FRANCE: Earth will be home to 8.8 billion souls in 2100, two billion fewer than current UN projections, according to a major study published Wednesday that foresees new global power alignments shaped by declining fertility rates and greying populations.
By century's end, 183 of 195 countries -- barring an influx of immigrants -- will have fallen below the replacement threshold needed to maintain population levels, an international team of researchers reported in The Lancet.
More than 20 countries -- including Japan, Spain, Italy, Thailand, Portugal, South Korea and Poland -- will see their numbers diminish by at least half.
China's will fall nearly that much, from 1.4 billion people today to 730 million in 80 years.
Sub-Saharan Africa, meanwhile, will triple in size to some three billion people, with Nigeria alone expanding to almost 800 million in 2100, second only to India's 1.1 billion.
"These forecasts suggest good news for the environment, with less stress on food production systems and lower carbon emissions, as well as significant economic opportunity for parts of sub-Saharan Africa," lead author Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, told AFP.
For high-income countries in this category, the best solutions for sustaining population levels and economic growth will be flexible immigration policies and social support for families who want children, the study concluded. Social services and healthcare systems will need to be overhauled to accommodate much older populations. As fertility falls and life expectancy increases worldwide, the number of children under five is forecast to decline by more than 40 percent, from 681 million in 2017 to 401 million in 2100, the study found.
At the other end of the spectrum, 2.37 billion people -- more than a quarter of the global population -- will be over 65 years old by then.
Those over 80 will balloon from about 140 million today to 866 million.
Sharp declines in the number and proportion of the working-age population will also pose huge challenges in many countries.
The number of people of working age in China, for example, will plummet from about 950 million today to just over 350 million by the end of the century -- a 62 percent drop.
The decline in India is projected to be less steep, from 762 to 578 million.
In Nigeria, by contrast, the active labour force will expand from 86 million today to more than 450 million in 2100. These tectonic shifts will also reshuffle the pecking order in terms of economic clout, the researchers forecast.
By 2050, China's gross domestic product will overtake that of the United States, but fall back into second place by 2100, they predict. - AFP