PHM-Exch> World Population Forecast to Top 7 Billion in 2011 - NYTimes.com

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: vern weitzel <vern.weitzel at gmail.com>
crosposted from: "[health-vn discussion group]" <health-vn at anu.edu.au>,

 [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>
Reprints<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/world/30population.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print#>
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/world/30population.html?_r=1&ref=world
July 29, 2010
 Population Research Presents a Sobering Prognosis By SAM
ROBERTS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/sam_roberts/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

With 267 people being born every minute and 108 dying, the world’s
population will top seven billion next year, a research group projects,
while the ratio of working-age adults to support the elderly in developed
countries declines precipitously because of lower birthrates and longer life
spans.

In a sobering assessment of those two trends, William P. Butz, president of
the Population Reference Bureau, <http://www.prb.org/> said that
“chronically low birthrates in developed countries are beginning to
challenge the health and financial security of the elderly” at the same time
that “developing countries are adding over 80 million to the population each
year and the poorest of those countries are adding 20 million, exacerbating
poverty and threatening the environment.”

Projections, especially over decades, are vulnerable to changes in
immigration<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration_and_refugees/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
retirement ages, birthrates, health care and other variables, but in
releasing the bureau’s 2010 population data sheet, Carl Haub, its senior
demographer, estimated this
week<http://www.prb.org/Publications/Datasheets/2010/2010wpds.aspx>that
by 2050 the planet will be home to more than nine billion people.

Even with a decline in birthrates in less developed countries from 6
children per woman in 1950 to 2.5 today (and to 2 children or less in
Brazil, Chile, Cuba,
Iran<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world/middleeast/28iran.html>,
Thailand and Turkey), the population of Africa is projected to at least
double by midcentury to 2.1 billion. Asia will add an additional 1.3
billion.

While the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand will continue to
grow because of higher birthrates and immigration, Europe, Japan and South
Korea will shrink (although the
recession<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/recession_and_depression/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>reduced
birthrates in the United States and Spain and slowed rising
birthrates in Russia and Norway).

In Japan, the population of working-age people, typically defined as those
15 to 64, compared with the population 65 and older that is dependent on
this younger group, is projected to decline to a ratio of one to one, from
the current three to one. Worldwide, the ratio of working age people for
every person in the older age group is expected to decline to four to one,
from nine to one now.

Earlier this week,
Eurostat<http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home/>,
the statistical arm of the 27-nation European
Union<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_union/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
reported<http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/3-27072010-AP/EN/3-27072010-AP-EN.PDF>that
while the union’s population topped a half billion this year, 900,000
of the 1.4 million growth from the year before resulted from immigration.
Eurostat has predicted that deaths will outpace births in five years, a
trend that has already occurred in Bulgaria, Latvia and Hungary.

While the bulge in younger people, if they are educated, presents a
potential “demographic dividend” for countries like Bangladesh and Brazil,
the shrinking proportion of working-age people elsewhere may place a strain
on governments and lead them to raise retirement ages and to encourage
alternative job opportunities for older workers.

Even in the United States, the proportion of the gross domestic
product<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/united_states_economy/gross_domestic_product/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>spent
on Social
Security<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/social_security_us/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>and
Medicare<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicare/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>is
projected to rise to 14.5 percent in 2050, from 8.4 percent this year.

The Population Reference Bureau said that by 2050, Russia and Japan would be
bumped from the 10 most populous countries by Ethiopia and the Democratic
Republic of Congo. Close
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