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PRB’s 2012 World Population Data Sheet
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“The most rapid population growth in many ways [occurs in] the countries that can least afford it,” said Carl Haub in a webinar on July 19 to launch the Population Reference Bureau’s (PRB) 50th annual World Population Data Sheet. This year, the report explores aging populations in more developed countries, rapid population growth in less developed countries, and the increased global prevalence of non-communicable diseases in an interactive map, which concisely illustrates global trends. PRB estimates that the world’s population is 7,057,075,000 as of mid-2012; the global population crossed the seven billion threshold in October 2011.
“The most rapid population growth in many ways [occurs in] the countries that can least afford it,” said Carl Haub in a webinar on July 19 to launch the Population Reference Bureau’s (PRB) 50th annual World Population Data Sheet. This year, the report explores aging populations in more developed countries, rapid population growth in less developed countries, and the increased global prevalence of non-communicable diseases in an interactive map, which concisely illustrates global trends. PRB estimates that the world’s population is 7,057,075,000 as of mid-2012; the global population crossed the seven billion threshold in October 2011.
Aging Europe and East Asia
Haub explained that population growth in Europe has been declining since the 1970s and is more or less a “pre-programmed destiny” for these countries. People of child-bearing ages make up a smaller percent of the population in many more developed countries, so unless there is an “enormous increase” in total fertility rates, these populations will continue to decline for the foreseeable future.
Haub noted that these aging populations are unprecedented. In Germany and Italy, for example, 21 percent are over the age of 65; many other European countries have similar figures, as do other developed countries like Japan and South Korea. PRB expects these percentages to increase throughout the next century and for European countries to struggle to support greater numbers of retirees.
Many such states have already found it difficult to raise the retirement age, even though medical advances allow people to work until later ages. PRB projects that in Japan, 42 percent of their population will be over the age of 60 in 2050; if such a large percentage of the population is no longer in the labor force, it will be difficult for to find the resources to support them.
The report shows that the United States, on the other hand, is still experiencing modest population growth. The higher birthrate is in part due to immigration, as recent immigrants to the United States tend to have more children. Haub noted that European states have been reluctant to accept greater numbers of migrants to try to reverse their declining population.
Youthful Developing Countries
While the demographic destiny of aging countries is somewhat determined, the future for less developed countries is more uncertain. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia have large and growing youth populations, and how many children these “future parents” will have is uncertain. That uncertainty is underscored by the variety of scenarios for future population growth. The UN has four variants – high, medium, low, and constant fertility – which vary considerably in their projections for future populations, and PRB’s global projections for 2050 are some 600 million people more than the commonly-used medium variant UN projection.
Rapid growth in the least developed countries is hardly a new phenomenon, but PRB breaks down the numbers to an impressive degree. The 2012 Data Sheet provides updated net migration rates, projected population as a multiple of today’s, infant mortality rates, rate of natural increase, and other basic statistics. PRB also provides population pyramids from the wealthiest and poorest quintiles of the population of Malawi, as an example of the utility of desegregating data to better allocate resources to the underserved. They found that while birthrates have begun to decline for the wealthiest one-fifth of Malawians, the poorest citizens still have a total fertility rate of over seven children per woman.
Measuring Health Systems
Devastating infectious diseases – malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS – have long been entrenched in some of the least developed and most rapidly growing parts of the world. But this year, PRB began to assess health on a broader level by tracking deaths attributed to non-communicable diseases as well. Diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory illness, and cancer are leading causes of death in developed countries, but they have also increased in prevalence in developing countries at an alarming rate.
PRB is not the only organization to take note of the change in disease predominance. The World Health Organization has issued guidelines targeting four factors which increase the risk of these illnesses: tobacco use, alcohol abuse, poor diet/obesity, and physical inactivity. The UN also called a special session last September to discuss non-communicable diseases. President of PRB Wendy Baldwin noted that the last such discussion on a health issue was 10 years ago about HIV/AIDS.
