I am Jonathan Tomkin from the University of Illinois So we have looked at the past of Japan and used

it to predict the future. Let's look at some other countries around the world. You know, I am going to
show you some UN generated data sets of the population periods for the countries in the different
stages in the demographic transition. This is a very youthful pyramid very youthful pyramids tend to
be spread out at the base So they are not exactly pyramid shape, a lot ike triangles and these things
are cases for there is lot of potential for the future population growth. because there is lots of
people who haven't entered the fertility ages yet, those people below the age of 15. So, Afghanistan
which we have already discussed has a very high fertility rate has displayed out structure at the base
here Male are show in blue and Female in yellow and you can see there is a very large group of
people slightly lighter colors which indicates the people who are just entering the pre family
builiding stage. So there is a lot of potential here for the population to increase. A more classic
pyramid structure might be a place like the Phillipines. Its still very youthful. We describe is as
youthful population pyramid, but in this case, the pyramid is not swayed at the base its a little bit
flatter In fact you can actually see that the age groups of 0-4, 5-9 are actually pretty similar to one
another. So, This is suggesting that perhaps the Phillipines is also entering a stage of demographic
transition Transitional countries and United States is a good example of that still experience some
population growth. So They haven't gone through the whole demographic experience of transition
period to stage IV The fertility rates are still higher than death rates. But if you look at the younger
age groups you can see that there is that start of that fat structure so you no longer have that wide
period base, but instead as we see in this example of Mexico that we can see that the age groups
between 0-5, 5-10 and upto 20 in this case are very flattened stable, so this is suggesting that the
future is building towards one of those more stable population where death rates and fertility rates
are the same Other countries have gone through this process We looked at Japan, another good
example is Germany Germany has that wedge or cup shape, so we call it mature country. These
mature countries are actually experiencing net population decreases. Some countries like Germany
might also experience an immigration, which might balance that. But if we look at this just in terms
of fertility vs death rates we can see that the population of future of Germany will be lower than it is
today. because there are far less people in the pre-family stage. There are far less people age
between 0-20 than there are in the older age groups. In particular, Here we see that in Germany the
biggest people are in the age group of forties. These are the people who are leaving their family
formation stage are leaving that additional growth stage So the thing to watch out for mature
countries is that the base of the pyramid is thinner and is not as wide as for the older cohorts So the
demographers who use this to predict the future This graph shows the yearly growth rate of the
world population vs the year. Historically, we can see this being a big change. There is quite a bit of
variation early on, like just after 60's we talked about the impact of cold war effects like Gen X, Baby
Boomers and so on. But nevertheless, the world population growth today is about 1% and it is being
historically trending down. Based on what demographers know about world population shapes, they
expect this trend to nearly continue Most this means that by about the mid-century population
growth will be about half of what it is today. So the growth will be slowed from 1% per year to about
1/2% per year This is just the same as so many patterns we have seen in the past. If you look at this
graph you can see that around 1980s i.e. around 30 years ago, the world's population growth rate
was almost double what is today It was about 1.8% per year So the world seems to be on the path to
lower and lower rates of yearly increase. This means,however. we will continue to see more and
more people on the earth over the next few decades. Note the fattening of this pyramid at this time.
This shows the world population pyramid providing 1950, 2010 and then projections for 2050 and
end of the century 2100 So, in the begining 1950s, this was almost 60 years ago we see a fairly
classic shape. Its a wide based and very pyramidal. The world today is actually in a transitional shape,
the base is quite fat but its also flat. So In other words, the people who are being born today are not
very different from the number of people who were born 10 years ago or 20 years ago. But the
population continues to increase even though this base does not continue to get fatter If we look at
the world in 2050, the number of people who are in age between 0-10 is about the same as today.
