Seven Billion Population This Fall

We all know that all the peoplewill be entering into modern life and be economically incentivized to havesmall families.  These populations willthen flatline and struggle to maintain replacement.

However at that point, longerlives should establish a global population approaching ten billion.  We also should have mostly sorted out the nicetiesof global governance and the integration of free energy into the economicsystem.

We would then be best placed toorganize directed terraforming efforts and the concomitant population expansionto make it possible.  Regreening the Sahara alone will need a couple of billion people.

My point is that furtherpopulation expansion through ten billion is well within what we presently areable to do.  Much beyond that, we aredealing with pioneering waste lands.

World population projected to hit 7 billion on Oct. 31

BY ELIZABETHLEAHY MADSEN

3 MAY 2011 4:05 PM

http://www.grist.org/population/2011-05-03-world-population-projected-to-hit-7-billion-on-oct.-31-says-un

Today, the United Nations announced that the world's population willreach an historic 7 billion people on Oct. 31, 2011. World population hit 1billion people in 1804. It took 123 years to add the next billion, but less thana century to cruise past the next four billion -- from 2 billion people in 1927to 6 billion people in 1999.

The U.N.'sPopulation Division also projected that the world will reach just over 10billion by 2100, a number based on many uncertain assumptions about the future.Demographic projections are often mistaken for predictions, but they only showus what would happen if today's demographic trends follow specific paths. Andwe all know that change is inevitable. We also know that if millions of womencontinue to have problems accessing contraception, and lack economic andeducational opportunities, these numbers could go up even more.

The U.N.'s projections -- presented in the 2010 revision of WorldPopulation Prospects -- offer only a few scenarios and are based onpotential changes in policies, services, and behaviors. They do not account forall the realities we see on the ground, where in some countries, women are notgetting the family-planning services they want. The decisions and policies wemake today will ultimately determine whether our numbers climb to anywhere from8 billion to 11 billion by mid-century.

The U.N. projections show some striking changes in countries' projectedpopulations for 2050. Forty countries' populations are projected to at leastdouble in the next 40 years, including Afghanistan,Iraq, and Yemen.Nigeria's population for 2050 is projected to jump by 150 percent, from 158million to 390 million.

Many of these increases in projected population, especially those insub-Saharan Africa, are due to persistentlyhigh fertility rates. The projections assume that the average number ofchildren per woman will begin falling in such countries, but this is often arosy assumption. For example, Nigeria'sfertility rate for 2010-2015 was previously projected to be 4.8 children perwoman, but has now been revised to 5.4. This difference contributes to a muchlarger total population by 2050.

Still, the assumptions built into the projections for manyhigh-fertility countries would require major increases in the use of familyplanning. Nigeria's fertility rate, measured [PDF]at almost six children per woman in 2008, is projected to fall to slightly overthree children by 2050. This is highly unlikely if current trends continue,because only 10 percent of married women in Nigeria use effectivecontraception, while 20 percent want to avoid pregnancy but aren't usingfamily-planning services. Until their health-care needs and rights arefulfilled, the demographic future the U.N. has projected for Africa'slargest nation seems too optimistic.

U.N. population projections -- will we follow the high, medium, or lowpath?The projections may also be optimistic for countries at the oppositeextreme, with very low fertility rates. Fertility rates in Japan, Korea,and Russiahave declined significantly since the late 1980s. Their rates are now 1.4children or less, which would lead to significant population decline. The U.N.projects that their rates will rise by at least 30 percent by 2050, but thatmay be based on faulty assumptions. Some researchers believe these very lowfertility rates are linked to gender inequities and difficulty balancing workand family. If societies don't become more woman-friendly and family-friendly,these fertility rates may not rise. As it turns out, a lack of opportunitiesfor women may be the driving force behind both very high and very low fertilityrates.

The surprising assumptions underlying some countries' fertility ratesreflect one of the key features of the population projections. In the past, theprojections were constructed using a technique that, in the U.N. mediumfertility projection, assumed all countries would move toward a universalfertility rate of 1.85 children per woman. High and low fertility projectionsonly varied from the medium by 0.5 children per woman in either direction.

This universal rate was highly improbable among countries at thedemographic extremes, and the U.N. has now recognized that its past projectionsdid not allow for unpredictable demographic transitions within individualcountries. Ugandais a dramatic example of this. The previous revision of the U.N.'s WorldPopulation Prospects showed that the country's fertility rate had fallenby about half a child per woman -- less than 8 percent-between 1950 and 2010.Yet that report projected that the country's fertility rate would decline by 60percent, to less than three children per woman, by 2050.

Starting with today's new set of projections, the U.N. has shifted to a"probabilistic" model for its medium-fertility scenario. This allowsthe pace of each country's fertility decline to be calculated individually,based on new estimates of historic fertility rates, allowing for much morevariance across countries. The new method also assumes that fertility rateswill eventually balance out around 2.1 children per woman, a level wherecouples would "replace" themselves in the population, rather than1.85. And the projections now extend out to 2100, and incorporate lifeexpectancies ranging as high as 90+ years.

These U.N. changes add greater nuance to population projections, butthey are still far from a crystal ball. Policymakers must take the next step andinvest in family planning and education for the projections to ever meetreality.