Baldwin also pointed out that non-communicable diseases can increase the burden on the health systems of developing countries even more so than in developed states. She reported that in south Asia, for example, people have heart attacks on average six years earlier than people in developed countries, meaning more families lose their primary breadwinners.
The risk factors for these non-communicable diseases are difficult to target, especially with increasing urbanization in developing countries. But in a video accompanying the report, Baldwin mentioned that raising the price of cigarettes is an effective way to reduce tobacco consumption, especially for youth. Some countries have also made progress in increasing physical activity through sports programs and making urban areas safer for pedestrians. “The low and middle income countries have a real opportunity to take really positive steps to confront that rise in non-communicable diseases and to address the risk factors that drive them,” she said.
The Data Sheet Over Time
The World Population Data Sheet has long been a vital resource for those in the population, health, and environment fields and has grown to include far more data than its first iteration in 1962. At first, the sheet had only four indicators: a population estimate for the year, annual rate of increase, crude birth rate, and crude death rate. Over time, PRB began measuring a greater number of key figures like infant mortality and life expectancy at birth. Population projections, a staple of the current version, were not added until 1978, perhaps in response to the inception of the United Nations World Population Projections in 1974.
Over the past five decades, the data sheet has been witness to some major shifts in global population trends. While PRB discourages researchers from comparing past data to current figures because the measures and methods of gathering information have likely changed over time, it is still possible to see the rise of importance in several trends based on the indicators PRB chose to focus on each year. For example, extremely young populations have been found to have profound effects on a country’s stability and prosperity, as have aging populations. The 1966 data sheet was the first to measure the percentage of the population under the age of 15, and it didn’t become a consistent data point until 1977.
The number of people living in cities in the developing world surpassed those in the developed in 1970, according to the UN, and in 1972, PRB began tracking the percentage of populations living in urban areas. HIV/AIDS indicators were added in 2000, as global awareness and a commitment to fighting the disease was rising.
PRB’s demonstrated commitment to continually adding more data and refining existing projections makes the data sheet is a valuable resource to those studying the problems of today and the future. Fifty years on, the amount of information collected is staggering. The data sheet provides a glimpse at not just how many people there are in the world, but also where and how they live.
For more information, take a look at the full data sheet!
Sources: Population Reference Bureau, UN Population Division.
Image Credit: PRB; Video: Noncommunicable Diseases and Youth in Developing Countries. -
Open Data Initiatives at USAID Reflect Move Towards Collaboration, Enabling Efforts
›Over the past year and a half, USAID has been busy reinventing itself. The announcement of its USAID FORWARD initiative and the release (jointly, with the State Department) of the first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review in late 2010 signaled significant changes for the organization, including several reforms designed to modernize operations and improve transparency. Part of that effort is making data collection and dissemination more open.
Thus far, the results have been encouraging.
September of last year saw the launch of an awareness campaign focused on the Horn of Africa, co-sponsored by the Ad Council and called, somewhat confusingly, USAID FWD (famine, war, drought). As part of the program, USAID published a collection of regional maps, aggregating the organization’s substantial data pool and showing everything from food and water security to the movement of refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons).
Using data from its own FEWS.NET site, USAID created the maps with open-source tools, allowing other organizations and concerned individuals to leverage the data for additional aid and outreach activities. Many, including the ONE Campaign and InterAction, were quick to incorporate the maps and underlying data into their own activities.
In order to promote greater data access and transparency, USAID also collaborated with the Department of State to create the Foreign Assistance Dashboard, a website that provides sortable aid budget allocation data to the general public. Launched in late 2010 with frequent updates since, the site allows users to see easily how aid is apportioned by region, sector, initiative, or other categories.
For instance, visitors can see that USAID more than quadrupled its humanitarian assistance to Pakistan in 2010 as a result of that country’s devastating flooding. Aid then fell back to near 2009 levels the following year.
Recently, USAID has also taken its open data efforts to the Web. Faced with 117,000 records of development loans provided by its own Development Credit Authority and lacking proper geographic coding, the organization undertook a pioneering experiment in crowdsourcing this June. Civilian volunteers from the online technical communities GISCorps and the Standby Task Force pitched in to help code the data, as did unaffiliated citizens attracted by social media campaigns.
