Covid, and demographics
Jul. 25th, 2020 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nairiporterAs of now, Earth's population is about 7.8 billion people. But for how long will it keep increasing? As dramatic as the consequences of the Covid pandemic may have been for the long-term dynamic of the world's population, it will likely only leave a negligible trace compared to other pandemics throughout history. Despite the crisis, the global population will keep growing. Every day about 225 thousand people are born.
The short-term dynamics, on the other hand, will be affected. The countries that have been most severely affected, could see extra mortality increasing to 10% or even 20%. This means losing 1-2 years of a nation's average longevity, which at times of crisis usually only fluctuates by a few months.
Estimates show that life expectancy will be more drastically decreased in males than in females. The likelihood of a 75 year old man with Covid to reach a fatal end is similar to that of a 85 year old woman (in Spain for example, the mortality rate in both groups is over 17%).
The economic downturn caused by the pandemic could contract birth rates across the world within the next 3-5 years. One of the reasons is that economic uncertainty tends to compel people to refrain from having children. Some even choose to remain childless. To what extent this would affect the demographic dynamics of the world, mainly depends on the governments' investment in family policies, as well as the levels of international migration for the years to come.
Although the world's population is still growing by 82 million annually, this is mostly due to the extremely positive balance of Sub-Saharan Africa, where the population is expected to double by 2050. But the overall global population growth is slowing down. In the last UN forecast from 2019, the scientists relied on the world having almost 11 billion inhabitants by the end of the century. That will probably the demographic peak in human history, beyond which the population is likely to start decreasing. At least that is what the birth rate projections indicate.
If a woman tended to have 5 children on average in 1950, now in 2020 she has 2.5 children. By 2100, the UN estimates, that number will have dropped to 1.9. Granted, the UN models don't take one crucial factor for global demographics in consideration, namely the influence of education. It tends to hugely affect women's decision whether to have children, how many, and at which point in life.
The current forecasts show that the curve is flattening sooner than previously anticipated, and by 2070 the global population will peak at 10 billion. This means that if at the end of the century, a woman has 1.5 children on average and this rate remains steady for a while, and considering the presumed increase of the average human lifespan to about 100 years by that time, by 2200 Earth's population may have dwindled to a mere 3 billion. That's a number that many ecologists are dreaming for, in fact. If the majority of those 3 billion people are well educated and highly productive, they would be able to efficiently cope with climate change, ageing, and other problems affecting human civilisation.
References:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-population-is-projected-to-nearly-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/
https://www.siue.edu/~rblain/worldpop.html
https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/sites/jrcsh/files/lutz_et_al_2018_demographic_and_human_capital.pdf
The short-term dynamics, on the other hand, will be affected. The countries that have been most severely affected, could see extra mortality increasing to 10% or even 20%. This means losing 1-2 years of a nation's average longevity, which at times of crisis usually only fluctuates by a few months.
Estimates show that life expectancy will be more drastically decreased in males than in females. The likelihood of a 75 year old man with Covid to reach a fatal end is similar to that of a 85 year old woman (in Spain for example, the mortality rate in both groups is over 17%).
The economic downturn caused by the pandemic could contract birth rates across the world within the next 3-5 years. One of the reasons is that economic uncertainty tends to compel people to refrain from having children. Some even choose to remain childless. To what extent this would affect the demographic dynamics of the world, mainly depends on the governments' investment in family policies, as well as the levels of international migration for the years to come.
Although the world's population is still growing by 82 million annually, this is mostly due to the extremely positive balance of Sub-Saharan Africa, where the population is expected to double by 2050. But the overall global population growth is slowing down. In the last UN forecast from 2019, the scientists relied on the world having almost 11 billion inhabitants by the end of the century. That will probably the demographic peak in human history, beyond which the population is likely to start decreasing. At least that is what the birth rate projections indicate.
If a woman tended to have 5 children on average in 1950, now in 2020 she has 2.5 children. By 2100, the UN estimates, that number will have dropped to 1.9. Granted, the UN models don't take one crucial factor for global demographics in consideration, namely the influence of education. It tends to hugely affect women's decision whether to have children, how many, and at which point in life.
The current forecasts show that the curve is flattening sooner than previously anticipated, and by 2070 the global population will peak at 10 billion. This means that if at the end of the century, a woman has 1.5 children on average and this rate remains steady for a while, and considering the presumed increase of the average human lifespan to about 100 years by that time, by 2200 Earth's population may have dwindled to a mere 3 billion. That's a number that many ecologists are dreaming for, in fact. If the majority of those 3 billion people are well educated and highly productive, they would be able to efficiently cope with climate change, ageing, and other problems affecting human civilisation.
References:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-population-is-projected-to-nearly-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/
https://www.siue.edu/~rblain/worldpop.html
https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/sites/jrcsh/files/lutz_et_al_2018_demographic_and_human_capital.pdf
