United Nations researcher Patrick Gerland along with co-authors recently published an incredibly important article in the journal Science – an article recently featured in the New York Times. The authors argue that contrary to previous estimates, global population is unlikely to peak anytime soon. Rather, the authors see an 80 percent probability that the world’s population, now 7.2 billion, will rise to as much as 12.3 billion by the year 2100.
One of the factors is that the decline of Africa’s fertility rate is proceeding at a slower pace than had been anticipated. Regions with rapid population growth like Africa and South Asia often have lower living standards. The regions may end up with more people than they can comfortably support even as nations in the West and in East Asia find that they have too few young people. Writer Tyler Cowen points to an obvious solution – accelerate immigration.
As a prominent example of how this might benefit the developed world, Japan’s working age population has been in decline since 1997. As its overall population grows older, Japan increasingly needs younger workers to support its growing number of pensioners. They have two options – encourage more childbearing or learn how to accommodate more immigrants.