The end results were outstanding: the volunteers finished the job in just 16 hours, although USAID had initially expected the operation to take 60.
Representatives from USAID recently published an illuminating case study about the crowdsourcing experiment and launched it at the Wilson Center. “By leveraging partnerships, volunteers, other federal agencies, and the private sector, the entire project was completed at no cost,” the report noted, adding that USAID hoped to have “blaze[d] a trail to help make crowdsourcing a more accessible approach for others.” One of the case study authors, Shadrock Roberts, noted that “we need to be working as hard to release relevant data we already have as we are to create it.”
USAID’s recent experiments with transparency and greater civilian participation appear to be part of a larger organizational shift toward greater openness and collaboration. Administrator Rajiv Shah seemed to confirm this in a March interview with Foreign Policy, when he spoke at length about the benefits of partnering with the private sector as well as other NGOs.
The recently reported demise, or at least great diminishing, of President Obama’s Global Health Initiative (GHI), which closed its doors amid a heated turf battle between USAID, the State Department, and PEPFAR, lends credence to this theory as well. The official GHI blog stated last week that it would “shift focus from leadership within the U.S. Government to global leadership by the U.S. Government.” This appears to indicate greater future emphasis on collaboration, with an eye toward enabling non-USAID actors to play a greater role in the development process.
It remains to be seen how USAID’s role and strategy will change over the next few years. However, results from the organization’s initial attempts at open data and open government policies have been positive in many respects, and there is reason to hope they will continue to push the boundaries in these areas.
Sources: Center for Global Development, Foreign Assistance Dashboard, Foreign Policy, Global Health Initiative, USAID.
Image Credit: Foreign Assistance Dashboard. -
USAID Turns to Crowdsourcing to Map Loan Data
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The original version of this article, by Aaron Lovell, appeared on the Wilson Center’s Science and Technology Innovation Program Commons Lab blog.
On June 28, officials from USAID met at the Wilson Center to discuss a recent experiment in using crowdsourcing to help clean up and map data on development loans. The agency had 117,000 records on private loans made possible by their Development Credit Authority, which theoretically could be mapped and made available to the public. The problem? Location data for the loans was not standard and was difficult to parse. USAID decided to turn to “the crowd” and recruit interested volunteers from the Standby Task Force and GISCorps – two online volunteer communities – to help clean the data, making it available for additional analysis.
Shadrock Roberts, Stephanie Grosser, and D. Ben Swartley – all with USAID – discussed the results of the project. They were able to clean up the information at virtually no cost to the government, noting that they hope it will be an example for further collaboration between government and engaged volunteers.
“Our hope is that the case study will provide others in government with information and guidance to move forward with their own crowdsourcing projects. Whether the intent is opening data, increased engagement, or improved services, agencies must embrace new technologies that can bring citizens closer to their government,” the officials wrote in a recently released case study focused on the exercise. While the exercise resulted in high-quality output, Roberts et al. did provide advice for other agencies considering similar work. Grosser stressed the need to “crawl, walk, [then] run” – that is, start small with a few hundred records and then expand on that, as the system is refined.
But USAID sees crowdsourcing becoming a key part of improving government data. “We need to be working as hard to release relevant data we already have as we are to create it,” Roberts concluded, when discussing how the experience could apply more generally. “The crowd is willing to do research, data mining, and data cleanup.”
Sources: USAID. -
UNHCR Report on East African Environmental Migrants: Long on Anecdotes, Short on Data
›July 6, 2012 // By Graham NorwoodAs part of the recently-concluded Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) presented a new report last week, titled Climate Change, Vulnerability, and Human Mobility: Perspectives of Refugees From the East and Horn of Africa. The report was created in order to “understand the extent to which refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons) in the East and Horn of Africa have perceived, experienced, and responded to climatic events and trends in recent years.”
