There are signs the world might be nearing an unprecedented decline in population, The New York Times reported, citing projections of deaths to exceed births worldwide by the latter half of this century, if not sooner.
"A paradigm shift is necessary," former chief of population trends and analysis for the United Nations Frank Swiaczny told the Times. "Countries need to learn to live with and adapt to decline."
An increasing retirement-age population, coupled with a shrunken working-class population will combine to stress the economy – not to mention lead to an increasing rate of deaths versus births in future decades, according to scientific forecasts.
Scientists wrote in The Lancet last year, among 195 countries and territories in the world, 183 will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100.
Also, the recent censuses from China and the United States both showed the slowest rate of population growth in decades, according to the report.
The world population boomed in the 20th century from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6 billion in 2000, due to increasing life spans and decrease infant mortality rates.
"Growth is a challenge, as is decline," Swiaczny told the Times.
The growth continues in some parts of the world, African nations in particular, as Nigeria might surpass China in population by the end of the 21st century, the Times reported.
"The era of high fertility is ending," according to the Times. "As women have gained more access to education and contraception, and as the anxieties associated with having children continue to intensify, more parents are delaying pregnancy and fewer babies are being born. Even in countries long associated with rapid growth, such as India and Mexico, birthrates are falling toward, or are already below, the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family."
The population science suggests an "exponential" shrinking, experts told the Times.
"It becomes a cyclical mechanism," Hong Kong University of Science and Technology professor Stuart Gietel Basten told the paper. "It's demographic momentum."
Among the shrinking countries, South Korea is handing out baby bonuses, spending more than $178 billion over the past 15 years encouraging women to have more babies.
Pope Francis spoke last Friday at a conference on Italy's birthrate crisis, saying the "demographic winter" was still "cold and dark," the Times reported.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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