Huge population boom expected in developing world
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UNITED NATIONS - The world's population - already more than double what it was in 1950 - is projected to boom by 3 billion more in the next half-century, a new U.N. study says.
Africa and Asia will dwarf Europe, even with the staggering toll of AIDS, the study says.
Today, there are about 6.1 billion people in the world. By 2050, that figure is expected to swell to 9.3 billion. Nearly nine of every 10 people will live in a developing country, one out of six in India alone, according to the study, to be released today by the U.N. Population Division.
And while AIDS is projected to kill hundreds of millions more in Africa, the number of people in the world's 48 poorest nations, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, is expected to triple in the next 50 years.
Meanwhile, dropping birthrates make it imperative for Europe and Japan to rethink their immigration policies and adjust social services to accommodate a shrinking work force and a growing elderly population, division director Joseph Chamie said.
"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."
The projections are a hint of what Chamie called an upcoming "new order" - an older, larger, poorer world dependent on migration to fill the gap between nations that cannot feed their people and wealthy countries seeking a labor force.
But Ben Wattenberg, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, cautioned that the study's estimates could be potentially misleading.
The fertility rate - the average number of children born to a woman during her childbearing years - is dropping faster and more consistently worldwide than the U.N. report suggests, making it likely that the 2050 population estimate is inflated, Wattenberg said. "Their numbers are high - they should be lower."
The report says that taking into account improved economies as well as lower mortality and fertility rates, growth will be rapid in Africa, much of Asia and Latin America. 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, the study says.
Europe, in contrast, will start seeing a decline as early as 2003 without migration. Ukraine's population is projected to drop by nearly 40 percent by 2050, Russia's by 28 percent, Italy's by a quarter. Last year, the 15 European Union nations together recorded a natural population growth - births minus deaths - of 343,000. It took India a week to match that.
Fifty years ago, Europe claimed 22 percent of the world population, Africa just 8 percent. In 50 years, Africa will have three times as many people as Europe, even though AIDS is expected to cut Africa's population growth by 15 percent by 2050.
Meanwhile, the industrialized world - Europe, North America, 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 37 percent, the report predicts.
Fewer workers will bear the burden of supporting its many elderly, an economic effect that Paul Hewitt of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said could prove catastrophic when many of the world's baby boomers begin retiring en masse.
"It's probably going to be the biggest crisis of the next 50 years," said Hewitt, project director for the center's Global Aging Initiative. "If we handle it wrong, we could end up with a 1930s-style depression."