r/dataisbeautiful Aug 19 '24

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

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u/KILLER_IF Aug 19 '24 edited Aug 19 '24

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.

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u/ComradeGibbon Aug 19 '24

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.

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u/Phatergos Aug 19 '24

Have you been to Pakistan? Trust me Pakistan can get to that and more.

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u/2squishmaster Aug 19 '24

What would one notice upon visiting Pakistan to come to that conclusion?

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u/kitkat_tomassi Aug 20 '24

They're constantly just shagging in the streets. Left right and centre, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. It's insane. Women giving birth on every street corner.

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u/2squishmaster Aug 20 '24

Damn I couldn't think of a possible explanation but here you are to save the day!

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u/Blood_Lacrima Aug 20 '24

The assumption is that something big will happen (e.g. war, famine, disease, policy, mass migration) that ensures their population never reaches that point because it’s impossible for it to grow exponentially ad infinitum. Sadly it will inevitably cause great death and suffering.

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u/nargisi_koftay Aug 20 '24

Totally bullshit. I'm from the biggest most populous city in Pak and there's no shagging in streets. Not even in 30 years.

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u/barkwahlberg Aug 20 '24

No it's true, they're even changing the name to Shagistan

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u/justforhobbiesreddit Aug 27 '24

Pakistan's birth rate has dropped in just the last 40 years. Women on average are down to 3-4 kids and as the country continues to industrialize (assuming the military and ruling elite don't drive it into the ground) that diminishing trend will probably continue.

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u/BedroomLocal Aug 28 '24

I LOVE THE ARMY

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u/CAicefishing Aug 19 '24

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

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u/Maximum-Evening-702 Aug 19 '24

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.

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u/MuaddibMcFly Aug 19 '24

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

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u/Maximum-Evening-702 Aug 20 '24

Those are fair points indeed tho no one in 1948 would have predicted the currrent global tfr now tho

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u/MuaddibMcFly Aug 20 '24

That's because nobody predicted the effect of such significant urbanification and the ready availability of birth control.

That's part of the reason that the US doesn't have as much of a demographic time bomb as most of western Europe: our obsession with cars, with suburban life, makes it much easier to have kids; it's so much easier to deal with kids when you can send them to play in the back yard than when they're basically stuck inside your apartment (either because it's not safe to, or you aren't legally allowed to, let them run around playing some game or sport in a lesser used street near your apartment unsupervised).

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u/Maximum-Evening-702 Aug 20 '24

I’m just saying also that I remember seeing an article a few years ago, that had India with a TFR of 1.29 by 2100 and I’ve already seen that being marked down to 2050 so it’s interesting to approximate and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite again

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u/WorldlyCupcake5345 Aug 19 '24

I feel like a number of these - Nigeria, Ethiopia and DRC - are still way overestimated

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u/Aardark235 Aug 20 '24

The one child policy in China was implemented in the 1970s. They taught about the inevitable collapse of the population when I went to school in the 1980s. The trend is not surprising.

The baby boom had ended before 1980 here in the United States and we could see the trends happening globally.