PRESS BRIEFING BY POPULATION DIVISION

“HIV/AIDS is a disease of mass destruction”, the Director of the United Nations Population Division said today at a Headquarters press briefing describing the key findings of the “2002 Revision of the official United Nations population estimates and projections”.

Joseph Chamie said that the 2002 revision broke new ground in terms of the assumptions made on future human fertility and the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  It was the eighteenth round of official United Nations population estimates and projections prepared by his Division.  The first dated back to 1951. 

He explained that various population estimates and projections were the basic foundation for understanding “where we are, where we have been and where we are headed”.  Indeed, the results had profound social and economic implications.  Those exercises were vital for policies, plans and programmes relating to virtually every facet of human activity, from education, health and social services, to housing, employment, defence and even voting and political representation. 

In the past two years, the world had experienced more deaths, as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and fewer births, he said.  World population by

mid-century, therefore, would be somewhat smaller (by about 400 million) than had been previously projected.  Nevertheless, the following was expected in world population by 2050:  significantly larger; substantially older; more concentrated in developing countries; and continued demographic differences, especially with regard to conditions in the least developed nations.

For the first time, he said, projected future fertility levels in the majority of developing countries would likely fall below 2.1 children per woman, generally replacement-level fertility.  Another important change was the anticipation of a more serious and prolonged impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  As a consequence of those changes, the 2002 revision projected a lower population in 2050 than the 2000 revision; 8.9 billion instead of 9.3 billion, according to the medium variant.  About half of the 400 million difference in those two projected populations was due to an increase in projected deaths.

He said that the majority of those deaths stemmed from higher projected levels of HIV prevalence.  The other half of the difference reflected a reduction in the projected number of births, primarily as a result of lower expected future fertility levels.  Regarding population growth, he said that in 1900 world population was 1.6 billion.  By 1960, it nearly doubled to 3 billion.  By 2000, world population had doubled again to 6.1 billion (He extended a tape measure to illustrate those findings).

World population today was 6.3 billion, he went on.  By 2050, it was expected to reach 8.9 billion, representing a 2.6 billion increase.  World population might rise to 10.6 billion in 2050, as projected in the high variant. 

According to the low variant, where women had, on average, half a child less than in the medium variant, the result would be a world population of

7.4 billion in 2050.  World population was currently growing at a rate of 1.2 per cent annually, implying a net addition of 77 million people per year.

He said that six countries accounted for half of that annual increment.  The top three were India (21 per cent), China (12 per cent), and Pakistan (five per cent).  Bangladesh, Nigeria and the United States accounted for four per cent each.  The population of more developed regions, currently at 1.2 billion, was anticipated to change little during the next 50 years.  By mid-century, 33 countries were projected to be smaller than today:  14 per cent smaller in Japan; 22 per cent in Italy, and between 30 and 50 per cent smaller in the cases of Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Russian Federation and Ukraine. 

The population of the less developed regions was projected to rise steadily from 4.9 billion in 2000 to 7.7 billion in 2050.  With sustained annual growth rates higher than 2.5 per cent between 2000 and 2050, the populations of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Uganda and Yemen were projected to quadruple, passing from 85 million to 369 million in total. 

On HIV/AIDS, he said the 2002 revision indicated a worsening of its impact in terms of increased morbidity, mortality and population loss.  Although the probability of being infected was assumed to decline significantly in the future, particularly after 2010, the long-term impact of the epidemic remained dire.  The response, to date, had been like putting a band-aid on the disease -- “far too little on this terrible pandemic”, he said.

Over the current decade, the number of excess deaths because of AIDS among the 53 most affected countries was estimated at 46 million, and that figure was projected to ascend to 278 million by 2050.  Despite the devastating impact of the epidemic, the populations of the affected countries were generally expected to be larger by mid-century than today, mainly because most of them maintained high to moderate fertility levels. 

For the seven most affected countries in southern Africa, where current prevalence was above 20 per cent, he said the population was projected to increase only slightly, from 74 million in 2000 to 78 million in 2050.  Outright reductions in population were projected for Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland.

Turning to fertility-related changes, he said that the past 50 years had witnessed a remarkable reduction in fertility.  During the first half of the twentieth century, the number of children a woman had was unpredictable.  During the past 40 years, fertility levels had fallen in the less developed regions from six to three children per woman.  Over the next 50 years, fertility in many developing countries was expected to reach replacement level.

