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By 2050, three quarters of the world will not replace its deceased population
The demographic clock is moving towards an unprecedented scenario: by 2050, three out of every four countries will not have enough births to replace those who die.
This is the warning from a study by the Instituto de Métrica y Evaluación de la Salud at the Universidad de Washington, published in The Lancet. The decline in global fertility, quiet but steady, will shape the coming decades.
The most visible consequence will be an ageing world population. Advanced economies, with fewer births and a shrinking workforce, will face a new social balance: more pensioners, fewer workers, and public systems under strain. At the same time, countries with higher birth rates will, for the most part, remain the least developed.
Is this population decline a tragedy or an inevitable transformation? For Melinda Mills, director of the Centro Leverhulme de Ciencias Demográficas de Oxford, the answer is not obvious. “Do we really need to maintain the size of the population? Each country has different needs and densities,” she reflects.
Rather than a crisis, it could be the beginning of a global reconfiguration. The key will be how each society adapts to this new demographic order.