World Population Prospects

The 2022 edition of the United Nations’ World Population Prospects (WPP) has been released. It was released on the World Population Day (11 July). The report says that India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023.

About the World Population Prospects report –

• The Population Division (under Department of Economic and Social Affairs) of the UN has been publishing the WPP in a biennial cycle since 1951.
• The 2022 report is the twenty-seventh edition.
• Each revision of the WPP provides a historical time series of population indicators starting in 1950.
• It does so by taking into account newly released national data to revise estimates of past trends in fertility, mortality or international migration.

Key highlights of the report –

• The world’s population continues to grow, but the pace of growth is slowing down —
  • • The global population is expected to grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100.
    • In 2020, the global growth rate fell under 1% per year for the first time since 1950.
• Rates of population growth vary significantly across countries and regions —
  • • More than half of the projected increase in global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries including India and Pakistan.
    • The 46 least developed countries (LDCs) are among the world’s fastest-growing.
• The population of older persons is increasing both in numbers and as a share of the total —
  • • The share of the global population aged 65 years or above is projected to rise from 10% in 2022 to 16% in 2050.
• A sustained drop in fertility has led to an increased concentration of the population at working ages (between 25 and 64 years) —
  • • This shift in the age distribution provides a time-bound opportunity for accelerated economic growth known as the “demographic dividend”.
• International migration is having important impacts on population trends for some countries —
  • • Over the next few decades, migration will be the sole driver of population growth in high-income countries.
    • For 10 countries, the estimated net outflow of migrants exceeded 1 million over the period from 2010 through 2021.
    • In many of these countries, the outflows were due to temporary labour movements, such as for Pakistan (net flow of -16.5 million), India (-3.5 million), Bangladesh (-2.9 million), Nepal (-1.6 million) and Sri Lanka (-1.0 million).
    • In other countries, insecurity and conflict drove the outflow of migrants over this period.
• Policies aimed at reducing fertility would have little immediate impact on the pace of global growth —
  • • Two-thirds of the projected increase in global population through 2050 will be driven by the momentum of past growth.
      • This is embedded in the youthful age structure of the current population.
    • For this reason, further actions by Governments aimed at reducing fertility would not have a major impact till 2050.
• Rapid population growth is both a cause and a consequence of slow progress in development —
  • • Sustained high fertility and rapid population growth present challenges to the achievement of sustainable development.
    • The necessity of educating growing numbers of children and young people, for example, draws resources away from efforts to improve the quality of education.
    • At the same time, achieving the SDGs, particularly those related to health, education and gender, is likely to hasten the transition towards lower fertility in countries with continuing high levels.
• More and more countries have begun to experience population decline —
  • • Fertility has fallen markedly in recent decades for many countries.
    • Today, two-thirds of the global population lives in a country or area where lifetime fertility is below 2.1 births per woman
• The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all three components of population change (the three components of population change are births, deaths, and migration) —
  • • Global life expectancy at birth fell to 71.0 years in 2021, down from 72.8 in 2019, due mostly to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
    • Available evidence about the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on fertility levels remains mixed.
      • In low- and middle-income countries, the availability of and the demand for contraception, as well as reported numbers of unintended pregnancies and births, have remained relatively stable.
      • In high-income countries, it appears that successive waves of the pandemic may have generated short-term fluctuations in numbers of pregnancies and births.
    • The pandemic severely restricted all forms of human mobility, including international migration.