The coronavirus pandemic has caused a change that had not been observed for almost five decades: the average life expectancy in the world has fallen. While in 2019 the expectation was 72.8 years, last year it was 71, shows a UN report released this Monday (11).
The number had grown uninterruptedly since 1972, until it was confronted by the excess of deaths during the health crisis. The good news is that countries should recover longevity trends between this year and 2025, depending, among other things, on vaccine coverage figures.
“Evidence from past crises that have resulted in many deaths suggests that, in general, they have only a limited, short-term impact on mortality patterns,” he tells the Sheetby email, John Wilmoth, head of the United Nations population division.
This is the first edition of the World Population Prospects report released since 2019 and, therefore, brings unprecedented estimates that take into account the coronavirus and other factors, such as the War in Ukraine.
The material shows that, for the first time since 1950, when monitoring began, the average annual population growth was below 1% – it was 0.9 in 2020 and, in 2022, the projection is that it will be by 0.84%. Another unprecedented factor was the portrayal that population degrowth — when the rate is below zero — should still be reached in the 21st century, in the 2080s.
Demographer José Eustáquio Alves, who analyzed the data, says that this factor is not necessarily a bad thing. “The population has exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth and we are entering a very serious environmental crisis process; the climate crisis is only one part.”
Projections suggest that the world population, which by the end of 2022 is expected to hit the door of 8 billion, will reach 9.7 billion in 2050. In the 2080s, the peak of 10.4 billion will be reached and will remain until 2100. shyer compared to the previous version of the document, which projected 11 billion for the end of the century.
More than half of the projected mid-century increase will be concentrated in eight countries: Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Pakistan, India and the Philippines. India, by the way, is expected to overtake China as the world’s most populous country in 2023 — four years ahead of schedule.
John Wilmoth says these nations will have a key opportunity to boost their economies when the fertility rate drops and the base of the age pyramid of working-age youth widens, a phenomenon called the demographic bonus. “But to make the most of this temporary shift, creating opportunity will need to become a political priority.”
While population growth, even if at a slower pace, will be ensured in low- and middle-income countries through the excess of births over deaths, in high-income nations the tendency is for international migration to become the only driver.
The material also reinforces the trend of widening the range of the elderly population. The share of those aged 65 and over is expected to increase from 10% this year to 16% in 2050, when this age group will be twice as high as the number of children under 5 and roughly the same as the number under of 12.
The scenario will, in part, be driven by the continuing downward trend in fertility rates, which show the number of children each woman has. Today the world average is 2.3. It is expected that by 2050 it will drop to 2.2, and by 2100 it will reach 1.8.
The subject, however, becomes a challenge when the focus is teenage pregnancy, a topic on which the material warns. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, 101 births were registered last year for every 1,000 pregnant women aged 15 to 19 years. In Latin America and the Caribbean, where the outlook is also worrying, the ratio was 53 per thousand.
The document also reflects trends in the war in Eastern Europe. The conflict will reduce Ukraine’s population by about 7 million by next year, largely due to forced emigration. From 43.5 million in July 2021, the number of inhabitants will rise to 36.7 in the same period in 2023.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country’s population has been falling – the peak was in 1992, with 51.8 million inhabitants. It is now projected that the country will reach the end of this century with 20.4 million people, almost half of what it had in 1950.
In the wake of the pandemic, life expectancy in the country also dropped from 74.5 years in 2019 to 71.6 years in 2021, a drop greater than the global average. War-related deaths, according to the UN, are expected to cause the expectation to plummet to 68.6 years by the end of this year.