In 1950, he pointed out, a handful of countries or areas had fertility below 2.1 children per woman.  Among those were:  Austria; Estonia; Latvia; Luxembourg; and the Channel Islands.  Today, the number of countries below a fertility level of 2.1 children per woman was 59, and by 2050, he projected the number at 154. 

He said that the projected deeper-fertility reductions resulted in a faster ageing of the population of developing countries than in previous revisions.  Globally, the number of older persons (60 years or older) would nearly triple, increasing from 606 million in 2000 to nearly 1.9 billion by 2050.  The consequences of that ageing transformation were considerable, especially the economic costs, or savings, investments, pensions and health care for the elderly. 

Over the next 50 years, he continued, the world’s median age would rise by nearly 10 years, to 37 years.  Among developed countries, 17 were expected to have a median age of 50 years or more, including Japan, Latvia, Slovenia (each with a median age of about 53 years); and the Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Singapore and Spain (each with a median age of about 52 years).  At the other end of the spectrum, Angola, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Uganda and Yemen were expected to have still young populations, with median ages lower than 23 years in 2050.

He said that international migration was projected to remain high during the first half of the century.  The more developed regions were expected to remain “net receivers” of international migrants, with an average gain of about 2 million migrants per year over the next 50 years.  Averaged over the 2000-2050 period, the main net gainers of international migrants were projected to be the United States (1.1 million annually), Germany (211,000), Canada (173,000), United Kingdom (136,000) and Australia (83,000).  The major “net senders” would be China (-303,000), Mexico (-267,000), India (-222,000), the Philippines

(-184,000) and Indonesia (-180,000).

Asked about reduced fertility rates, he said that fertility was indeed low in many developed and developing countries because many women were postponing marriage, delaying childbirth, and choosing to have fewer children through the use of family planning methods.  Thus, there was a lower number of children per woman on average, or nearly half the level needed to replace a family.  For example, to replace a mother and a father, a family needed to have two children.

He did not envisage an AIDS vaccine soon, he replied to a question.  The problems with treatment related to availability and cost.  Prevalence rates in affected countries would be about the same until 2010, when individual and behavioural changes would have occurred.  He would evolve another scenario in a few weeks that would project the population if there were a vaccine available in a few years.  However, the picture today was rather discouraging.  Apart from lack of availability and high cost, some strains of the virus were becoming increasingly resistant to the existing drugs.

Asked how the Division was doing in terms of projecting population changes, he said the United Nations projections, which, as the longest running and most comprehensive, were considered to be the “gold standard”, were doing well.  In 1957, the projections for 45 years later were 6.28 billion.  As it turned out, the population for 2000 was 6.07 billion.  Over the past 10 to 15 years, numbers for mid-century population had been as high as 9.8 billion, but that number changes as the world changes. 

Replying to a question about whether his analyses indicated that there was anything that would influence the downward flow of fertility rates, apart from

improved living standards, he said, a generation ago, few could imagine that India’s population could grow from one-half billion to one billion, and would add another half billion over the next 50 years.  That thinking had applied to Pakistan and many other countries.  Demography was simple -– births, deaths and migration changed population.  In many of those countries, birth rates had not come down fast enough, and the resulting inadequate resources would lead to increased fatalities.  In Ukraine, for every birth, there were net migrants who were leaving.  So, declining fertility in Eastern European countries, coupled with migration patterns, was having profound effects.

The Division had generally not taken the effects of wars into account, because it was unable to do so, he replied to a further question.  It had dealt only with births, deaths and migrants.  It was not in a position to predict that in 2025, for example, there would be a conflict in a certain part of the world.  He simply could not do that, and if he could, he would be next door in the Security Council.

If a war broke out in the next 50 years, or next week or next year, and he had numbers, he would try to reflect that.  That had been possible with certain conflicts such as in Lebanon, Somalia and Cambodia.  However, deaths due to the AIDS epidemic were many times greater than any military conflicts in the past 10 years. 

To a question about the United States’ population growth, he said that was one of the few developed countries that was growing relatively rapidly.  The number presently stood at 285 million and was projected at about 407 million by mid-century.  It had one of highest birth rates among developed countries, or about one child more per family than Italy, for example.  So, that was near replacement fertility.  Also, an enormous number of migrants were coming into the country, and the death rates overall were relatively low.  Combined, the United States was a very rapidly growing country.  By mid-century, a very large flow of people coming in would settle in cities, particularly in warmer climates.  So, there would be a larger United States, with an older population redistributed to cities in the southern half of the country.

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