• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Study Predicts Population Decline for Many Industrialized Countries

Posted on: Thursday, 19 August 2004, 06:00 CDT

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.

While the United States, like other developed nations, has an increasing number of older residents, 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 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 socio-economic, 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 work force - is causing more young adults to think twice about having large families, Riche said. They must consider direct costs, like sending a child to college, and indirect costs, such as a parent having to take time off from a career to raise a child, before staring a family.

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

More News in this Category