In order to achieve this goal, UNHCR and its collaborators (including the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, the London School of Economics, and the University of Bonn) interviewed approximately 150 refugees and IDPs in parts of Ethiopia and Uganda.
While the narrative is more anecdotal than data-driven, it nevertheless identifies several apparent trends in climate-related migration:Overwhelmingly, stories of mobility associated with moving away from worsening impacts associated with climate variability followed a specific pattern. That is, where movement related to climatic stressors did occur, such movement was taken as a last resort (only after all efforts to remain and adopt other methods of adaptation had been exhausted), particularly where the land being left was self-owned and only after all efforts to remain and try a number of alternative forms of adaptation had failed. Where movement occurred, in most cases it was likely to be internal, circular, and temporary rather than cross-border and permanent.
Stories of international migration were rare, and generally occurred either because migrants already lived near a border and were familiar with the area, or because they had encountered violent conflict (often of a political nature) during an earlier intra-state relocation.
The report also mentions that a majority of those interviewed claimed to have noticed significant changes in weather patterns over a 10- to 15-year period. In fact, many interviewees frequently claimed to be able to distinguish “normal” climate variability from more “permanent” changes.
Significantly, Climate Change, Vulnerability, and Human Mobility highlights several ongoing sources of debate and controversy regarding the issue of climate-induced migration as well.
The links between climate change, migration, and violent conflict are not well understood. And the question of whether climate change precipitates conflict or merely exacerbates it is still unresolved, though research on the subject is ongoing.
The terminology used to describe climate migrants remains a hotly-contested issue as well. While terms like “environmental refugee” and the especially popular “climate refugee” can make for good headlines, the UNHCR report strongly disapproves of such terms, given that the word “refugee” has a very specific legal definition.
Indeed, there is still much debate over how to classify climate migrants. It has been pointed out, for instance, that it is virtually impossible to separate out the various factors that induce migration, and questions as to whether migration is forced or voluntary also persist. For the most part, the UNHCR report shies away from such contentious questions, aiming instead to present a general and “human” narrative designed to call attention to the plight of climate migrants.
Definitional debates aside, the issue of climate-induced migration has been in headlines recently. The Asian Development Bank reported in March that 42 million people were displaced in the region during the last two years due to storms, floods, and other extreme weather events. And Israel signaled a tougher stance on immigration by deporting South Sudanese refugees in the wake of a major Israeli Ministry of Environmental Protection report warning of future climate-induced migration.
The particular vulnerability of women too is drawing increased interest. An article in Environmental Research Letters points out that “women tend to be poorer, less educated, have a lower health status, and have limited direct access to or ownership of natural resources,” and will therefore be disproportionately affected by climate change. Gender disparities must be accounted for in policymaking then, to ensure that future climate migration policies are equitable and inclusive, the author, Namrata Chindarkar, argues.
The challenges of defining and measuring the phenomenon remain – the UN Environment Program’s 2006 prediction of 50 million climate migrants by 2010 has not come true, and has even been a source of some embarrassment for the organization – but the recent UNHCR report is a timely reminder that climate-induced migration remains a major issue with tremendous long-term implications.
Sources: Asian Development Bank, Environmental Research Letters, Human Rights Education Association (HREA), The Jerusalem Post, The New Republic, National Geographic, OECD, Scientific American, Der Spiegel, UNHCR, The Washington Post.
Photo Credit: Displaced Somalis, courtesy of UNHCR. -
Updates to African Conflict Database Give Researchers Access to Comprehensive, Near Real-Time Information
›Despite the end of Cold War-era civil wars, political violence rates in Africa remain remarkably high. However, this broad statement hides an important qualification: the types of violence that have persisted in recent years have changed significantly, shifting from rebel and government activity towards violence against civilians, riots, protests, and battles by armed groups other than rebels.
The only way researchers can track this activity is through political violence data disaggregated by type, location, and time. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED) project aims to provide that service. We recently released updated information on political violence across Africa from January 1997 to December 2011 (see above for a hotspot map and timeline of violence over this period).
