UN releases World Population Prospects (WPP)

Context

Recently, the United Nations has released the 2022 edition of the World Population Prospects (WPP).

The Population Division of the UN has been publishing the WPP in a biennial cycle since 1951.
Each revision of the WPP provides a historical time series of population indicators starting in 1950.
It does so by taking into account newly released national data to revise estimates of past trends in fertility, mortality or international migration.

The world’s population continues to grow, but the pace of growth is slowing down.
The global population is expected to grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100.
In 2020, the global growth rate fell under 1% per year for the first time since 1950.

Rates of population growth vary significantly across countries and regions.
More than half of the projected increase in global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries- Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.
Disparate growth rates among the world’s largest countries will re-order their ranking by size.

The population of older persons is increasing both in numbers and as a share of the total.
The share of the global population aged 65 years or above is projected to rise from 10% in 2022 to 16% in 2050.
The report suggests measures for ageing population by improving the sustainability of social security and pension systems and by establishing universal health care and long-term care systems.

A sustained drop in fertility has led to an increased concentration of the population at working ages (between 25 and 64 years), creating an opportunity for accelerated economic growth per capita.
This shift in the age distribution provides a time-bound opportunity for accelerated economic growth known as the “demographic dividend”.

This is having important impacts on population trends for some countries.
For high-income countries between 2000 and 2020, the contribution of international migration to population growth (net inflow of 80.5 million) exceeded the balance of births over deaths (66.2 million).
Over the next few decades, migration will be the sole driver of population growth in high-income countries.
In many of these countries, the outflows were due to temporary labour movements, such as for Pakistan (net flow of -16.5 million), India (-3.5 million), Bangladesh (-2.9 million), Nepal (-1.6 million) etc.