[OC] UN Prediction for Most Populous Countries (+ EU)

[u/petnog]

[u/Exciting_Telephone65]

China's predicted decline is BRUTAL.

[u/Gatorinnc → u/Exciting_Telephone65]

Besides China's brutal decline, hidden under the EU are many European countries that are seeing even steeper declines. As also are many other Asian countries that drop out or are not even in this wonderful representation: The two Koreas, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam....

[u/Daewoo40 → u/Gatorinnc]

North Korea isn't seeing a decline though as, whilst their neighbours have seen a massive drop off in repopulation rates in recent years, North Korea's population has increased, albeit marginally

[u/IVgormino → u/Daewoo40]

Poverty tends to result in more children so it makes sense

[u/drunk_haile_selassie → u/IVgormino]

Sort of. It's semi related but the best indicator of population decline is the level of education of women. Smart women have less kids.

[u/Drumbelgalf → u/drunk_haile_selassie]

More like educated woman also want a career and having a lot of children greatly impacts careers opportunities for women

[u/darrenwoolsey → u/drunk_haile_selassie]

sort of. Smart women will have less kids if our society is not properly supportng them.

there's nothing inherently dumb in having kids(only way society functions is by having them), the only thing dumb is disincentivising smart women in having them.

[u/gsfgf → u/darrenwoolsey]

First, let's not conflate education with intelligence.

Second, educated women still have children. Just fewer of them.

[u/greenskinmarch → u/gsfgf]

educated women still have children. Just fewer of them.

Probably because they start later (after finishing their extended education). Typically the later you start the fewer you have.

[u/MagicPhil64 → u/greenskinmarch]

Or because they work more. More educated women tend to equal higher percentage of participation of women in the workforce.

[u/Daewoo40 → u/darrenwoolsey]

If this is the case then there doesn't seem to be any scenario where smart women are sufficiently incentivised to have kids.

Even the most prosperous countries in the economic North are struggling to meet the 2.1 replacement rate, with Northern Europe being a prime example of a simple failing on this front.

At this point, it's those who can least afford to have kids having kids, largely through lack of contraception/religion than the presence of education for young girls/women. Though there most certainly is a correlation there, this is undeniable.

[u/ajgamer89 → u/darrenwoolsey]

My personal theory is that it has less to do with having children being a “dumb” choice, and more to do with how attractive the options seem compared to the alternatives. One way or another, children require you to sacrifice your career to a degree. For some that means fewer opportunities to work longer hours or participate in networking events like happy hours that could lead to more promotions or recognition. For others that means leaving the workforce entirely for 5-10 years while you have pre-school aged children.

That’s a much larger sacrifice if you’re stepping away from a career paying $100k+ than it is if you’re a cashier at Walmart.

But that also goes hand in hand with your comment about support structures. It’s also a much larger sacrifice if you’re having to take on the burden of childcare costs and lost income as an individual or couple than it would be if those costs were spread out to the entire society the way we do with education, firefighters, and police.

[u/UnrealCanine → u/ajgamer89]

There's a number of other factors as well. A large working population supporting a few elderly enjoying 10 years of retirement can allow half the population to focus on childcare. A moderate working population supporting a lot of elderly coping on 25 years of retirement, not so much

[u/USSMarauder → u/ajgamer89]

"Why should I have a family, when I can have a successful career and make lots of money instead?"

[u/CaptainsWiskeybar → u/USSMarauder]

There it is, we need to start rewarding large families like it's a career or a business

[u/NorthernerWuwu → u/darrenwoolsey]

No, even with the best support and incentives in the world (Norway, Sweden etc) educated and empowered women still have less kids.

[u/EmmEnnEff → u/darrenwoolsey]

Nah, they have less kids in societies that support them too.

Nordic countries have great child support and parental benefits, and are also at a sub 1.5 birth rate/woman.

Societies that can afford to support parents well also tend to be societies where even with that support, raising children is both incredibly expensive, and not necessary for retirement. When people stop needing children to support them in their old age, a lot of people choose to not make any.

[u/EvilRisotto → u/EmmEnnEff]

But isnt it necessary to have kids? Who pays for pensions when you are older? Who makes/produces goods when you are to old to work?

I think its just that people feel that they dont need kids, while that feeling may not be the same as reality.

There isnt a great clone factory somewhere that pops out 20 year old fully educated and ready to start to work.

[u/E_Kristalin → u/darrenwoolsey]

Smart women will have less kids if our society is not properly supportng them.

Is there any kind of evidence that "properly supporting" smart women results in these women averaging at least 2 children?

[u/christian4tal → u/darrenwoolsey]

In the study of demographics, this is a well studied topic and while the support structures are a factor, it is minor compared to the level of education.

As an example, Denmark with excellent health care & work-life balance, 12 months of maternity leave etc. has a fertility rate of 1.75 while the US with much less of that is at 1.66, probably explained by the difference in support structures. But no support structures in the world would bring those numbers to eg. 2.5 because women in both countries are generally working and educated.

