Ukraine's population to drop by 40 percent in 50 years - U.N. report

The Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 28 - Over the next 50 years, the world's poorest nations will triple in size - while its richest will shrink, a new U.N. study predicts.

The world, 6.1 billion people strong today, is anticipated to reach 9.3 billion by 2050, the U.N. Population Division estimated in a report issued Feb. 28. Nine of every 10 people will be living in a developing country, one of six in India alone.

Meanwhile, Europe and Japan will see their populations plummet, forcing them to rethink immigration policies and adjust social services to accommodate a shrinking work force and a growing elderly population, said Joseph Chamie, director of the U.N. Population Division.

"Some people think the world population problem is over," he said. "No. This is a long-term issue and it's a very complex symphony - you have some countries declining, you have other countries growing rapidly, and you have some staying the same. When you add those up, you have a very complex world."

"Virtually all of this growth is in the developing world - and a good part of it is in the poorest countries," he added.

The projections are a hint of what Chamie calls an upcoming "new order" - a world that is larger, older and poorer, and one that will depend heavily on migration.

Growth will be phenomenal in Africa, much of Asia and Latin America, the study projected. The United States, with a fresh influx of 1 million immigrants a year, will grow - to nearly 400 million at mid-century from 283 million today, it said.

Europe, in contrast, will start seeing a decline as early as 2003 without migration.

Ukraine's population is projected to drop nearly by 40 percent by 2050, and Russia and Italy's more than a quarter.

Last year, the 15 European Union nations together recorded a natural population growth - births minus deaths - of 343,000. It took India just a week to match that. Already burdened by a population of 1 billion, India is anticipated to have 600 million more people by 2050.

Fifty years ago, Europe claimed 22 percent of the world population, Africa just 8 percent. Today, they stand even at about 13 percent, outnumbered by Asia's 60 percent. But in 50 years, Africa will have three times as many people as Europe, even with AIDS-related deaths.

"It's like a mortality avalanche from the HIV/AIDS epidemic," Chamie said. "Despite that, you see Africa going from about 800 million to 2 billion" by 2050. Without AIDS, that figure would be 300 million higher, Chamie projected.

Meanwhile, the industrialized world - Europe, North American, Japan, Australia and New Zealand - will face an aging population. A fifth of Europe was age 60 or older in 1998; by 2050, that figure could jump to more than a third, with children making up only 14 percent of the population, the report said.

The U.N. projections take into account economic gains as well as lower mortality and fertility rates. But Ben Wattenberg, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, cautioned that the estimates could be "potentially misleading."

The fertility rate - the average number of children born to a woman over the course of childbearing years - is dropping faster and more consistently worldwide than the U.N. report suggests, making it likely that the 2050 estimate is inflated, he said.

"Their numbers are high - they should be lower," he said.

If the predictions do play out, fewer workers will be bearing the burden of supporting the elderly, an economic impact that Paul Hewitt of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said could prove "catastrophic" when many of the world's baby boomers - now in their 40s and 50s - begin retiring en masse.

Countries must rethink pension, retirement, trade and immigration, he said. "This is very controversial, but I think it all points the way to globalization. Labor-short countries will need to integrate more with the developing world."

KPnews.com
28 Feb 2001

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