Abstract
According to the UN projection 2017, the world’s population will increase by more than four billion in the next 85 years and will reach 11 billion by 2100. Quoting from Prof. Lam’s N-IUSSP essay, “The world’s next 4 billion” (Lam 2017), there is a debate on the future of humankind on the sustainability of ecological environments on the earth. However, if we take a closer look at this additional 4 billion people, most of the increase is expected in elderly (65+) and working-age adults (mostly older working ages); the increase in children and young adults is lower than ever. In the same UN projection, it indicates that Japan’s population will decrease from 0.13 billion in 2015 to 0.08 billion by 2100. Japan has entered a post-demographic transitional stage (Sato and Kaneko 2015), in which it will lead the world in population aging and decline. This chapter will analyze the world’s trends in Total Fertility Rate (TFR), Net Reproduction Rate (NRR), and Life Expectancy (LE) in comparison with Japan. The results show the world is entering the last phase of the demographic transition except in Sub-Saharan Africa and most of the world will be confronting a rapid aging and population decline. Furthermore, if the next 4 billion increase successfully by 2100, the demographic transition of Sub-Saharan Africa may also enter the final stage sooner or later. After then, the entire world’s population may be living in a “shrinking society” (Hara 2014).
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Notes
- 1.
The total number of human populations currently living on the Earth is over 7.67 billion people as of December 2018 indicated in the website (www.worldometers.info/world-population/). This number is estimated and projected by certain procedure. The 2017 Revision of World Population Prospects is the 25th round of official United Nations population estimation and projection. They are prepared by the Population Division in UN DESA (Department of Economic and Social Affairs).
- 2.
Population Projections for Japan: 2016–2065, was released in April 2017. They are based on three alternative assumptions about future changes in both fertility and mortality (a low, medium, and high variant of each) with a result of nine projections. There are auxiliary projections for the period from 2061 to 2110, where the survival rate-fertility rate, sex ratio at birth, and international migration rate are assumed to remain constant from 2061.
- 3.
Asia contains Japan (Fig. 1.2).
- 4.
He argues that an expanding population requires more land and space in a finite world and the available space declines as population grows. The “anthropization of land” means increasing land use for human activities, more concretely saying is “13% of the earth’s land occupied by arable land, 26% by permanent pastures, 8% by managed forests, 3% by urban areas and 4% cent by infrastructures and economic activities, 54% of all land is now directly or indirectly affected by human activities” (Livi Bacci 2018: 3).
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Hara, T. (2020). Introduction: The Sustainability of the World Population. In: An Essay on the Principle of Sustainable Population. SpringerBriefs in Population Studies(). Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3654-6_1
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