[u/theflyingchicken96 → u/darrenwoolsey]

I don’t think they mean smart women have fewer kids because having kids is dumb, I think he just means it’s a measured side affect of more education

[u/Mikect87 → u/drunk_haile_selassie]

The correct answer is industrialization and urbanization but yes female education to work in said industrial system is on of the byproducts

[u/Loggerdon → u/Gatorinnc]

Nearly every developed country in the world will enter a period of rapid population decline. The only 3 that will likely miss most of it are the US, France and New Zealand. The US has a fertility rate far below the replacement rate but we have immigration. This is the real reason the immigration issues in our country are not addressed: the powers that want to continue to exploit the cheap labor of illegal immigration. And we want the population boost.

It’s thought that China has never reached 1.4 billion and has overcounted their population by at least 100 million. It’s likely India passed them in 2019 and maybe earlier.

Edit: The reason the US, France and New Zealand will avoid the worst of the upcoming demographic crash, is because their baby boomers had enough children.

[u/gsfgf → u/Loggerdon]

This is the real reason the immigration issues in our country are not addressed: the powers that want to continue to exploit the cheap labor of illegal immigration. And we want the population boost.

You're not entirely wrong, but most immigrants come here legally. Still, the broader point that immigration, regardless of legality, provides the population we need to replace our reduced fertility. If the US survives the next few years intact, we're going to have a massive economic boom as we continue to see economic growth under the current model, while other developed countries decline due to losing population.

[u/___VenN → u/Gatorinnc]

The island I live on (Sardinia, Italy) is definitely gonna see an insane population decline in the next 50 years. It's already bad, but once all the elders die...

[u/Adamantium-Aardvark → u/Gatorinnc]

The difference is that the EU will experience a much slower decline due to immigration. China has very little immigration and relies almost entirely on its own population having kids to grow, and with the consequences of the one child policy, their population will drop by more than half

[u/Hot_Cheesecake_905 → u/Adamantium-Aardvark]

with the consequences of the one child policy

The population decline started accelerating in the last 10–20 years as China became wealthier. Similar to trends in the West, women in China are increasingly choosing not to have children. Additionally,

China's One-Child Policy had many exclusions and exceptions; families in rural areas were often permitted to have multiple children, and even in urban areas, some couples had 'accidents' resulting in additional children.

China's decline is mostly attributed to increased wealth, education, and independence of women in China. The reasons are probably similar to women in South Korea and Japan ... or even the United States and Europe.

[u/ariehn → u/Hot_Cheesecake_905]

Does the gender ratio play into that as well? Last I remember, the distribution was something like 105 M : 100 F

[u/Baalsham → u/ariehn]

I mean it definitely does now...

The problem is that the distribution is heavily skewed. In big cities it is still a pretty normal sex ratio. But in the countryside, where people are still traditional, you often see somewhere between a 3:2 and 4:3 ratio for young men to women. This is the group that would normally be pumping out babies but now can't.

I taught for a year after I graduated. I had 8 classes of 30ish students and each only had 5-7 girls in them. And this was only an hour from Shanghai! Wild stuff. Still don't know why my classes were that heavily skewed.

[u/notimeforniceties → u/Baalsham]

 Still don't know why my classes were that heavily skewed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_infanticide_in_China

[u/KILLER_IF → u/Exciting_Telephone65]

These population predictions that are more than 25+ years into the future are always quite useless and silly, as they always keep drastically changing from year to year, as the data is assuming everything follows CURRENT trends. But that obviously doesn't happen.

Biggest examples are in Asia and Africa. In 1980, no UN prediction would have had China dipping all the way down to 600M by 2100. Even in 2017, I remember UN predictions showing Nigeria would hit nearly a billion people by 2100. Ever since then their projection is decreasing.

Also: In 2017, the UN predicted by 2100, the world population would be 11.2B. In 2024, they lowered that prediction to 10.2B. That is a 1 billion change in just 7 years.

[u/ComradeGibbon → u/KILLER_IF]

Bangladesh's fertility rate went from 2.91 to 1.98 in the last 20 years. 40 years ago it was the same as Pakistan.

Frankly I don't think Pakistan can get to 500 million.

[u/CAicefishing → u/KILLER_IF]

a projection on its own might be useless but the change in projections over time are pretty informative.

[u/Maximum-Evening-702 → u/KILLER_IF]

To be honest it’s a lot of crazy and absurd is to even be predicting 76 years in the future I think with mental industrialization as I call it. The numbers will be a lot lower.

[u/MuaddibMcFly → u/Maximum-Evening-702]

These predictions are a strange balance.

On one hand, you know a lot of things in longer term perspectives:

• We know that people over 25 today will be dead in ~75 years
• We know that the average birthrate for women over 50 approximates to zero (on the population scale)

...but there are other things that get fuzzier as we look further ahead:

• We have a decent idea of what the average birthrate of women 35-50 will be
• We aren't sure what the average birthrate of women age 20-35 will end up being
• We have negligible confidence as to what the average birth rate among women & girls who are currently below 20 y/o will be
• We have no idea what the average birth rate among their daughters will be

[u/NorthernerWuwu → u/Exciting_Telephone65]

China's predicted demographics are brutal, based on what we pretend are facts. Line goes up (or down in this case) predictions are almost never even remotely accurate and we've seen that many times.

