Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth

I regularly see articles claiming that civilization is going to collapse because of dramatic population declines. The truth is more nearly the opposite.

Paper from 2023:

Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth Is Exceeding Most Projections and Jeopardising Scenarios for Sustainable Futures

by Jane N. O’Sullivan

The size of the world’s population has profound implications for demand for food, energy and resources, land use change and greenhouse gas emissions. This study examines why most population projections have underestimated world population growth, and the implications for actions required to achieve sustainable societies. The main determinant of future population is family size choices. ...

Unless political will is rapidly restored for voluntary family planning programs, the global population will almost certainly exceed 10 billion, rendering sustainable food security and a safe climate unachievable.

As interviewed last year:

Richard: Fertility rates are declining sharply in OECD countries, and China’s population is now dropping rapidly. Is world population growth in the rear-view mirror, a problem we no longer have to worry about?

Jane: “Declining sharply” and “dropping rapidly” are emotive terms that exaggerate the trends and distract from the far more rapid growth elsewhere. Globally we increase by somewhere between 70 million and 90 million annually, and that pace has been unrelenting for more than 40 years. We don’t have hard evidence that the curve has started to bend, let alone that it is on track to peak any time soon. So, the problem hasn’t gone away, and the impacts of the human population get more serious and intractable every year. ...

Every two or three years, the UN publishes an update of their population estimates and projections. Almost every update this century has revised the world population upward. Their mid-2022 release estimated the mid-2022 population to be 7.975 billion. This was 21 million higher than their 2019 projection anticipated it would be, despite more than 15 million unanticipated deaths due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It was 177 million more than the 2010 projection expected, and 253 million people more than was projected in 2000. Despite their consistent underestimation of growth, their model continues to assume all high-fertility countries are experiencing rapid fertility decline, even though their historical data show they haven’t.

Here is some ominous new research:

A new study published in the open-access journal PLOS One suggests that human populations may need a fertility rate of at least 2.7 children per woman to reliably avoid long-term extinction, significantly higher than the commonly cited replacement level of 2.1. The research was led by Takuya Okabe of Shizuoka University, Japan. ...

In stark contrast to the newly suggested sustainability threshold of 2.7 children per woman, global fertility rates have been steadily declining for decades. According to the United Nations, the global average fertility rate in 2024 was approximately 2.3 and is projected to drop below 2.1 by mid-century.

The authors conclude that true population sustainability – as well as the sustainability of languages, cultural traditions, and diverse family lineages – requires rethinking conventional fertility targets.

The island nation of Japan has a population of 123 million. No, there is no danger of Japanese extinction.

Some minor languages and cultures could go extinct. My guess is that they will be preserved by AI models. English is becoming the universal language, and obscure languages are just a nuisance.