New to the ACLED project are real time data and trend reports on monthly conflict patterns throughout the continent. It is now perhaps the comprehensive and representative depiction of political violence as it occurs throughout Africa.
The data captures an array of actions including battles, looting, rioting, protesting, violence against civilians, and non-violent activity (such as arrests, recruitment drives, troop movements) by a variety of actors such as governments, rebels, militias, rioters and protestors.
Each event is geo-referenced by location and time-stamped by day. In our recently released version, we also included fatalities by event; distinguished conflict groups by their type (government, rebel, political militia, communal militia, rioters, protesters, civilians etc.); and specified the type of interaction between actors (e.g. government-rebel battle; rebel-civilian attack). These changes make ACLED data flexible for multiple uses.
Several new findings on conflict patterns are found using ACLED data:- Violence against civilians accounts for approximately half of all conflict events.
- Generally, where they occur, civil wars intensely affect 19 percent of a state’s territory, yet rebel actions have drastically decreased since 2005.
- Militia activity has significantly increased since 2005 and is especially high during election periods in new democracies.
- Communal violence patterns are more widespread but affect fewer people than civil war violence.
- Civil war patterns are not strongly affected by climate changes, but communal conflict decreases during periods of local scarcity and increases on the cusp of rainy seasons.
- Political violence increases in the period from peace talk announcements to negotiations. This violence is directed towards overtaking territory and civilians are frequently the main victims.
Fine-grained data on the range of political violence in the developing world is important as it provides the opportunity to ask and potentially answer certain questions about a range of issues related to governance, economic development, and conflict dynamics themselves.
For example, ACLED data shows that violence is increasingly occurring in villages, towns, and cities across Africa. In other words, political violence may be “urbanizing.” This has important implications for how we understand the practice of politics, the geography of marginalization, and the role of trigger patterns in explaining conflict. But there are many competing theories that could explain this trend.
Using data that disaggregates by violence type allows us to probe deeper: If the environmental security framework is correct, political violence in towns may be a response to high in-migration from rural areas to cities. Violence therefore is due to competition between urban people and migrant populations.
An alternative explanation is that the poor conditions of African urban life, high rates of informal employment, and under-representation of urban communities in government might explain an increase in violence. In this case, violence is a populist response, in that civilians riot and protest in favor of government reform.
Finally, the advantages of densely populated urban areas – easier access to resources, recruits, infrastructure, and power – may attract more organized groups to contest these spaces. If this explanation were correct, we would expect higher rates of rebel activity against government forces in cities, with a clear drive to overtaking the capital.
We have not been able to address these questions before with credible and comprehensive data, but now we can. Indeed, such data is crucial for interrogating the climate-security debate.
For example, Clionadh recently co-authored an article in the Journal of Peace Research’s special issue on climate and conflict, which used ACLED data for East Africa. In that piece, she and her co-author argued that different conflict groups use their environment in accordance with their overall goals. While much of the conflict activity studied had an environmental signal, the climate signal was much weaker.
We hope that these studies and other work with disaggregated data spur more theories and explanations of conflict patterns in developing states, and that the breadth and form of the data allows for new directions within conflict research.
Clionadh Raleigh is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Trinity College, Dublin, external researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and director of the ACLED project. Caitriona Dowd of Trinity College and Andrew Linke of the University of Colorado are senior researchers for ACLED.
Image Credit: ACLED. -
International Research Institute for Climate and Society
Ethiopia Provides Model for Improving Climate, Other Data Services in Africa
›The original version of this article appeared on the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI).
In developed countries, we are accustomed to having access to long and detailed records on weather and climate conditions, demographics, disease incidence, and many other types of data. Decisionmakers use this information for a variety of societal benefits: they spot trends, fine-tune public health systems, and optimize crop yields, for example. Researchers use it to test hypotheses, make forecasts, and tweak projections from computer models. What’s more, much of these data are just a mouse click away, for anyone to access for free (see examples for climate and health).
