We need to prepare for a shrinking world population – but will we?

By 2050, it’s projected only a quarter of countries will have above-replacement fertility rates; by 2100 there will be just six: Chad, Niger, Somalia, Samoa, Tonga and Tajikistan
While many see upsides to a smaller global population, these demographic shifts will reconfigure the world economy and require societies to be reorganised

David Dodwell

Published: 6:30pm, 29 Mar 2024

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By 2100, just six of the world’s 204 economies will still have growing populations. All of them are small. Three of them are in poverty-stricken sub-Saharan Africa. The rest – including all of the largest economies – will for many decades have been living with shrinking birth rates and steadily ageing populations.

The implications of this demographic upheaval will be huge, and the impact profound – across populations, economies, geopolitics, food security, health and the environment. They mean more elderly dependents than people of working age. Tax-paying populations will decline. National health insurance costs will rise, as will social security burdens. Healthcare infrastructure will struggle to keep up.

If our economies are to avoid shrinking, our productivity per worker will need to rise, and we will have to deal with increasingly severe skill shortages and mismatches. We will have to rely on more immigrants, and on a lot more artificial intelligence and robotics.

So concludes the latest update of a massive study, published last week in the Lancet medical journal, based on demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study and tracking data over 150 years – back to 1950 and forecasting to 2100. According to co-lead author Natalia Bhattacharjee, demographic changes “will completely reconfigure the global economy and the international balance of power – and will necessitate reorganising societies”.

But as with climate change, we are not very good at developing policies to help us deal with deep, slow, relentless forces like demographic change. Even the deep, fast ones – like the Covid-19 pandemic – have shown how difficult it is for us to collaborate across borders. We can see the changes likely to occur many decades ahead, with clarity and accuracy – but clear foresight has made us no better at developing the policies needed to navigate the challenges.

The study, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, tracks with precision that annual live births worldwide peaked at 142 million in 2016 and fell to 129 million in 2021. The world’s total fertility rate (TFR) has fallen since 1950, halving from 4.84 to 2.23 in 2021. For a society to replace itself, this rate has to be above 2.1. But by 2050, global TFR is forecast to fall to 1.83, and by 2100 to 1.59.

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By 2050, fewer than a quarter of countries will have above-replacement birth rates, and by 2100 there will be just six: Chad, Niger, Somalia, Samoa, Tonga and Tajikistan. These six today account for fewer than 70 million people – just under 1 per cent of the global population, which recently passed 8 billion. They are also among the world’s poorest nations.

So, as of 2021, the number of children born is still above the level needed to keep the world population steady – but only just. And this global average hides some important facts. The world’s high-income countries fell below the replacement rate about 50 years ago (around 1975), with Europe’s countries falling below the replacement rate around 1990 and Southeast Asia in 1994.

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It is now just the world’s poorest economies – particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa – that report positive replacement rates. Both China and India have TFRs below the replacement rate.

The report concludes that “human civilisation is rapidly converging on a sustained low-fertility reality”. Despite the efforts of numerous countries to introduce pro-natal policies aimed at lifting the fertility rate back towards the replacement level – ranging from cash handouts (like in Hong Kong), to tax inducements, subsidies and improved parental leave arrangements – the study says there are “few data to show that such policies have led to strong, sustained rebounds in fertility”.

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These demographic shifts have profoundly altered where the world’s children are born and the problems they face. In 1950, more than half of the world’s babies were born into the comparative comfort of upper-middle and high-income societies. In 2021, around 70 per cent were born in low-income and lower-middle income countries. By 2100, nearly 80 per cent will be born in these poor countries – the majority of these in sub-Saharan Africa.

This area includes what has been described as the world’s “coup belt”, stretching from Africa’s Atlantic coast in Guinea, across Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and finally reaching the Indian Ocean coast in Sudan – making up what The New York Times once called “the longest corridor of military rule on earth”. The region is home to 43 per cent of the world’s terrorist deaths.

“Broadly, over the coming decades, the majority of live births will become concentrated in the areas of the world that are most vulnerable to climate change, resource insecurity, political instability, poverty and child mortality,” the Lancet report notes. It points to “a clear demographic divide between a subset of low-income countries and the rest of the world”.

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Despite the widely voiced concerns about the falling global birth rate, there are upsides. Environmentalists concerned about global warming, the mounting threat to biodiversity arising from human activity and pressure on food and other natural resources will see benefits in a shrinking population. Many will see the challenges linked with falling birth rates as a necessary part of our adjustment towards sustainability.

The report’s authors call for “focused and collaborative work” to resolve the challenges ahead. They have provided the focus. I am not very confident the world’s leaders will manage to provide the collaboration.

David Dodwell is CEO of the trade policy and international relations consultancy Strategic Access, focused on developments and challenges facing the Asia-Pacific over the past four decades