Cet! wi< Demographic Pre ee collapsing birth rates will turn our world upside down PS UO Le MOP omMOIKCOU TEN ORM Reon aCe MOINES SCE URL OOnhy rights will be rolled back to encourage them to start families, writes Hugh Tomlinson CChina’s population e tury falling to 730 million from 1.6 billion E Hugh Tomlinson Wednesday July 0, 5.00pm BST, The Times population collapse. Greying states in Europe and across the globe will compete for migrants froma still-growing Africa, while others consider turning back the clock n women's rights in a desperate attempt to save their dying societies with baby booms. I ness than a lifetime, China will be half the nation it is today thanks to a rapid This vision of the world in 2100 is set out in a landmark study that has concluded that the age of an ever-expanding human population is coming to a close faster than previously thought, with massive implications for the global economy and the environment.Rather than increasing throughout the century, as previously assumed, the study from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington says the world’s population could peak at 9.7 billion in 2064, before falling sharply away to 8.8 billion by the end of the century as a global leap forward in women’s education and availability of contraception hastens a decline in fertility. A baby clinic in Nigeria, which is expected to become the world's second most populous country by 2100 AKINTUNDE AKINLEYE/REUTERS More than 150 countries will have declining populations by 2050, and several will see their populations today cut in half by 2100, with calamitous consequences. The report marks a radical break with predictions from the UN’s population division, which expects the population to peak at 10.9 billion around 2100, before beginning its decline. It is a discrepancy that has attracted huge attention and criticism since the report was published. John Wilmoth, the director of the UN population division, which issued its own forecast last year, described the new projection as “extreme”.15; PER The headline figures in the IHME report are certainly eye-catching. South Korea, one of the global economic success stories of the past 50 years, will see its current population of 52 million slump to 27 million by the end of the century. Japan and Spain are among 23 nations whose populations will collapse by more than half. Some populations in eastern Europe have already peaked, the study found, and could fall by almost two-thirds by 2100. The fortunes of China, and with it, those of the global economy, underscore the turbulence ahead. The [HME study predicts that China will supplant the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2035, but will concede the title again as its population withers during the second half of the century, collapsing to 730 million from 1.6 billion today. Wealthier nations such as the US, Britain, Australia and France, will see modest population growth, as immigration offsets their dwindling birth rates. This dependence on immigration to sustain the workforce will become a global competition over the coming decades. Women protest against the tightening of the abortion law in Warsaw. Such conflicts could become more commonBucking the trend is sub-Saharan Africa, the only continent expected to have a growing population by the end of the century. That is expected to trigger a global competition to attract African migrant workers among ageing, developed nations, and the rise of major African economies such as Nigeria, projected to be the world’s second-most populous country by 2100. The UN has been more conservative in its predictions of what will happen as, country by country, fertility rates slip below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. The UN had assumed that the global fertility rate in 2100 would be around 1.8, while the IHME forecasts only 1.4. That discrepancy amounts to a difference of almost two billion people by the end of the century. WORLD AT FIVE Falling numbers How fertility rate is projected to change by the end of the century in selected countries 2017 Nigeria India France Sweden USA UK China e Germany o Spain eo Japan e oe e lly Singapore CChart:The Times * Source:The Lancet, University of Washington “The UN's findings had assumed that fertility would come back. We saw no evidence it will. We think the phenomenon we are seeing in Japan, Singapore, parts of Europe, will become a global phenomenon,” said Chris Murray, director of the IHME and co-author of the study. Alarm at this precipitous collapse in fertility is already at the forefront of national debate and government policy throughout much of Asia, and is spreading to Europe. The findings of the latest report suggest that governments must tackle the crisis much sooner than anticipated, however.“The vast majority of population growth is coming not from people being born, but from people not dying,” said Darrell Bricker, co-author of the book, Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline. “That means an awful lot of old people, and a diminishing workforce supporting a rapidly ageing population.” Faced with this looming demographic apocalypse, Mr Murray sees three potential options for governments desperate to stave off collapse. “They can look to the Swedish model, making it easier for women of working age to have children, with generous maternity programmes, childcare, and state support for working mothers,” he said. Sweden has succeeded in raising its fertility rate from around 1.5 to 1.8 this century, while other countries have found similar strategies that may slow the rate of decline but cannot drag fertility back to replacement rates. “Tt’s a pretty small bump, and similar efforts in places like Japan and Singapore have not been successful,” Mr Murray admitted.The most viable option for ageing developed economies is to throw open their borders to a new wave of immigration and rebuild their dwindling workforce. That would demand rowing back the nationalist anti-immigrant rhetoric adopted by populist governments in Britain, the US, and elsewhere over recent years. Competition for educated migrant workers among shrinking, developed nations is likely to grow more fierce as the century draws on. That will bring a renewed focus on Africa, as the only region on the planet with a young, growing workforce. “T think we will see a changing view of immigration, and with it more competition for educated migrants,” Mr Murray said. “We will probably see large African migrant populations in many parts of the world, as well as the emergence of large African economies.” The social turmoil and economic stress brought by such a rapid slump in populations is ripe for exploitation, however. In some parts of the world, governments have already begun to cast the dwindling birth rate as a matter of national security. That rhetoric could shift into more concerted efforts to roll back women’s rights, as the crisis deepens, pressuring women to breed for the nation.“When you have language like that, you can see governments pressing women to have more children. There are all sorts of sorts of ways the rights of women can come under attack.” In fact, the scale of the crisis could be even more severe. The IHME found that if countries meet their sustainable development goals for education and contraception, the global population would actually fall, to between 6.3 and 6.9 billion people, by the end of the century. WORLD AT FIVE Up and downs Predicted changes in population for selected countries: 2017 compared to 2100 Falling population Pe China EEO India 128,360,000 Se 59,720,000 fe 83,290,000 sermany Wa 66,420,000 g 46,390,000 cn 22,910,000 teal 60,600,000 ed 30,540,000 Growing population 206,090,000 Nigeria CT USA in 66,640,000 71,450,000That collapse would have other benefits, notably for the environment, with a sharp reduction in carbon emissions worldwide. Like the conflicted global effort to combat climate change, tackling the demographic crisis will require governments to act sooner rather than later, however, and demand the sort of bold, far-reaching policy decisions that today’s generation of populist leaders has tended to avoid. Mr Bricker said the new report underscored the need for determined action, however. Even the UN’s latest figures last year cut the projected global population peak from 11.2 billion to 10.9 billion. “That’s equivalent to a country the size of the United States, Mr Bricker said. “The UN predicts a higher peak and a slower decline, but no one fundamentally disagrees about the trajectory. “But since the UN study last year, there has been a tendency to push the issue to the back burner. This report shows it can’t stay there.”