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World population not only grows, but grows old
Monday, October 31, 2011
By: Joel Achenbach
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Mind control is closer than you think
The graying of the planet
World population not only grows, but grows old
View Photo Gallery --  The world's population will reach 7 billion on Oct. 31, according to the U.N. Here are the 12 countries with the largest populations in the world.
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The planet as a whole doesn't have a baby shortage. Every minute of every day, according to the Population Reference Bureau, the number of births exceeds the number of deaths by 158. But the growth isn't spread evenly. Of the net increase, 154 are in the developing world.
Ethiopia and Germany have roughly the same population today, but Ethiopia's is expected to more than double in the next four decades while Germany's is projected to shrink by 10 million people.
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Life expectancy at birth
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Life expectancy at birth
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Explore changes in the world's population
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Explore changes in the world's population
The demographic transition is a significant factor in the financial crisis in Europe and the ongoing debt debate in the United States. In both places, the number of workers will steadily and dramatically decrease in relation to retirees. In the United States, the ratio of working-age people to retirement-age people will go from about 5-to-1 to 3-to-1 in the next two decades, according to the Census Bureau.
And America is a juvenile country compared with Japan, where, by mid-century, the 65-plus cohort will reach 40 percent of the population. If the trend holds, there will be just one working-age person per Japanese retiree.
"It's a big, big social change. Lots of things are going to be disrupted," said Ted C. Fishman, author of "Shock of Gray," a 2010 book whose subtitle frames the issue comprehensively: "The Aging of the World's Population and How It Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation."
Fishman points out that this isn't all bad, although it is a challenge:
"Longer life is what human beings have wanted ever since we started talking to spirits and mixing herbs in bowls. And we worked at the top of our intelligence to get to this point of our life. It took almost the sum total of human history to get it. And now we have to work at the top of our intelligence to solve the social challenges that come with longer life and aging societies."
The global transition to lower fertility has many factors, including a basic change in attitudes toward children. In societies with high infant mortality or without social programs to support the elderly, parents desired many children as a kind of insurance. And in some countries, having lots of children was considered a patriotic duty. For example, at one point under Mao Zedong, China made heroines of women who had large families. In the 1970s, China abruptly reversed course and instituted a coercive one-child policy that sent the nation's birthrate into free fall.
It's unclear how big the human population will get. The planet added a billion people, net, in the past dozen years (and is now more than twice as crowded as it was when Barack Obama was born). The most likely scenario, the United Nations said, will put the population at 10 billion at the end of this century and growing only modestly. But a relatively small uptick in the predicted fertility rate could result in a world with 16 billion people; a down-tick could mean a drop to 6 billion.
Washington Post article
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