EconAir

The Future Labor Force   SUMMARY This post is a summary of some of the themes of previous posts on demographic and population projections, with an emphasis on how demographics will impact economic growth. See bibliography at the end of this post. For a list of all blog posts on a wide variety of topics, see  List of Posts by Topic on my blog.   Almost all countries outside of Africa are already facing or will soon face below replacement birth rates. Without immigration, this could lead first to smaller labor forces with greater numbers of retired citizens. Eventually, however, both the number of workers and retired citizens will decrease. During both stages of the transition, there will be issues of how to increase total output, maintain standards of living and allocate income between the two major age groups. See  Global Demographics and Population Projections .   Population and economies can growth even if birth rates are below replacement. But eventually both economic output and rea

  SUMMARY   Global population has more than doubled since 1970, going from 3.7 billion to the current (November, 2023) total of 8.0 billion (UN numbers). The  Lancet  long-term projection is that world population will peak around 9.7 billion in the 2060s and then begin to decline, reaching around 8.8 billion people in 2100.   In the most recent United Nations projection (2024), global population is expected to peak at about 10.3 billion sometime in the 2080s and then fall to 10.2 billion in 2100.    Compared to the present, Africa is expected to have about 2.2 billion more people in 2100. The rest of the world is expected to see a decrease of about 1.4 billion people. One billion of the decrease will occur in China and India. The rest of the decrease will occur mostly in Europe, southeast and southern Asia, and Japan. The United States and Latin America (because of increasing population in Mexico) will see little change.   Nigeria’s population growth will be so great that the country w