic future.
For a developed country, America's fertility levels today are remarkably high. Apart from tiny Iceland, the estimated total U.S. fertility rate in the late 1990s was actually the highest in the developed world: just over 2 births per woman per lifetime, versus an average of 1.4 births per lifetime for the rest of the grouping. America's changing ethnic composition (according to the Census Bureau, Hispanic-Americans now equal African-Americans in total numbers) accounts for part of this difference—but only part. "Non-Hispanic white" American women are currently having 1.7 births per lifetime.
By both historical tradition and current practice, the United States is favorably disposed toward immigration: In the late 1990s, America took in almost half of all the newcomers absorbed by the developed countries. Thanks to these twin characteristics—relatively high fertility and relatively high levels of immigration—the United States is set to chart a different course from the rest of the Western world in the decades ahead.
For one thing, America's population, while aging, is nonetheless likely to remain distinctly younger than the rest of the West's. The UNPD's "medium" scenario illustrates the point: In 2050, median age in America would be about forty-one years (it's currently thirty-six)—but in the rest of the West, it would be over forty-nine years. No other now-developed country would have such a young populace: In fact, in these projections America's age profile would be far closer to that of the future Mexico than that of the future Europe. If social aging is a worry, the United States will have to worry that much less.
Unlike the rest of the West, moreover, the United States is poised for continued population growth over the coming decades. Again, the "medium" scenario is illustrative: Where other developed countries as a group shrink by 15 percent between now and 2050, the United States grows by about 40 percent—more than any other now-developed nation.
Today America is the world's third largest country; fifty years from now, in the UNPD's "medium" scenario, it is still third (after only India and China). But the relative balance between the United States and other areas would also shift in some interesting directions. There are now two Americans for every Russian. In 2050, the ratio would be four to one—and there would also be almost four Americans for every Japanese. Even if the current membership of the European Union were to form a single state, its projected 2050 population would be significantly smaller than America's. To the extent that population matters in international affairs, America's demographic prospects would seem to support—or even enhance—U.S. global influence in the years ahead.
Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. An earlier version of this article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on March 9, 2001.
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