Correspondence
5 Lawn JE, Blencowe H, Waiswa P, et al.
For more about the UN World
Population Prospects 2019 see
https://population.un.org/wpp
For more on the Population
Reference Bureau datasheets see
https://www.prb.org/datasheets
See Online for appendix
For more on the Eurostat
Population Database see
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/
web/population-demography-
migration-projections/data/
database
See Online for appendix
580
change, biodiversity loss, and food
Stillbirths: rates, risk factors, and
acceleration towards 2030. Lancet 2016;
387: 587–603.
Stein Vollset and colleagues con­
cluded that the global population
would most likely peak around
2064 with 9·7 billion people. 1
The media have focused on their
claims of economic challenges from
“inverted age pyramids”. Both the
projections and the prognosis are
highly questionable and are doing
a great disservice to women’s
reproductive rights and the global
prospects for environmental security
by undermining political will for
eliminating unwanted births and
ending population growth sooner
rather than later.
One of many reasons for concern
is that Vollset and colleagues’ model
shows an acceleration of fertility
decline in sub-Saharan Africa starting
from 2006.1 This change is important
in setting the trend for future decline.
However, this trend is not seen with
data from the UN or the Population
Reference Bureau (appendix). This
absence of evidence could suggest
that the model is already over­
estimating the extent to which
increases in educational attainment
have reduced fertility. By modelling
completed cohort fertility at age
50 years against average educational
attainment at age 25 years, the
25-year lag misses the slowdown of
fertility decline from the late 1990s,2
which has been more strongly
linked to waning family planning
programmes than to educational
attainment.3,4
More concerning is their unfounded
claim that employment, and therefore
gross domestic product, will depend
on working-age proportion. The
countries with the greatest extent
of population ageing, such as Japan
and Germany, have seen no such
decline in employment, only an
increase in workforce participation.
When population decline offers so
much benefit for minimising climate
with met need for contraception and
insecurity, it is irresponsible to use
an untested assumption to advocate
boosting growth, as Vollset and
colleagues do.
I declare no competing interests.
Jane N O’Sullivan
j.osullivan@uq.edu.au
School of Agriculture and Food Sciences,
University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 2072,
Australia
1 Vollset SE, Goren E, Yuan C-W, et al. Fertility,
mortality, migration, and population scenarios
for 195 countries and territories from
2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the
Global Burden of Disease Study. Lancet 2020;
396: 1285–306.
2 Bongaarts J. Fertility transitions in developing
countries: progress or stagnation?
Stud Fam Plan 2008; 39: 105–10.
3 de Silva T, Tenreyro S. Population control
policies and fertility convergence.
J Econ Perspect 2017; 31: 205–28.
4 Sinding SW. Population, poverty and
economic development.
Phil Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2009;
364: 3023–30.
As scientists and stakeholders in the
field of population, we are concerned
that the highly publicised popula­
tion forecasts by Stein Vollset and
colleagues,1 and their models, data,
and underlying assumptions, have not
received enough critical scrutiny.
For example, some of the baseline
data differ substantially from other
available datasets derived from
global (eg, the UN) and national
or regional statistical offices (eg,
Eurostat), and the migration scen­
arios deliver seemingly contra­
dictory results. Observed data for
completed cohort fertility of women
at age 50 years who were born
between 1955 and 1968 were used
to partly project completed cohort
fertility of women at age 50 years
for younger cohorts who were born
in 1969–2002 with incomplete
fertility histories. These two datasets
were jointly used to project future
completed cohort fertility of women
at age 50 years born in 2003–85,
which can be found in the appendix.1
We believe that the resulting fertility
scenarios rest on highly uncertain
estimates of the share of women
its projected future trends. On the
contrary, the mortality assumptions
appear conservative in the context
of research on the gains in longevity
in the past century. 2 Problematic
conceptions of the working-age
population and measures of ageing
were used, which do not account for
changes in characteristics at either
the individual or population level.
Vollset and colleagues adopt an
overly simplistic approach to complex
social processes, such as migration
theory and policy, and the conceptual
relationship between access to
family planning and universal
fertility outcomes. Simplistic views
of the relationship between shifting
population dynamics and climate
change, the economy, and health
systems are repeated in many of
the authors’ representations to the
media.
The Article notes “A very real danger
exists that, in the face of declining
population, some states might
consider adopting policies that restrict
female reproductive health rights and
access to services.” It is for precisely
this reason that projections of fast
declines in fertility and population
require greater critical scrutiny than
ever before.
SG-B and TS have been involved in the
development of the Wittgenstein Center for
Demography and Global Human Capital forecasts.
Signatories of this Correspondence are listed in the
appendix.
Editorial note: the Lancet Group takes a neutral
position with respect to territorial claims in
published maps and institutional affiliations.
*Stuart Gietel-Basten, Tomas Sobotka
sgb@ust.hk
Center for Aging Science and Division of Social
Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region, China (SG-B); Vienna
Institute of Demography (Austrian Academy of
Sciences), Wittgenstein Center for Demography and
Global Human Capital, Vienna, Austria (TS)
1 Vollset SE, Goren E, Yuan C-W, et al. Fertility,
mortality, migration, and population scenarios
for 195 countries and territories from
2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the
Global Burden of Disease Study. Lancet 2020;
396: 1285–306.
www.thelancet.com Vol 398 August 14, 2021

2 Lee R. Mortality forecasts and linear life
expectancy trends. In: Bengtsson T, Keilman N,
eds. Old and new perspectives on mortality
forecasting. Demographic research
monographs (a series of the Max Planck
Institute for Demographic Research).
