“IMPLICATIONS ARE IMMENSE”
“We are facing staggering social change through the 21st century,” he said in a statement.
IHME researcher Natalia Bhattacharjee said the “implications are immense”.
“These future trends in fertility rates and live births will completely reconfigure the global economy and the international balance of power and will necessitate reorganising societies,” she said.
“Once nearly every country’s population is shrinking, reliance on open immigration will become necessary to sustain economic growth.”
However, World Health Organization (WHO) experts urged caution for the projections.
They pointed out several limitations of the models, particularly a lack of data from many developing nations.
Communication about the figures “should not be sensationalised, but nuanced, balancing between gloom and optimism,” the WHO experts wrote in The Lancet.
They also pointed out that there can be benefits of having a smaller population, such as for the environment and food security. But there are disadvantages for labour supply, social security and “nationalistic geopolitics”.
Teresa Castro Martin, a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council not involved in the study, also emphasised that these are just projections.
She pointed out that the Lancet study predicts the global fertility rate will fall below replacement levels around 2030, “whereas the United Nations predicts this to occur around 2050”.
The study was an update of the IHME’s Global Burden of Disease study. The organisation, set up at the University of Washington by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has become a global reference for health statistics.
Source: CNA
