World Demographics

While we are waiting for the COVID-delayed 2022 edition of the UN's World Population Prospects publication, I thought it would be interesting to use the old 2019 edition to look at some of the interesting developments in global demography that are often masked by the headline trends with which most of us are familiar, i.e. China/India/USA.

Let us start by looking at the evolving population dynamics of the four next largest nations: Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria.

Here are the numbers from a generation ago (2000):
Indonesia: 212m
Brazil: 175m
Pakistan: 142m
Nigeria: 122m

In 2017, Pakistan overtook Brazil with each nation having approximately 208m people.

As of 2021 the rankings hold but the field has closed up:

Indonesia: 276m
Pakistan: 225m
Brazil: 214m
Nigeria: 211m

In 2022, Nigeria is expected to surpass Brazil with populations of 217m and 215m respectively.

Over the coming years, Pakistan will progressively close the gap on Indonesia, surpassing it by 2048 at 331m people (roughly the population of USA today). Meanwhile Nigeria will downshift and fly past both Pakistan and Indonesia at redline RPMs.

The estimates for 2035 are as follows:

Indonesia: 310m
Nigeria: 295m
Pakistan: 283m
Brazil: 227m

Nigeria is projected to surpass....
Pakistan by 2030 at 263m people.
Indonesia by 2039 at 322m people.
USA by 2047 at 379m people.

I know nationalists want more population but I really want to implement Chinese style Pop control as with coming water insecurity we are doomed

Between 2022 and 2050, WPP2019-Medium projects a net global population gain of 1781m people. Regional breakdown as follows:

Sub-Saharan Africa: +966m
South Asia: +412m
North Africa and West Asia: +211m

South-East Asia: +113m
Latin America & Caribbean: +97m
Northern America (USA/CAN): +52m
Central Asia: +24m
Oceania/AUS/NZ: +14m

Europe: -37m
East Asia: -70m

South Asia is still a strong medium-term contributor but the curve is already bending. Long-term, Sub-Saharan Africa is the last major engine of human population growth left.

The 2022 edition of the UN's World Population Prospects should be published in the . The current edition was published in 2019 so the update is more than welcome.

Ok the 2022 data release is now , though the authors appear to have done their level best to make the data difficult to decipher. I'm still chewing it over, but here's something new:

Pakistan is now projected to overtake USA as the world's fourth-most populous nation around 2053 @ ~375m people.

(Nigeria is still on track to overtake USA as the world's third-most populous nation a couple of years before this.)

Lethe said:

Ok the 2022 data release is now

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, though the authors appear to have done their level best to make the data difficult to decipher. I'm still chewing it over, but here's something new:

Pakistan is now projected to overtake USA as the world's fourth-most populous nation around 2053 @ ~375m people.

(Nigeria is still on track to overtake USA as the world's third-most populous nation a couple of years before this.)

Click to expand...

I always find the population projects super stupid. It never takes in account the carrying capacity of land or educational/wealth growth.

USA is a continent sized country with plenty of resources that can have 1 billion people if the land is fully developed like China. Nigeria is pretty small in a fairly hostile environment for mechanized farming.

Also with educational and wealth growth, Nigeria will suffer the same modern society drip in birth rate as other more developed countries.

PiSigma said:

I always find the population projects super stupid. It never takes in account the carrying capacity of land or educational/wealth growth.

Click to expand...

Projections are always more or less uncertain, sensitive to various assumptions, and of course the further into the future one projects, the greater the level of uncertainty. Nonetheless, the modelling is quite sophisticated and I do think most folks overestimate the uncertainty associated with near-term (i.e. next 20 years or so) projections, because the characteristics of the next generation are more or less baked in to those of the present, which is more or less known. Exogenous factors such as the carrying capacity of the land are rightfully ignored in these projections, but declining birth rates associated with increasing development are certainly taken into account.

In a league of their own: India and China to 2070:



(Population of China here includes Hong Kong and Macau, but not Taiwan)

Lethe said:

In a league of their own: India and China to 2070:

View attachment 93064

(Population of China here includes Hong Kong and Macau, but not Taiwan)

Click to expand...

Good luck to India managing their (sun-baked) population

Other Big Kahunas 2000-2060:

(This is not a complete list of countries with population >150m over the period, as such a chart would be too cluttered to be readable. Rather, it is the "Big Kahunas" of the present and recent past (USA/Indonesia/Brazil) and their principal challengers (Nigeria and Pakistan). Bangladesh, Ethiopia, DR Congo, Tanzania, Philippines and Egypt are all projected to have >150m people by 2060.