Dordrecht: Springer, 2019: 167–83.
New population forecasts by
Stein Vollset and colleagues1 predict
lower global population growth than
do other forecasts—for instance, the
one published by the UN.2 Vollset
and colleagues assume relatively low
fertility in the future compared with
UN and other forecasts, which leads to
low population growth.
I believe that fertility is not
adequately modelled in the new
forecasts. Vollset and colleagues
assume that the educational level
of women is an important driver for
future fertility levels. Indeed, highly
educated women tend to have fewer
children than do women with little
or no education, both in low-income
and high-income countries. However,
not only does education affect
fertility but also the reverse is true:
fertility influences school attendance.
Adolescent girls and young women
(ie, aged approximately 15–25 years)
with one or more children have
fewer opportunities to attend school
than do women without children,
as shown by studies in Bangladesh,
Malawi, and Zambia,3 Norway,4 and
Denmark.5
A model that includes a two-way
association between fertility and
education will predict higher fertility
levels in countries where women have
little education, compared with the
model that was used by Vollset and
colleagues. Little schooling leads to
high fertility, which, in turn, causes
decreased education. At the same
time, fertility levels will be lower
in countries where women have a
lot of schooling when the two-way
association is modelled compared with
the unidirectional model of Vollset
and colleagues. I suspect that the new
forecasts predict too few births in low-
income countries and particularly in
sub-Saharan African countries.
www.thelancet.com Vol 398 August 14, 2021
I declare no competing interests.
Nico Keilman
nico.keilman@econ.uio.no
Department of Economics, University of Oslo,
N 0951 Oslo, Norway
1 Vollset SE, Goren E, Yuan C-W, et al. Fertility,
mortality, migration, and population scenarios
for 195 countries and territories from
2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the
Global Burden of Disease Study. Lancet 2020;
396: 1285–306.
2 UN Department of Economic and Social
Affairs Population Division. World
population prospects 2019, vol I:
comprehensive tables. New York, NY:
United Nations, 2019.
3 Psaki SR, Soler-Hampejsek E, Saha J,
Mensch BS, Amin S. The effect of adolescent
childbearing on literacy and numeracy in
Bangladesh, Malawi, and Zambia. Demography
2019; 56: 1899–929.
4 Cohen JE, Kravdal Ø, Keilman N. Childbearing
impeded education more than education
impeded childbearing among Norwegian
women. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2011;
108: 11830–35.
5 Gerster M, Ejrnæs M, Keiding N. The causal
effect of educational attainment on completed
fertility for a cohort of Danish women:
does feedback play a role? Stat Biosci 2014;
6: 204–22.
Authors’ reply
We appreciate the opportunity to
respond to comments regarding our
Article.1
Nanna Maaløe and colleagues
suggest that we should use child
survival as a covariate in our fertility
model. The hypothesis that child
mortality is a predictor of fertility
rates has been debated in the field of
demography for some time. Although
there is evidence that a relationship
exists between child mortality and
fertility rates, the causal pattern
between these two measures is
not well established.2 We modelled
fertility with female educational
attainment and contraceptive met
need as covariates. These covariates
are well established as major
predictors of fertility,3 and together
they explained a large proportion of
the past variance in fertility. When
we added survival rates for children
younger than 5 years to the model,
the explained variance increased
modestly, from 80·5% to 83·1%.
We appreciate the feedback and will
continue to improve our fertility
Correspondence
model in future iterations. We are,
however, reluctant to base policy
scenarios on covariates with an
uncertain foundation for a causal
effect.
Jane N O’Sullivan is critical of our
projections and claims that we are
undermining population control
policies and women’s reproductive
rights. We do not agree. We explicitly
stated how important it is to protect
women’s reproductive rights in our
Article. Pretending that decreases in
fertility do not exist does not solve
the problem of overpopulation. As
an example of where our estimates
fail, she points to the acceleration of
fertility decline that our estimates
show from around 2006. Her
claim that our fertility trend for
sub-Saharan Africa deviated from the
estimates from the UN is incorrect.
UN 4 estimates showed a similar
slope to ours, and the UN values are
closer to ours than those from the
Population Reference Bureau. We
have redrawn O’Sullivan’s figure from
the appendix with the addition of the
2019 estimates from the UN World
Pascal Deloche/Godong/Universal Images Group/
Population Prospects (appendix).
Furthermore, O’Sullivan finds
our calculation of countries’ gross
domestic product (GDP) from
forecasts of GDP per worker and
future working-age populations
Getty Images
concerning. Our approach is based
on out-of-sample predictive validity
evidence that GDP is more accurately For more on the Population
estimated from growth rates for Reference Bureau datasheets
see https://www.prb.org/
GDP per worker than from GDP per datasheets
capita.5 We are aware that limitations See Online for appendix
with this approach include the
potential for future compensatory
mechanisms to protect GDP under
declining working-age populations: for
example, increasing female workforce
participation, delaying retirement,
and increasing automation of major
economic sectors.
Stuart Gietel-Basten and
Tomas Sobotka are concerned that
our models, data, and underlying
assumptions have not received
enough scrutiny. As with the Global
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