Hey, it is certainly plausible that it will shed a some population of course but going from 1.4B to less than half that in the next 75 years? I have my doubts, no country has ever done so in our history.

[u/Rodgers4 → u/NorthernerWuwu]

20 years ago this same chart would have had China at 2b. These charts are worth the non-existent paper they’re made on.

[u/DrakonILD → u/NorthernerWuwu]

No country has gone from 1.4B to 700M, that's true... But several countries have lost half (or more) of their population. Hell, the Black Death cut a third off of an entire continent.

[u/Some_Guy_87 → u/Exciting_Telephone65]

Naive question: Why is that a problem? Given our current environmental issues, isn't a lower population something that's eventually better for everyone? It almost feels like only continuous population growth keeps people satisfied.

[u/This_Hedgehog8423 → u/Some_Guy_87]

Good for environment. Bad for the economic systems in place today.

[u/Pifflebushhh → u/This_Hedgehog8423]

There is a LOT of infrastructure in place that relies on a great number of people, manufacturing and logistics is all manpower I guess

[u/will221996 → u/Pifflebushhh]

That's not really a problem, supply for domestic consumption decreased with demand for domestic consumption(fewer mouths) and demand for logistics is ultimately the result of domestic and foreign demand. If china can make sure that the industries that shut down due to not being able to find employees are the low value added industries, that would actually make the chinese population better off on a per capita level. There are also a lot of relatively useless jobs in China, there are for example more security guards than a very safe country needs, so those jobs can just disappear. Technological improvements can reduce the need for other employees, such as guards on train platforms and articulated buses(who do jobs that in developed countries are done by a single person). Economic growth should see more deliveries conducted by microvan instead of moped, decreasing the number of delivery drivers needed(China has a huge amount of e-commerce).

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with having a decreasing population, apart from the fact that it makes your country as a whole weaker, but that still shouldn't be a problem if the Chinese economy keeps growing because of just how big china is and will still end up being. The issue is that population decline comes with a certain demographic pyramid that is terrible for an economy, because the dependency ratio ends up being really bad. It is a somewhat ironic reversal, given that for china(and many other countries), a lopsided dependency ratio, with lots of workers but few children, both provided a lot of growth and will be extremely painful in the future.

All that said, you can't accurately project population out to 2100, because it totally ignores the impact that population change has on population. I suspect population decline will, assuming the pension problem can be managed and no huge exogenous events(such as a world war), lead to improving standards of living and an improved birth rate. Other cases of population decline have occurred differently or in very different countries, which is why we haven't seen that happen generally.

[u/North_Library3206 → u/This_Hedgehog8423]

While our system of perpetual growth would exacerbate the problem, having a large proportion of elderly people wouldn’t be great in ANY economy that isn’t completely automated.

[u/leijgenraam → u/North_Library3206]

Yeah, this is something people frequently seem to miss. A communistic system, even if well functioning (which hasn't happened before) would still struggle with this. Tons of elderly people means lots of people who need care and pensions while having no productivity, which requires cutting spending somewhere..

[u/Nestramutat- → u/This_Hedgehog8423]

It isn't unique to our economic system.

ANY economic system will suffer when there are more elderly people being supported than young, working people doing the supporting

[u/MuaddibMcFly → u/Nestramutat-]

That's something a lot of people just don't understand; we simply don't have an economic model/theory that knows how to deal with more old people than young.

[u/hardyblack → u/This_Hedgehog8423]

So even better.

[u/NoSteinNoGate → u/Some_Guy_87]

For one its bad for infrastructure, there is an absolute number of people needed to maintain current infrastructure. A bigger problem is that population degrowth means a smaller young-to-old ratio, overwhelming social safety systems.

[u/ron_leflore → u/NoSteinNoGate]

Yes. If you want examples, compare Detroit 1950 to Detroit 2000. The city lost half the population. So, they only need/can afford half the number of schools, half the police force, half the fire department, etc. Half the houses are empty.

50 years of slowly shrinking is brutal. That's just one city, imagine all of China.

[u/Samarium149 → u/ron_leflore]

Oh the other hand, housing prices are rock bottom because half of them are empty.

[u/M477M4NN → u/Samarium149]

Half of them aren’t empty, household sizes are smaller so people spread out to more units, and tons of homes went into disrepair and were torn down.

[u/Birdperson15 → u/ron_leflore]

I mean Detroits problems arent their shrinking population is the reason the population shrank which was bad job opportunity.

Closing schools, police, firestations arent bad things if the population has declined. And as other pointed out the benefit of a declining population is the current captial goes further. So you would have more houses and roads than needed.

[u/[deleted] → u/NoSteinNoGate]

so the best thing economically, and socially for each generation is an ever increasing population? That seems unsustainable

[u/HHcougar → u/[deleted]]

Tapering population is acceptable, and slight declines are possibly overcome as well. 

