POPULATION: Poorer Nations Top With High Growth Rates

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 23 1999 (IPS) - Five of the world’s developing nations – India, China, Pakistan, Indonesia and Nigeria – account for nearly 50 percent of the world’s population growth, according to latest statistics from the United Nations.

The current world population is about 5.9 billion people and, in October, is expected to reach the 6.0 billion mark.

Joseph Chamie, director of the UN’s Population Division, says the world population is growing by 78 million people per year. India had the largest share of the growth at 21 percent, or about 16 million people, followed by China, with a 15 percent contribution, or 11 million people.

Addressing the UN Commission on Population and Development, Chamie projected an increase of 3.0 billion people in the next 50 years in the developing world – rising from the present 4.8 billion to 7.8 billion by 2050.

But the population of the more developed industrial nations would remain essentially unchanged: at around 1.2 billion.

India alone is expected to grow by 50 percent over the next five decades, from one billion to 1.53 billion. In 2050, India would have the largest population in the world.

Demographers have argued that the world’s population may have grown even faster if not for the drop in fertility rates.

Chamie said that 50 years ago, couples in developing countries were having an average of six children. Today, the average was slightly less than three. “Few in the 1950s were bold enough to declare that fertility would drop so rapidly,” he said.

For example, in 1950, China’s fertility rate was among the highest in the world, at approximately 6.2 children per couple. But the present fertility rate was well below replacement level, at 1.8 children per couple. Chamie said that there was also significant fertility declines in Vietnam, Brazil and Kenya.

In the richer nations, however, fertility transition had gone from an average of about three children per couple in the early 1950s to 1.5 children per couple today, well below replacement levels.

Chamie said the populations of 30 countries, including Germany and Japan, were expected to decline. Very low fertility levels, he said, not only led to population decline but also to rapid population ageing.

The United Nations has predicted that life expectancy will increase by some 10 years over the next half century, from the current 66 years to 76 years.

Chamie recalled a French delegate once urging the Commission to consider the possibility that human longevity could reach as high as 120 or even 150 years because of advances in technology, medical science and bio engineering. These advances, the Frenchman had predicted, would extend life expectancy at birth to nearly double its current level.

“My own projections are not as bold,” Chamie said.

Under-Secretary-General Nitin Desai told the Commission that there were many changes that had occured in the last century, including changes in life expectancy and population dynamics. And significantly more countries had encountered demographic transitions.

Desai said that the most important thing was that global population numbers had not fully captured the diversity of population trends.

For example, it did not reflect the toll taken on many countries by Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which is reponsible for transmitting the deadly disease. The population numbers, he said, did not also take into account the consequences of political and civil conflicts throughout the world.

Over the past few years, he said, there had been a growing interest in a more coordinated follow-up to the major UN conferences held since 1990.

“There were certainly themes that cut across those conferneces, such as issues relating to the availability of financial resources, children, women and education. For that reason, it was necessary that the work of the United Nations at all levels be better coordinated,” Desai said.

Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), said that on operational matters, reproductive health was UNFPA’s primary focus accounting for more than 60 percent of total programme allocations.

A major concern was to develop effective programmes, promoting reproductive and sexual health within a human rights framework.

In that area, she said, some of the priorities included: combating the spread of HIV infections; encouraging programmes to protect reproductive health of adolescents; reducing maternal mortaltity, improving reproductive health services for refugees and women displaced by civil conflict; and minimizing recourse to abortion by makign safe, effective, appropriate family planning universally available.

She said that in order to help meet the need for regular and timely data, the UNFPA was providing, among other things, extensive support for censuses to be held in the year 2000.