This belief suggested we might not have enough food to go around and that Mother Earth will be irreparably damaged by all these billions of people feasting on scarce environmental resources. On the other hand, population growth gave us the confidence that economic growth was likely and young people could help pay for and take care of the elderly.
But, things have changed. Dramatically. Especially in South Korea. In 1970, a million Korean babies were born. In 2023, the number of births was just 230,000. By 2050, Korea’s labor force will be about two-thirds of its current size. About two hundred day-care facilities have been turned into nursing homes, sometimes with the same directors, the same rubberized play floors, and the same crayons. Last year, strollers for Korean dogs outsold those for babies. Is the political mess we’ve seen in Korea a symptom of this destined demographic demise.
Today, the fertility rate is below the replacement rate in more than half of world’s countries and 90% of countries have seen a declining fertility rate in the past decade. By 2100, 97% of the world’s countries are predicted to be below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman (Korea is already down to 0.7 children per woman).
A new report from the United Nations reveals that the global population will be 700 million people less than previously thought by the end of the century (you can read the full report here). The global population will now, according to projections, peak at 10.3 billion around 2080 and then decline to 10.2 billion by 2100. By 2100, the population of Europe is expected to shrink by 21% from its peak in 2020 due to plunging birth rates.
For most of us, we won’t be living to see this demographic disaster, but our children (if we have them) are saddled with a very scary situation that the world has never navigated before, except during extreme pandemic times. It makes you wonder why so many countries are anti-immigrant right now (yes, xenophobia is part of the reason). If people are the future scarce resource, you’d think an innovative government would welcome immigrants these days. If you want to learn more about this, I highly recommend this recent New Yorker magazine piece on The Population Implosion. And, here’s a graph from a McKinsey & Company report:
-Chip