The reason why there are many more people is because less people are dying. So the reason we are
seeing of this population growth rate around the world today is not because there is going to be a
jump in number of people being born relative to today, its because the people who are being born
are going to live and are going to live for longer. So in some ways, the world increase in population is
very hopeful theme because it indicates that people lives are getting better, more secure and
healthier. The predictions are very difficult beyond 2050 because there could be lot of culture
changes, there could be technological changes. We have made very firm predictions that you will see
that United Nations has a range of ideas about what the world population might be at the end of this
century. But if the world population of developing countries follows the same pattern as we saw in
developed countries, we would expect to see this transition to more mature age structure and this
means we will get what we will see here in 2050 and 2100 where we have this very flat block shaped
structure where the world population is relatively stable and the death rate is really have been
abated until people reach old age. So the sort of thing that killed people in the past pandemics,
communicable diseases, poor diet and lack of nutrition are things that are being eliminated and
that's why people are living so much longer. and if this is the case, we expect to see this flat
maturized structure. So the UN then has several different world population projections made
depend on different presumptions. You can read more about this from the readings. But I'll tell you
that the favorite model has about century in population so that is the number of people at the end
of this century of about 10 billion people Don't forget there are 7 billion today. So that's a fairly
significant increase. The other thing this favorite model which is the orange line, if we look at this
dataset we can see the historical trend data going back is the black and you have very good data in
blue from the modern era and the three different colors - red, yellow and green are the different in-
member scenarios the United Nation looked out that the preferred model yellow one - growth really
becomes flat by mid-century and the end of the century So we might see a popualtion of around 10
billion by 2050 and then population might not change by end of the century. So this suggests that if
we look at that yellow curve, which is their most favorite curve, that we have an S shaped population
growth pattern So that's a stable population growth pattern which wouldn't an opportunity to go
through a crash, unless of course, we are already be on the world's carrying capacity. The red line
assumes the population doesn't follow the trend that we have seen in the past that fertility rates go
up rather than come down in the countries. In this case we might see at one point 16 billion people
at the end of the century. On the other hand, if the demographic transition is more agressive,
because we have this faster pace loss in the 21st century than we had at 20th cnetury or 19th, Its
possible that population will contunue forward. This would imply that lot of countries would follow
path of Germany and Japan, having rich people with few kids and under this scenario, we want to
expect less people at the end of the century than they are today. Less than 7 billion. So there is a
range of futures out there. but if we look at this - The most favorite model, the most predictions
based on what we have observed so far over the last 100 years would indicate that the population
will slowly increase and this population increase will be largerly due to the extended life
expectancies and not due to explosions in the rates of births. I have spoken a lot about population
growth. The one thing to be very aware of and this is what all the demographers agree that it is not
going to be even everywhere. Some countries will see significant population growth and some
countries will see no population growth and even an decline Here we have data from 1950 and 2010
of the biggest countries in the world. so today as it was true in 1950, China has the highest
population (that's the red line). and India has the second largest population. Between 1950 and
2010, both these countries saw enormous increase in number of people. The third largest country is
United States which is also saw big increases in population. and perhaps If you look at one of those
countries who existed below however, it is not expected that future population growth will follow
the same pattern. Because a lot of these countries are going through demographic transitions. India
is expected to continue to see significant population growth. because its yet to experience this
demographic transition. China, on the other hand, has experienced a very significant demographic
transition. In fact the birth rates in China today are below replacement rate. so the world's most
populous country is not expecting to see large increases in the population of future. If we look at
other countries such as the United States this transitional country, which has high immigration we
might see modest increases in the future populations. And for lots of other countries on this list you
will see that these populations trends increase and some otherwise significant countries such as
Russia and Germany will drop out of this list of the largest world population because they don't see
peak population growth and in fact, for one of these countries we see decline is expected of this
coming century I like to point out that China is a very good example of the county which is surprising
in that we think about as developing country the culure of the pass through demographic transition
we expect the world population of China to be lower at the end of the century than its today Most of
the world population growth between today and end of the century is predicted to occur in Africa.
Let's look at this graph. Africa sees a net population increase over the 90 years between 2010-2100
of 2.5 billion. Other areas in the world such as Latin America, North America Asia will see increases.
Some of these will be relatively modest. Asia will see almost 1/2 billion increase Other countries in
places such as Europe in particular will see decreases. So there actually will be less people in Europe
at the end of the century than there are today based on the demographic trends we spoke about in
today's lecture. Given that the people of Africa are much poorer than most other places in the world
- on average. and so consume less. It might be, unless there is a significant catchup economic
growth, the impact of these additional people will be on the world environment will be lower than
you might expect. I will give you an example. Let's look at Green House Gases. Average Sub-Saharan
African emits less than 1 ton of CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) each year The average American emits over 20
tonnes per year In the absence of significant economic change in these countries, it implies that 192
additional North Americans could have a much bigger impact on global climate than 2.5 additional
billion Africans. So we have to be careful when we think about predicting the future for the
environmental impact that these changes of population are. It could be that rather than the
population change having the biggest impact on World's climate or other environmental processes
or other sustainability issues, it could be standard of living that is the most of imporant So we see
increases in consumption to match these increases in the population. that's when we will see the
need for new forms of energy, improvised dealing with polluition such as CO2 in the atmosphere. So
population growth may not be the horror it could be population growth rates are decreasing and
they are on track to stablize this century. It might infact be that for environmental sustainability
consumption patterns have a much more bigger impact than population change will. There are some
problems that are not resolving themselves however. In the next week set of lectures, we will talk
about an entire class of problems known as "Tragedy of the Commons" and this explains why things
such as global atmosphere, the world fisheries or even the shared bathroom down the hall are not in
state we might wish them to be Produced by OCE ATLAS digital media @ University of Illinois