PRESS CONFERENCE TO RELEASE RESULTS OF ‘2006 REVISION WORLD POPULATION PROSPECTS’

Continuing on its path towards population ageing, the world’s population is on track to surpass 9 billion people by 2050, according to the 2006 Revision of the official United Nations population estimates and projections released at a Headquarters press conference today.

The results of the 2006 Revision, which provide the population basis for the assessment of trends at the global, regional and national levels, serve as input for calculating many key indicators in the United Nations system.  They also incorporate the findings of the most recent national population censuses and of the numerous specialized population surveys carried out around the world.  (See Press Release POP/954 of 13 March.)

Releasing the 2006 Revision, Hania Zlotnik, Director of the Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said the Division -- charged with producing a biennial set of population estimates and projections for all countries in the world -- was currently tracking the population of 229 geographical units, including all Member States of the United Nations and approximately 30 Non-Self-Governing Territories.

Several implications for the future were the result of important changes in the estimates and projections of the 2006 Revision, including the way in which the impact of HIV/AIDS was projected, she said.  That change was a result of a very strong commitment shown by Governments -- and particularly by those most affected -- to ensure that the majority of people affected by the disease would receive antiretroviral treatment, thereby prolonging their lives.  The new estimates and projections assumed that, by 2015, in at least half of the highly affected countries, it would be possible to give antiretroviral therapy to 70 per cent of those showing HIV/AIDS symptoms.  The treatment could increase their life span from 10 years after infection to 17.5 years.

However, projections were much more modest in the other half of the affected countries, where it was assumed that approximately 40 per cent of those affected or showing symptoms would be treated, she said.  Overall, those changes implied 32 million less deaths than there would have been had the mortality rates of the 2004 Revision been applied to those 62 countries.

Referring to the “demographic transition”, Ms. Zlotnik remarked that the world was changing from a population of high fertility and high mortality to one of low fertility and low mortality.  Advances in medicine and the availability of antibiotics meant many developing populations had managed to reduce the incidences of infectious diseases.

The next stage of that transition was one where fertility -- and eventually the number of children -- began to decline, she said.  That was often referred to the “beehive distribution”, whereby there were relatively more working people than children or elderly persons in a population.  Most countries in Asia and Latin America had already reached that stage and would remain there for at least two decades.

As the transition progressed, the age distribution was transformed into a reverse pyramid, with the number of elderly being greater than that of the rest of the population, she said.  In Europe, for example, the number of people aged 60 and over had surpassed the number of children.  Asia and Latin America were expected to have reached a similar stage by 2050, while African countries were still at the beginning stages of transition.

While age distribution was still pyramid-shaped, it was expected to reach the “bee-hive” distribution by mid-century, she said.  In order to get there, however, Africans would have to nearly double their populations by 2050.  “The continent is going to have to absorb a very high increase and it would have to absorb it at levels of development that are the very lowest that we have in this world.”

Asked how population trends affected the Arab world, Ms. Zlotnik said none of the Arab countries was highly affected by HIV/AIDS, but that did not mean they had no incidence.  It was hard to generalize, as the Arab world was very varied.  For instance, Yemen had very high fertility, while the reverse was true of Tunisia.  On the whole, North-African countries had had a relatively rapid decline in fertility, while the Gulf States had made great advances in reducing fertility and mortality.  However, there were exceptions.

Regarding the influence of environmental changes on the projections, she said none had been taken into account, thus far.  However, migration was an important part of population change for every country.  Analysts were charged with both recreating past migration trends and speculating on future trends.  At the moment, migration was making an important relative difference for developed countries, where the number of deaths was already higher than the number of births.  Without migration, those populations would already be in decline.  “We don’t expect that migration is going to drive population growth at the levels that fertility has driven them in the past,” she added.

Asked about the current projections of HIV/AIDS-related deaths, she said the number of deaths -– whether from the disease or not -- were not tracked and it was, therefore, impossible to say how many people were dying of AIDS.

As for why countries where about only 40 per cent of those affected by HIV/AIDS would receive antiretroviral therapy lacked access to it, she said it was due to less developed health systems.

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