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Japan, Russia Face Big Population Decline ; Study: U.S. Will Reach 420 Million By 2050

Posted on: Wednesday, 18 August 2004, 06:00 CDT

WASHINGTON - Japan, Germany, and many other large industrialized countries face long-term population slowdowns or declines as more young adults have fewer children or delay child-rearing, demographers say.

While the world's population is expected to increase by almost 50 percent by 2050, Japan could lose 20 percent of its population over the next half-century, according to data released Tuesday by the private Population Reference Bureau.

Russia's population is expected to decline by 17 percent, and Germany's by 9 percent.

The United States is the biggest exception among industrialized countries, with its population expected to rise by 43 percent, from 293 million now to 420 million at mid-century.

The U.S. population is expected to keep growing in large part because of immigration.

Some European countries have considered loosening immigration curbs as a way to help fill shortages for highly skilled workers and to build a tax base to replace dwindling funds for programs for the aged.

But the underlying reasons for the population dilemma faced by industrialized nations are mainly socioeconomic, says demographer Martha Farnsworth Riche, former head of the U.S. Census Bureau.

"Modernization" - the way today's economies are built on a more educated workforce - is causing more young adults to think twice about having large families, Riche said.

The annual study found that the world's population will increase nearly 50 percent by mid-century to almost 9.2 billion.

While the population of developed countries would rise 4 percent to more than 1.2 billion, the population in developing nations would surge by 55 percent to more than 8 billion.

Countries in Africa and South Asia would see the largest increases.

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