Across much of Africa, however, it’s a different story. By most measures, Africa is the most “data poor” region in the world. Wars and revolutions, natural and manmade disasters, extreme poverty, and unmaintained infrastructure, have left massive gaps in socioeconomic and environmental data sets. Reliable records of temperature, rainfall, and other climate variables are scarce or nonexistent. If they do exist, they’re usually deemed as proprietary and users must pay to get access. This is not an inconsequential matter. Without readily available, reliable data, policy makers’ ability to make smart, well-informed decisions is hobbled.
The problem of data access persisted even in Ethiopia, regarded as having one of the better meteorological services on the continent. Thanks to the recent efforts of Tufa Dinku, a climate scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, the situation has improved considerably.
Continue reading on IRI.
Video Credit: Overview of Ethiopia Climate Maprooms, courtesy of IRI. -
Deborah Mesce, Behind the Numbers
Kenya’s New Data Website Puts the Ball in Media’s Court
›The original version of this article, by Deborah Mesce, appeared on PRB’s Behind the Numbers blog.
The Kenya government took a bold step toward transparency a few weeks ago when it fired up its Open Data website and posted loads of data in a format that makes the information easily understood by the average person. The data sets include national census statistics as well as government spending, and the government promises more data to come. This is a boon for journalists willing to wade into the numbers to examine what’s going on in their country and hold their government accountable. I’m waiting now to see how they will use this new tool.
We always hear that information is power, but that works only if the information is used. Lots of information begins as numbers, statistics, and data sets, with lots of good stories tucked away in there to be found by the journalist willing to go the extra mile, examine the numbers, and do the math. In many developing countries, the information – numbers, statistics, data sets – isn’t easily accessible, if it is available at all. Governments keep a tight hold on it, or if it’s made available, the average person would be hard pressed to make heads or tails out of it.
Continue reading on Behind the Numbers.
Image Credit: Open Data. -
PRB’s Population Data Sheet 2011: The Demographic Divide
›August 9, 2011 // By Kellie Furr“Today, most population growth is concentrated in the world’s poorest countries – and within the poorest regions of those countries,” write the authors of the 2011 Population Data Sheet, an analysis tool published annually by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The population projections between poor and rich countries are “stark and very sad,” said Carl Haub Haub, senior demographer at PRB, at the July 28 web-based launch of the Data Sheet: “We call it the demographic divide. It shows the vast difference that has developed between the rich and poor countries of the world.”
The Population Data Sheet offers insight on global population trends using detailed statistical information along 18 demographic, population, health, and environment indicators for more than 200 countries and regions. The data sheet is based on the latest projections of the UN Population Division. Carl Haub and James Gribble of PRB discussed the long-term implications of the data sheet’s projections during web-based launch that included open questions.
Conflicting Trends
“Even though the world population growth rate has slowed from 2.1 percent per year in the late 1960s to 1.2 percent today, the size of the world’s population has continued to increase – from 5 billion in 1987, to 6 billion in 1999, and to 7 billion in 2011,” write the authors in PRB’s July Population Bulletin, “The World at 7 Billion.” To put those population totals into perspective, it took from the inception of human existence until the year 1800 – a total of approximately 50,000 years – to reach the first billion.
Fortunately, the recent (relative) decline in global growth rate has already curbed what could have been a considerable surge in the world’s population: “If the late 1960s population growth rate of 2.1 percent – the highest in history – had held steady, world population would have grown by 117 million annually, and today’s population would have been 8.6 billion,” said PRB President Wendy Baldwin in a press release. However, the world’s population still grows significantly at 77 million people annually, according to the UN, and we’re slated to reach 8 billion in just another 12 years. How can this dichotomy of large population totals in the face of lowered fertility be explained?
The Phases of Demographic Transition
“To understand global, we actually have to think local,” said PRB in their film short, “7 Billion and Counting,” released alongside the data sheet. Individual countries go through demographic transitions at different times, and the disparity in where countries are along in their progression varies greatly.
