Transcript POPULATIONS_IN_TRANSITION_IIx

How the world’s populations are
changing, in one map
BY MAX FISHER, DEMOGRAPHICS
SPECIALIST, THE WASHINGTON POST
NEWSPAPER
• OBSERVATION: This presentation is also
available in TEXT, as a web article, on
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/world
views/wp/2013/10/31/how-the-worldspopulations-are-changing-in-one-map/
Max Fisher/Washington Post, 2013
• It's often said that demographics are destiny.
While the futures of nations are guided by much
more than population trends, these demographic
forces can play an awfully significant role.
Countries need to grow in order to stay healthy
and successful, but not too quickly or they risk
problems like political instability. Bigger
populations can mean bigger economies (and
bigger militaries), but only if the state can provide
the necessary infrastructure and services. More
people means more pressure on natural
resources, but it can also mean more businesses,
more exports, more tax revenue.
• All of that makes the above map really
important for how we think about the
trajectories of nations and of the world. It
shows current trends in population growth,
based on data from a new United Nations
Population Fund report. The blue countries
are growing, with darker blue countries
growing very rapidly. Purple countries are
growing slowly or are about stagnant, with
less than 1 percent population growth every
year. Red countries are actually shrinking,
typically because people are leaving and/or
because they're not having enough babies,
and that can cause huge problems.
• A note on the data: The researchers estimate
current population growth by averaging the
annual change in each country's population,
per year, between 2010 and 2015. Those latter
few years are obviously projections, but with
the rare exception for a major war or natural
disaster, such short-term projections are
considered reliable. The numbers include
births and deaths, as well as migration -- an
important point we'll touch on later. Here are
a few noteworthy trends from the data.
1. The big story is sub-Saharan Africa
• Almost all of the countries growing more than 2
percent per year are in Africa. There are a few reasons
for that. Birth rates there tend to be very high. People
are living much longer as health standards improve.
And the continent is becoming more stable and more
peaceful, meaning that there are fewer wars, famines
and natural disasters. All of these trends are happening
at once and are poised to completely transform Africa.
This chart, from a different U.N. agency's population
projections, show that Africa's growth is expected to
outpace the rest of the world's for the next century,
more than quadrupling in size:
Obs: check URL for interactive version with values
• Africa’s amazing growth could bring great
opportunity for the countries there, as well as
significant risk. Natural resources will be
stretched, risking returns to instability, and as
more people move into cities, the demand for
social services will go up. But those same trends
could see standards of living rise significantly.
More immediately, as the U.N. report points out,
an unusually high number of sub-Saharan births
are among girls age 15 to 19. That is, quite simply,
a bad thing: Young mothers are at greater health
risk, as are their children, and they are less likely
to receive an education or enter the workforce.
2. Continued rapid growth in the Middle East
• The Arab Middle East has been experiencing a very
significant youth bulge over the last few years,
meaning that an unusually large share of the
population is young people. That's been problematic
because when large numbers of young people hit
working age at the same time, the Middle Eastern
economies aren't able to provide enough jobs.
Combine that with the region's stale authoritarian
regimes and it's a recipe for political turmoil. That's
considered a major factor in the unrest since 2011.
With populations there still growing quickly, those
trends could continue for some time, if Arab
governments are able to get it together.
• The highest growth rates in the Middle East -indeed, in the world -- are actually in the Middle
Eastern countries that have seen the most
stability during the Arab Spring. The absolute
highest growth rate, by far, is in Oman, with 7.9
percent growth annually. That's just staggeringly
high; there's no telling what it could mean for the
country. Super-rich Qatar has a growth rate of 5.9
percent, also extremely high, though it's likely the
tiny Gulf state can use its tremendous oil and gas
wealth to absorb the impact. But keep an eye on
Jordan: Its 3.5 percent annual growth rate,
combined with its poverty and its problematic
influx of Syrian refugees, could bring real
instability to the little kingdom that has resisted
democratization for so long.
3. Eastern Europe is a demographic disaster
(and so is Japan)
• When your population is shrinking, that's bad for
several reasons. First, it means your population is
not growing, which you really need it to be in
order to sustain a healthily growing economy.
Second, it means that working-age people will
make up an ever-smaller share of your
population, which will be increasingly dominated
by the elderly. Old people typically don't work,
and they consume far more social services. So the
strain on those services goes up just as the
number of people paying into them goes down.
It's a recipe for real trouble.
• Most of the shrinking countries are in Eastern
Europe, where birth rates are very low and
lots of people are leaving to seek better
opportunities. Some post-Soviet European
countries are shrinking up to 0.8 percent per
year. That's a lot. The only other shrinking
countries are Germany, Japan and Cuba, all at
just 0.1 percent per year. But Japan's
population decline is expected to accelerate
dramatically, as this chart shows:
Obs: check URL for interactive version with values
• Japan is the world's third-largest economy. Its
shrinking and increasingly elderly population
is expected to cause serious trouble for that
economy, which also happens to be currently
burdened with huge amounts of public debt.
That has some economists worried that the
country may face a demographic crisis that
could become an economic crisis as well.
Ironically, many people would like to migrate
to Japan and Germany, which would seriously
ameliorate their demographic woes, but both
countries have strict policies limiting
immigration.
4. Immigration is counteracting the
West's demographic slowdown
• If you look at Europe and North America,
you'll see that birth rates there are pretty low,
typically quite close to zero. That's bad news;
while too-fast population growth is bad,
countries do want some growth, and after
centuries of booms, the Western world is
seeing that growth slow. It's expected to
reverse in a number of countries; Germany is
perhaps just the leading trend of looming
Western demographic decline.
• The exceptions to this trend are countries that
have lots of immigration: Ireland, Iceland,
Norway are all above 1 percent average
annual growth. The United Kingdom and
United States, though marked purple, are in
the upper end of that range, with 0.6 percent
and 0.8 percent annual growth, respectively.
That's just a difference of a single percentage
point per year, or less, but over time it can
make a big difference. Check out this chart
showing the projected populations of Western
European countries plus South Korea, a
similarly developed country:
Obs: check URL for interactive version with values
The trend lines for countries with little immigration are down, meaning eventually they
will turn red on a map like the one at the top of this page. The trend lines for countries
that foster more immigration tip upward, a much healthier trajectory.
5. Growth in East Asia is slowing
• After a world-changing demographic
explosion, East Asia is seeing birth rates
slow. It wasn't long ago that countries
such as China, South Korea and Burma
would all be deep, dark blue on this map.
In fact, public health has gone way up in
these countries, with people living longer
and dying less frequently, which should
drive home that birth rates are really
coming down in East Asia. That is, to
some extent, healthy.
• As China's leaders knew when they enacted
the deeply controversial "one-child policy,"
limiting all parents to a single child, the
country's population had been growing faster
than the economy and government could
sustain. The danger comes if the population
slowdown continues, as East Asians become
more affluent (richer people tend to have
fewer babies), and countries like China and
South Korea risk a Japan-style demographic
crisis. But that is at least a generation away.