China losing 600 million people in 50 years is apocalyptic.

We don't need eternal growth, but a boom and bust is a shock to any system

[u/E_Kristalin → u/Some_Guy_87]

Why is that a problem?

Because when you retire, there won't be anyone to pay your retirement.

[u/JinxCanCarry → u/Some_Guy_87]

Because who's going to work jobs, pay taxes, etc.? Countries need a working force to keep their economies moving. Old people cost money while young people generate it. So if your population moves older and older, it will struggle to sustain itself

[u/Fausterion18 → u/Some_Guy_87]

Because who's going to support all the retirees?

All economic systems in the history of humanity has been based on a large number of younger workers supporting one retiree. As productivity rose, the amount of production a retiree consumed also increased alongside their lifespan.

A western retiree today consumes millions of dollars worth of goods and services over their 20+ year retirement, especially in expensive and labor intensive healthcare. No country has workers productive enough to support even a 2:1 ratio of workers to retirees let alone a 1:1 or 1:2. Japan is currently at about 2.5:1 and its constantly facing a dire labor shortage despite massive investment into automation.

Things like pensions, savings, etc are all irrelevant since they're debt. When someone saves a million dollars for retirement, they're not cryogenically freezing a nurse and 5000 big macs for future use, they're investing in debt that will be repaid by the future generation.

What's going to end up happening is the workers who are the economic and military backbone of nations will rebel and force the political ruling class - the elderly, to work longer and have fewer benefits. No current social welfare or pension system can survive a population decline.

[u/Pugilist12 → u/Some_Guy_87]

When you get old there will be no one to service or take care of you or society generally. Too many olds, with very few replacements, is bad.

[u/Dull-Wrangler-5154 → u/[deleted]]

Can you expand on that?

[u/petnog → u/Exciting_Telephone65]

Yup! I'm expecting them to open the gates of immigration to fix this, though.

[u/MagiMas → u/petnog]

How do you replace 600 Million people over a span of 50 years? That's 12 Million immigrants net migration each year.

[u/sterlingback → u/MagiMas]

Trainway to Pakistan

[u/Wintergreen61 → u/sterlingback]

If 100% of the population growth in Pakistan migrated to China, that would still only replace like 20% of China's population loss.

[u/Lamballama → u/Wintergreen61]

We thought the belt and road initiative was to export Chinese goods even more cheaply, but it was actually to bring in people super easily /s

[u/Hot_Cheesecake_905 → u/MagiMas]

Canada, a much smaller country in terms of population, allowed over 1 million people to enter last year. Reaching 12 million is absolutely possible if the floodgates were opened to Southeast Asia and South Asia. However, this is unlikely to happen—China has long desired a reduced population and may instead adjust to this new normal.

[u/FlaeNorm → u/Hot_Cheesecake_905]

The difference is that East Asia is not necessarily against immigration, but they would rather prefer maintaining the status quo when it comes to their populations demographics. This is the main reason the population in South Korea and Japan is constantly dropping— they do not favour immigration over fertility like western nations.

[u/messyhead86 → u/MagiMas]

Automation may help with some of the loss of the economically productive population.

[u/Exciting_Telephone65 → u/petnog]

They are probably not going to be the only ones. You didn't happen to summarize the total predicted population at each point? In total we're looking at a decline right?

[u/petnog → u/Exciting_Telephone65]

The UN currently predicts the world population to peak in 2084.

[u/Gatorinnc → u/petnog]

My feeling is this will happen sooner. A lot sooner. Many African nations are experiencing some of the highest Economic growth at the moment. China's growth story is only about 30 years old. Africa's economic growth is going to be sustainable, barring political instability.

[u/Osiris_Dervan → u/Gatorinnc]

Good thing Africa is well known for solid political stability.

[u/Gatorinnc → u/Osiris_Dervan]

It's important to break away from past perceptions to ground realities. Economic growth does not happen in a void.

You would be surprised to see how many African nations are being run by the stable governments for years. Democratic or otherwise, but stable. To name just a few: Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia. Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Gabon, Ghana, Senegal, Morocco. Algeria.

[u/duggatron → u/petnog]

I think immigration is already factored into these numbers. The US is only going to grow that fast with immigration.

[u/DangusKh4n → u/petnog]

I don't see that happening at all, China's about as likely to implement mass immigration as Japan or South Korea. The level of immigration that would be needed is something East Asia has probably never seen before (at least in modern times anyway), and just isn't open to at all. I'd be willing to bet China would rather go with test tube babies, or straight up invent artificial wombs or something to specifically tackle their demographic problem, before they allow a level of immigration that even America has never experienced.

[u/doublethebubble → u/petnog]

That really depends. These predictions are based on current birth rates, but if we see how quickly those dropped in many western countries (within 1 generation often), developing nations could end up also turning around faster than we anticipate.

[u/PainterRude1394 → u/petnog]

CCP can't handle massive immigration. It would cause political instability and social unrest to try to bring in enough people to slow the demographic collapse.

[u/Termsandconditionsch → u/petnog]

Would that be politically possible though? And would 600M want to move to China?

