The world reached 8 billion people, with Brazil in the seventh position of the most populous states, with 215 million individuals. In the coming years, however, the country will lose positions and will have to deal with a proportional decrease in the number of young people and accelerated aging, above expected in the global average.
A UN projection points to Brazil’s population peak in 2046, the year in which the country will reach 231 million inhabitants. Afterwards, the number of Brazilians will begin to decrease. The expectation is that, by 2100, there will be a significant drop, with the population dropping to 185 million. Globally, the decline is further away: the world is expected to peak only in 2086, with 10.4 billion people. By 2100, there will be 10.3 billion.
The accelerated transition in Brazil lights alerts for the change of phases that specialists call “demographic bonus” to “demographic burden”. In the first, economic growth is favored by the greater proportion of young people and adults who work and contribute to Social Security. In the second, the number of elderly people is greater, which can take away the momentum of the economy and impact the health system.
The Brazilian bonus process began in the 1970s and peaked from 2015 to 2020, says José Eustáquio Diniz Alves, doctor in demography and former professor at the National School of Statistical Sciences. But, for several reasons, the country has wasted part of the favorable period. Now, what he calls a window of opportunity is closing without Brazil having actually leveraged growth.
“We can make an analogy with a house. Until 2020, the windows were opening, and more light came in. Then, they started to close. There is still light, but in an increasingly smaller amount”, says the demographer, estimating that the country will enter the demographic burden phase from 2035 onwards.
The demographic bonus is the ideal period for economic growth and a jump in the quality of life of the population, explains the professor, adding that all countries with an HDI (Human Development Index) above 0.900 took advantage of the window of opportunity. In the index methodology, the closer to 1, the better. Brazil’s current HDI is 0.754. “The problem is that Brazil has been taking advantage of only part of the bonus, not all of it. In the last seven years, there has been a lot of waste.”
From 2015 to 2016, the economic crisis caused a recession and robbed millions of jobs in Brazil. More recently, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the War in Ukraine triggered an increase in inflation and a rise in food prices globally, also imposing obstacles to the Brazilian economy.
Part of the bonus waste is still related to unemployment. Without an adequate occupancy rate, the country cannot capitalize on the potential of the entire population able to produce. In the third quarter of this year, the unemployment rate in Brazil was 8.7%, according to IBGE data released last month.
Demographer Ricardo Ojima, professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) and former president of the Brazilian Association of Population Studies, believes that the country could have taken better advantage of the bonus with long-term public investments in the areas of education and qualification of young people to meet specific demands, such as in the technology sector, which suffers from a lack of specialized labor.
“But the current government’s investments in education were secondary. The higher education budget today is one of the lowest in recent years. It is difficult to expand technological knowledge if there is a successive decrease in the volume of resources”, says Ojima. The professor adds as a negative factor the narrative that disqualifies public universities, which, according to him, discourages young people.
Carla Beni, economist and professor at FGV-SP, endorses the assessment. She adds that, in the short and medium term, the bonus could be better used with investment in technical schools and short courses. “These schools, with subsidies from the State, could help young people to be more competitive in the market. There is a lack of technical labor in Brazil”, she says.
Compared to European countries, Brazil has gone through the process of demographic transition more quickly due to accelerated urbanization. The decrease in the Brazilian fertility rate —from 6 to 2 children on average per woman— occurred in just over 40 years. In European countries, the same process took place over a century, according to Ojima.
In urban centers, greater access to education and contraceptive methods partly explain the reduction in the number of family members. Another factor is the higher cost of living, which forces reflection on planning.
At the same time that there is a drop in the fertility rate, Brazil registers advances in health indicators and higher life expectancy. According to the UN, Brazilians are living an average of 73.4 years, which represents an increase of around 52% compared to 1950, when the average was 48.1 years.
Proportional aging is not just a challenge for Brazil. A study by FGV Social points out that, by 2060, 95% of a list of 201 countries will have a decrease in the percentage of young people. According to the survey, in a little less than 40 years, the proportion of Brazilians aged 15 to 29 years (15.3%) will be closer to the extreme minimum projected for South Korea (11.7%) than to the world average ( 20%).
The difference is that the South Korean government has efficiently taken advantage of the moment of demographic transition, with a strong industrialization process and massive investment in education, technology, in addition to improving the qualification of young people, points out Ojima, from UFRN. These are factors in which, in general, Brazil has failed so far.
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