A demographic transition essentially hinges on two trends: the decline of birth and death rates over time. These trends do not necessarily change simultaneously however, resulting in most cases, first, a natural increase (when mortality rates decline but birth rates remain high) followed by a natural decrease in population (when birth rates also decline). Though the timing and magnitude of these trends differ from place to place, there are broad similarities across countries which have been conceptualized as phases by demographers, such as Carl Haub and James Gribble.Phase one is characterized by high birth rates and fluctuating death rates, found in countries such as Niger, Afghanistan, and Uganda; typically only death rates decline in this phase. Phase two, encompassing mostly lower-middle income countries such as Guatemala, Ghana, and Iraq, is marked by a continued decline in death rates but only slightly lower birth rates. The potential for large population growth exists in these countries, as they still possess a large youth population.
Countries in phase three have yet lower birth and death rates and overall total fertility rates close to the widely-accepted replacement level of 2.1 children per woman; these countries are home to approximately 38 percent of the world’s population and include India, Malaysia, and South Africa. Phase three countries often still possess a disproportionately large working age population as an echo of their previous growth, which allows them to take advantage of the “demographic dividend.”
Finally, phase four countries have the lowest birth and death rates, with some even seeing negative growth as total fertility rate falls at or below the natural replacement rate; countries in this phase include most of Europe and other developed countries, such as Japan and the United States (though relatively high levels of immigration keeps overall growth higher).
The data sheet shows that most developing countries still remain in the earlier phases of demographic transition, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Relatively recent public health improvements in these countries have decreased death rates at a rapid rate, and though total fertility rates (TFR) have declined as well, they have not kept the same pace: “This lag between the drop in death rates and the drop in birth rates produced unprecedented levels of population growth,” wrote Haub and Gribble in the Population Bulletin.
A Tale of Two Worlds
The data sheet authors observe that poverty is strongly associated with countries which are stalled in their progression through the demographic transition:Poverty has emerged as a serious global issue, particularly because the most rapid population growth is occurring in the world’s poorest countries and, within many countries, in the poorest states and provinces…Relatively high population growth rates make it more difficult to lift large numbers of people out of poverty.
In her primer video on demographic security for ECSP, demographer Elizabeth Leahy Madsen said, “we are in an era of unprecedented demographic divergence,” and characterized the phenomenon of population trends moving simultaneously in different directions as “rapid” and “unprecedented.”
Haub used Italy and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as an example to illustrate the divide. Although both countries currently sit at around 60 million people each, Italy is only projected to grow by 2 million through 2050, while the DRC is projected to reach a staggering 149 million people. Italy has a gross national income per capita of about $35,000, whereas DRC has only $180 per capita, according to the World Bank.
This observation has been corroborated by other demographers: “In 1950, 68 percent of the world’s population resided in developing regions. Today that’s up to 82 percent. But in the year 2050, it’s projected to be 86 percent,” said demographer David Bloom on NPR’s global health blog, Shots.
Demography ≠ Destiny
A poor country is not necessarily tethered to its projections, which are based on assumptions, said the authors, “but when, how, and whether [the demographic transition] actually happens cannot be known.”
Low development indicators do not always dictate that a country will lag in a demographic transition. “Government commitment to a policy to lower [birth rates] has succeeded quite well in countries with a low level of development,” said Haub in a 2008 PRB discussion on the demographic divide. Bangladesh and Iran are two examples of countries that significantly affected their demographic trajectories in the 20th century with targeted programs.
Proactivity certainly plays a role, as the PRB “7 Billion and Counting” video puts it (see above): “Understanding how and why the world’s population is growing will help nations better plan for the future…and for future generations.”
Sources: NPR, Population Reference Bureau, UN-DESA, UNICEF, World Bank.
Video and Image Credit: “7 Billion and Counting,” courtesy of PRB’s Youtube channel, and stages of demographic transition courtesy of PRB’s 2011 Population Data Sheet.
“The most rapid population growth in many ways [occurs in] the countries that can least afford it,” said Carl Haub in a webinar on July 19 to launch the Population Reference Bureau’s (PRB) 50th annual 