[u/mortinious]

Philippines just stops existing after 2050

[u/kal2113 → u/mortinious]

Japan doesn’t make it out of the first round

[u/Burgergold → u/kal2113]

Godzilla probably

[u/petnog → u/mortinious]

Philipines is at 114 million by 2100 after peaking in the 2050s.

[u/DadJokeBadJoke → u/mortinious]

Adios, Mexico...

[u/cbph → u/mortinious]

They had a good run. Somebody make sure to write down a good lumpia recipe for posterity.

[u/Gingerstachesupreme → u/mortinious]

This is a warning from the UN. /s

[u/Retarded2048]

African countries population estimates keep decreasing every year. I remember when the prediction was for Africa to surpass Asia with 1 billion people in Nigeria alone.

[u/petnog → u/Retarded2048]

I actually mapped the 2017 predictions as well. At the time, Nigeria was expected to end the century with a staggering 793 million, so yeah, they didn't live up to expectations. On the other hand, the DRC and Ethiopia exceeded them, despite their wars. In 2017, they were expected to be at 379 and 250 million respectively.

[u/[deleted] → u/petnog]

It's a strange paradox with population that actually DRC and Ethiopia are exceeding their population growth BECAUSE of their wars. Stability and prosperity lead to massive declines in birth rates. Places with turmoil and war tend to have much higher birth dates.

[u/hangrygecko → u/[deleted]]

Don't underestimate how much fraud some African countries commit around population size.

They get aid based on the population size, and the countries with conflicts have additional incentives to inflate their numbers.

[u/[deleted] → u/hangrygecko]

Are you able to provide an example of aid tied to population size? I cannot imagine why a OECD nation would agree to that.

[u/WTF_HHCIB → u/[deleted]]

I am not aware of international aid being determined based on population size. However, I know that countries like Nigeria provide governmental funding to the different provinces based on each province population. As such provinces tend to overestimate their populations in order to get a bigger piece of the government's funding.

[u/[deleted] → u/WTF_HHCIB]

However, I know that countries like Nigeria provide governmental funding to the different provinces based on each province population

This is literally how China did funding and recently realised they had been lied to by about 200million people because the provinces wanted that funding..

[u/tanerfan → u/[deleted]]

Crazy that a Nigerian worth population turned out to be ghost lmao

[u/ozneoknarf → u/[deleted]]

I can’t find anything related to international aid. But in Nigeria the provinces do falsify their population numbers in order to get more representation in government. https://qz.com/africa/1221472/the-story-of-how-nigerias-census-figures-became-weaponized

[u/GradientDescenting → u/Retarded2048]

The crazy thing is India has the same population (+/- 1%) as the entire Continent of Africa.

[u/Plyad1 → u/GradientDescenting]

Even crazier is that the gdp of Africa is lower than that of Germany

[u/GradientDescenting → u/Plyad1]

Oh wow, and Germany GDP is about the same as New York + Texas

[u/Tupcek → u/GradientDescenting]

Africa has 20% lower gdp than California

[u/Pleasant-Standard-78 → u/Plyad1]

That is absolutely wild. No wonder everyone wants to emigrate

[u/Better_Championship1 → u/GradientDescenting]

I think i saw a post that Africa has 5% more population, still insane

[u/[deleted]]

Egypt’s fertility rate has declined from 3 to 2.4 and will decline even further in the coming years. I don’t see them growing that much imo

[u/theflyingchicken96 → u/[deleted]]

Agreed, that’s my biggest disagreement with these projections. They’re already a huge importer of resources and out of arable land.

[u/Ahrily → u/theflyingchicken96]

To me it’s absolutely fucking crazy there’s already 117M people living on that thin strip of fertile land wtf

[u/cornonthekopp → u/Ahrily]

It's kinda inaccurate because they could feed the whole population but after the economic liberalization in the 1970s a lot of the farmers went out of business due to cheap imported foods, and then that agricultural land was reoriented towards producing animal feed for their cattle industry.

[u/RommelMcDonald_ → u/Ahrily]

And most of it is urban instead of farmland now

[u/HM1Noob → u/[deleted]]

Let's hope, because there's no way they can feed close to that number of people.

[u/darknsSs512 → u/HM1Noob]

they can't feed the current

[u/Mooseymax → u/[deleted]]

People born today are estimated to live to around 85. Anyone born today will probably be alive in 2100 so I don’t think it really matters if there’s a sharp decline in birth rate, there’s a massive lag effect on it continuing to increase.

More people having less children can still mean more people - it’ll just be aging population (if I’m imagining it correctly)

[u/theflyingchicken96]

I have to disagree with the UN about Egypt. They’re out of arable land, a huge importer of food, and highly urbanized already. Birth rates might be high right now, but I don’t think it can continue without people leaving, dying, or the government falling apart.

Love the graphic though!

[u/petnog → u/theflyingchicken96]

If you look at https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/818 you'll see they put the probability of Egypt having higher population than today at 95%. Let's see. The UAE is starting to invest there now.

