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Population, Ageing, AIDS: Key Challenges Over Next 50 Years
China Daily
Beijing, China
July 26, 2005
Massive population growth in the poorest countries, global ageing, and the battle against the AIDS virus will be the key challenges for the international community over the next 50 years, according to an international conference that concluded in Paris at the weekend.
This month the world's population crossed the 6.5 billion mark. But the increase has slowed from a 2-per cent annual rise in the 1960s to 1.2 per cent today with the 9-billion-mark expected to be cracked around 2050.
Falling fertility rates in Europe, Latin America and Asia have contributed to this slowdown. In China, home to 1.3 billion people, the number of children per woman has fallen to 1.7 from a peak of 7.5 in the 1960s.
However in Africa fertility rates remain high and populations are predicted to rise rapidly, tripling by 2050 in a number of countries including Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Uganda.
Demographer John Cleland of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said that population increase could contribute more to deepening poverty than HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa, where the population is predicted to rise from 750 million to 1.7 billion during this period.
In Europe and Asia falling birth rates and longer life expectancy are leading to an aging of the world's population.
According to UN figures, 20 per cent of today's population in developed countries are over 60 and by 2050 that proportion is projected to rise to 32 per cent.
"If nothing is done, the aging of the population will lead to a reduction in the workforce, a fall in economic growth and large shortages of labour," said Martine Durand, an economist with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Raising the retirement age is one of a number of politically difficult policy options facing governments along with increased immigration, encouraging people to have more children and employment creation, as they try to counter the economic effects of having a shrinking workforce and growing number of retirees.
Durand said governments in developed countries are already taking measures to delay retirement. Italy, Finland, Spain, Norway and France have already restricted the possibility of early retirement while Austria, Switzerland and Belgium have raised the legal age of retirement.
Due to falling fertility rates, immigration will continue to play an important role for a number of countries, particularly in Europe, over the next 25 years.
"Without immigration a number of European countries would experience a substantial fall in their populations," said Serge Feld of the University of Liege in Belgium.
Only Finland and France will be increasing their populations largely from natural population growth.
Increasing life expectancy is the other driver in the aging process with people in rich countries expected to live to an average of 82 years by 2050 compared to 76 years today, according to UN figures.
In the 50 least developed countries average lifespan is also expected to rise from 51 to 67, a figure which is conditional on the implementation of government programmes to treat HIV-infected people and stop the spread of the virus.
Life expectancy in southern Africa, which has the highest HIV infection rate in the world, has fallen from 62 years in 1990-95 to 48 years in 2000-05. It is set to drop further " to 43 years over the next decade" before a slow recovery starts.
Some 3 million people died of AIDS related illnesses in 2004 while 5 million people became infected taking the global total to 40 million.
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