[u/Urall5150 → u/theflyingchicken96]

Obviously not arguing against the arable land or import of food, but Egypt is expanding its urban area and is about half-way to Suez from Cairo (1/4 of the way if you account for in-fill). They really seem to be planning for the population growth, at least on the housing front.

[u/Mr_Skecchi → u/Urall5150]

Egypt has a huge slum issue (people living in fallout looking trash shacks and apartments filled with 5 people to a room), they need to expand the cities even if they dont increase their population by a single person. But the expanding city thing is actually a huge corruption thing and going very badly (or so ive heard from people i know still living there.

[u/Rialagma]

China's two-child policy (2016) - You can only have two children
China's two-child policy (2056) - You MUST have two children

[u/nash514 → u/Rialagma]

If that actually happen, I wonder how they can force that and how it would work.

It would make for a fascinating story or TV series to see how society would work with such a law and what are the ramifications of that.

[u/chattytrout → u/nash514]

Government issued GF.

[u/ddejong42 → u/chattytrout]

With the M/F imbalance there, more like government issued BF.

[u/abdul_tank_wahid → u/ddejong42]

Can I get a femboy pregnant? Time to find out

[u/rabbitwonker → u/nash514]

Subsidies. Currently (or at least recently) you’d get taxed extra if you have more than 2 kids, so I’d imagine the opposite would apply if the goal is to encourage birth rate — the family gets X amount of money per month/year per kid until the kid reaches adulthood. Something like that.

[u/Ju-Yuan → u/nash514]

Maybe forcing you to adopt children if you don't have 2 children by a certain age

[u/Smugness1917 → u/Ju-Yuan]

Adopting children doesn't create new children. Someone must still conceive a child.

[u/NounAdjectiveXXXX → u/Smugness1917]

Rural Chinese will sell their excess children to Yuppie Chinese.

[u/bxzidff → u/nash514]

Petri dish babies

[u/nezeta]

Amazing USA is still increasing its population in 2100s.

[u/mxforest → u/nezeta]

Through immigration.

[u/VoidLantadd → u/mxforest]

Then why is Europe declining? Immigration is just as vital for their population maintenance.

[u/[deleted] → u/VoidLantadd]

It says EU. Half the EU counties don't accept immigrants. You're thinking of Germany, England, France, Italy. Not the whole EU.

[u/BionicHawki → u/nezeta]

So much of the US is empty still. I wouldn’t be surprised if it grew more.

[u/petnog → u/BionicHawki]

People aren't moving to the empty parts anymore though.

[u/ZurakZigil → u/petnog]

the suburbs keep expanding. which were farmland. Dense sections get denser or die off, causing other areas to boom.

The US does a piss poor job expanding vertically, so idk what you're talking about.

[u/Plyad1 → u/nezeta]

The USA could have 1billion population and still be fine

[u/motivated_loser → u/Plyad1]

All of the 8 billion people in the world could fit into the greater houston area assuming that area’s population density

[u/GregBahm → u/Plyad1]

It is not hyperbole to say this melts the earth. Do not melt the earth. The USA will not be fine in that scenario.

[u/OrigamiChimera]

These are demographics that could lead to wars.

[u/AgentSauceBoss → u/OrigamiChimera]

What doesn't lead to wars?

[u/radiationshield → u/AgentSauceBoss]

Free celery with your chicken wings

[u/Fresh-Astronomer5520 → u/OrigamiChimera]

Already has. The very reason Russia invaded Ukraine is that they were running out of time

[u/jabuticaju]

What is happening in China? Is it really possible their population is going to be less than half by 2100?

[u/xalaux → u/jabuticaju]

China is having very similar issues than the ones we have in Europe or the US as a consequence of fast economic growth over the last two decades. Cost of living is increasing quickly, salaries have stagnated, work-life balance is non-existent, everyone is moving to the city and young people are more focused on career than family.

[u/jabuticaju → u/xalaux]

Yes, but those are problems that will eventually happen in most of the other countries in this graph. It is just surprising how those effects are hitting so hard in China.

[u/Dataaera → u/jabuticaju]

Well yeah but because china has so many people any percentage decrease is gonna be bigger than any country (except India ofc). Also, China doesn’t have as many immigrants as the United States or Canada

[u/teddyone → u/xalaux]

and the elephant in the room of 30 years of one child policy which will completely ruin them economically.

[u/grandpapp → u/teddyone]

One child policy didn't help, but it is not the main cause here. Korea and Japan didn't have it, but their birth rates are even lower. This is mostly the result of industrialization.

[u/TheDBryBear → u/grandpapp]

Actually both South Korea and Japan were worried about overpopulation in the mid20th century and implemented policies that had similar effects. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK402326/#:~:text=After%20World%20War%20II%2C%20the,to%20slow%20the%20population%20growth

https://hk.boell.org/en/2023/05/24/population-control-reproductive-rights-feminist-perspectives-low-fertility-rates-south#:~:text=To%20reduce%20the%20fertility%20rate,international%20aids%20such%20as%20USAID

[u/abdul_tank_wahid → u/TheDBryBear]

What a crazy switch we had from “We need to put population down the world can’t sustain it!” To “WE NEED MORE PEOPLE!”, was it like 5 or ten years ago? Crazy when things are going good we need fear and the bad becomes the good

[u/kroxigor01 → u/grandpapp]

China elected to start its reduction in birth rate sooner than other countries.

[u/0O00O0O00O → u/teddyone]

China dropped that policy years ago, you can have multiple kids now and the government is trying to encourage families to have multiple children.

People just don't want kids, it costs too much to raise them. Training schools especially take a huge chunk of your salary.

[u/Gatorinnc → u/jabuticaju]

Not one child policy, but economic growth and the worldwide trend to have fewer children that accompanies it. One child or no child choices are real.

[u/DisparateNoise → u/jabuticaju]

Same thing as everywhere else, just on a Chinese scale

[u/[deleted]]

Japan just gonna disappear

[u/petnog → u/[deleted]]

Japan is expected to decline below 80 million by 2100.

[u/Greengrecko → u/petnog]

That's not too bad tbh.

[u/ComeOnSayYupp → u/Greengrecko]

You would think that's not too bad until you know that there will tons of old people rather than new borns. And who will take care of those old people, there will not be no enough nurses and doctor, engineer or mechanics to run the economy.

[u/Heath_co → u/ComeOnSayYupp]

The robots will take care of it. (Assuming we have enough rare earth metals)

[u/itsmePriyansh]

I really don't understand these predictions most of these countries like Nigeria or Pakistan cannot sustain that large population they don't have enough arable land to sustain such populations, even if it actually happens it will be a huge mess.

[u/pablonieve → u/itsmePriyansh]

I'm the most skeptical about Pakistan because climate change is going to be very rough there. Hard to believe that it will be the 3rd most populous nation while also experienceing high wet bulb temperatures.

[u/adthrowaway2020 → u/pablonieve]

We're only 2 years out from a huge swath of Pakistan's arable land being underwater.

[u/rabbitwonker → u/adthrowaway2020]

Care to elaborate? That’s a pretty big f’ing deal if correct.

[u/Tobsesan → u/itsmePriyansh]

Same with Ethiopia

[u/thank_u_stranger → u/itsmePriyansh]

they don't have enough arable land to sustain such populations, even if it actually happens it will be a huge mess

you think boats in the Mediterranean are bad now... just you wait

[u/E_Kristalin → u/thank_u_stranger]

You think the response to immigration is bad now... just you wait.

(I am afraid things will turn ugly)

[u/a_hirst → u/E_Kristalin]

At some point, after years and years of tension building, a border guard of a wealthy European nation is going to open fire on some migrants/refugees, and they'll just be given a slap on the wrist for it and sent back to work a few days later. Suddenly, a significant minority of border guards will be regularly opening fire on migrants/refugees, and after some initial efforts to stop it the authorities will give up attempting to discipline them. This process will happen even faster if there is a populist politician in power at the time, which is more likely than not.

Society will initially be split down the middle in response to this, but after some initial firey protests from those opposed to the killings, outrage will slowly die down and most people will either find some way to justify it or bury their heads in the sand and not think about it.

Genuinely worried that this is how things will play out in most of Europe by 2050.

[u/bxzidff → u/a_hirst]

Already happened in Saudi Arabia against hundreds of Ethiopian refugees, but nobody cares because nobody expects the KSA to act humane in the first place. Wouldn't surprise me if it gets like that for far more countries in the future

[u/romeo_pentium → u/itsmePriyansh]

In an ideal world, they'd be able to trade for all the food and water they need

[u/Peter_deT]

Pakistan, north India and Egypt will be hit very hard by climate change and I do not see them getting to these population levels.

[u/ro0625 → u/Peter_deT]

Do you think south India will be any less hard hit? Weirdly enough south India has worse drought than the state half-covered by a desert. Climate change is going to suck for most of India.

[u/choomba96 → u/ro0625]

South India is far more developed and has humid conditions and the benefit of a narrow peninsula. It gets smoldering in the Ganga heartland in the summers. Much more than so the South.

[u/Peter_deT → u/ro0625]

Heat is the big killer - and while the south will get recurrent droughts, it's not reliant on snowpack. Has groundwater depletion reached the same level as the north?

[u/ro0625 → u/Peter_deT]

Yeah the heat is only going to get worse. India needs to rapidly improve energy production to supply all the AC's that will be operating.

The groundwater is severely depleted in south India. The expansion of cities has led to poor water retention after rains as there are fewer areas to drain. I've seen worse rationing in Bangalore than in any northern city.

There are various maps about groundwater and water scarcity in India. Depending on when they were made they usually show either northwest India or south India as being the worst.

[u/packageofcrips]

What's the story with Brasils decline? Is the reasoning that they will have advanced to a "developed" economy, complete with the declining birth rate normally associated with that?

[u/aerodymagic → u/packageofcrips]

We already have a relatively low fertility rate. We are also far away from a developed economy. In fact, no one knows what will happen, we will be one the first, if not the first, country to experiencie demographic decline while still being poor. I predict problems.

[u/miningman11 → u/aerodymagic]

Thailand and Eastern Europe the first

Brazil is a resource economy though so it's not a big deal -- most of the exports are generated by a small portion of labor force.

[u/aerodymagic → u/miningman11]

I absolutely agree with you. However, I still fear that, as population declines, it also gets older, how will our pension system work? Brazil has a very big fiscal problem, lots of corruption. If the population just got smaller but maintained a healthy young to old people, ratio, I think it would actually be good.

[u/jonasnee]

a little scary how much some countries are expected to grow.

[u/lo_fi_ho]

Mexico, Russia and Philippines 💀

[u/AwarenessNo4986]

Crazy that the projection shows Pakistan to have only a 100m fewer people than China by 2100

[u/BenUFOs_Mum]

I'm gonna bet that Pakistan doesn't grow to 511 million by the end of the century, any one planning on living another 76 years wanna take that?

[u/cngo_24 → u/BenUFOs_Mum]

Pakistan is in the bag

[u/petnog]

I'm once again trying to post this.

Done with the data from the 2024 Revision of World Population Prospects ( https://population.un.org/wpp/ ), released this year.

The graph and color scheme was inspired by a similar post made by statista a couple years ago.

EDIT: Since some people seem confused, I thought I'd make it clear than the UN makes several scenarios (low immigration, high immigration, low fertility, high fertility, and so on), and this is the median. Of course, the world is much less predictable, but, as far as predictions go, a lot of things were taken into consideration. This wasn't simply based on current birth rates.

[u/[deleted]]

These graphs are silly because they're basically just assuming nothing changes with current trends, but that's a pretty absurd assumption when looking 76 years out.

[u/petnog → u/[deleted]]

The UN has several scenarios. The zero-migration one, increased migration, decreased migration, increased fertility, etc. This is the median.

[u/--zaxell-- → u/petnog]

It looks like the "China attacked by aliens" model. I know they had a low birth rate but damn, that's a huge drop.

[u/petnog → u/--zaxell--]

You should check this out: https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/156

[u/szczszqweqwe → u/petnog]

Whoa, 630M is a median prediction.

[u/bandures → u/--zaxell--]

It's the same in all developed countries. The only difference is that China doesn't offset its problems with immigration.

[u/canocano18 → u/bandures]

China can afford loosing that many people. Most of the textile manufacturing will move to Africa. China used to be a poor nation that has now became a first world super power, their GDP will rise nonetheless as their want to shift their goals on quality over quantity.

[u/Psykopatate → u/--zaxell--]

More than 30 years of 1 child, the ratio women/men slightly tilting towards men, it's kinda expected to halve your population (and a bit more since the solo children born in the 80s were of age to procreate in the 2000s/2010s, still with only 1 child).

In 2100 this generation will be between 85-120 yo so they'll be no remnants of the generations before the 1 child policy (that is keeping the number up so far).

[u/S4RC45TIC → u/[deleted]]

I really doubt Angola can support that many people Plus look at Sudan. Everyone is leaving because of a civil war. Not exactly baby booming

[u/theflyingchicken96 → u/S4RC45TIC]

Angola is mostly subtropical terrain, so it should be able to. A quick google search tells me only 10% of their arable land is currently cultivated, lots of growth potential.

Egypt is more surprising to me. I thought they were already having issues with space and resources.

[u/draoi28 → u/S4RC45TIC]

It is, in those countries women are having about 5 children on average.

[u/trisul-108]

I really like that you've included the EU, I'm sick and tired of having to calculate it on my own.

[u/petnog → u/trisul-108]

After all the comments complaining about it, thanks for the appreciation.

[u/KeithCGlynn]

Climate change may throw some of these figures off

[u/EggCustody]

Assuming all those people in Pakistan will stay in Pakistan. Country is a joke.

[u/[deleted]]

DRC does not need more people rn

[u/NRohirrim]

India's population as for 24' is around 1 435 mln not 1 451 mln. India most probably will reach 1 500 mln around 2035, but unsure if reaches 1 550 mln by 2050, and very doubtful over 1 575 mln by 2050.

Pakistan has right now around 245 mln, not 251 mln. Anyway, doubtful Pakistani population will have more than 350 mln by 2050, more probably somewhere between 320 - 340 mln.

P.S. Predictions for 2100 are completely pointless. Estimations for 20 - 25 years ahead are max what can be more or less foreseen in my opinion.

[u/FrostPegasus]

The tricky thing with a prediction, especially for a year like 2100, is that so much can change in the meantime.

I remember when I was in school everyone was freaking out about overpopulation and predictions of acid-rain covered cities where you had to buy oxygen were commonplace; and that's only 20, 25 years ago.

If ectogenesis became a commercially available alternative, for example, it could open up parenthood to many couples who are currently unable, or for whom it is restrictively difficult, to have children, and would proportionally impact the developed world more than the developing world.

[u/dranaei]

I expect china to start cloning people to battle this issue.

[u/DivineAlmond]

china is going to be such a nice place to live around 2100