Countdown

2000/01/01 Pearce, Fred Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Giza zientziak

In October 1999, 6,000 million people were born worldwide. It might happen in a hospital in London, but probably in some favela in Sao Paulo or some neighborhood in Calcutta. The United Nations will officially recognize as a date of birth on 12 October.

Only 12 years we surpassed the 5,000 million inhabitants. For this reason, notes such as "population explosion" or "demographic disaster" have been added to this fact. But these kinds of ads have been rejected by demographers and you'll see how the world's population will be reduced ahead of time.

Maximum population according to this point of view XXI. It will occur in the 19th century and then begin to descend. Therefore, although current young people are advised to have fewer children, their grandchildren may have a drive to move forward and grow.

"In the last five years fertility has lost value in most of the world," says one of the heretics, head of population research for Wolfgang Lutz at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria. "All changes tend to restrictive population trends." In all the latest trends population growth has stagnated and will tend to the other side in approximately 70 years. This trend has been rising the XIV that cleared a third of the European population. From the epidemic of the twentieth century.

The remains of the reduction of the human population were being built in recent years. In the 1950s, women had an average of five children in the world. Now every woman has 2.7 children. In the last decade the annual increase has fallen from 90 to 78 million. And in one part of the population the absolute numbers are decreasing. In 1990 there were 623 million people under five. Around 1995, only 614 million. It could be the beginning of a trend that can spread across the age spectrum.

Demographers announced a decline. But it is happening faster and more globally than they announced. In the last three years, UN statisticians have twice reduced the projections of future populations. In the last period, at the end of last year, the "6,000 million day" has been thrown twice four months ago and the announcement of the population of 2050 has fallen by 500 million, from 9.4 billion to 8.9 billion.

The main reason for these changes is the decline in the rate of productivity, especially in developing territories. Hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Asia, reducing the number of relatives, have opposed predictions. Without strict birth control, it was said that the "demographic transition" could only be crossed by territories of great prosperity and literacy. This concept is used by demographers to refer to smaller families and stable populations.

In the 1990s several territories have denied this idea. Bangladesh was in a precarious situation. But there for a decade birth rate has dropped from 6.2 children per woman to 3.4. Despite being a poor and unliterate territory, this decline has been achieved thanks to contraceptive methods. Even in some African regions, although birth rates are still very high, they are declining rapidly as contraceptive methods are more frequently used.

Lester Brown, director of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington DC, is the author of a new population study called Beyond Malthus. Brown is known for his apocalyptic vision of the overcrowded future. You also accept: "Demographers have often been surprised by the reduction in the number of children selected by couples in today's world."

Population growth has its dark side. In Africa, mortality rates in sub-Saharan countries are increasing due to the HIV virus. In some territories a quarter of the adult population is contaminated. Last year the U.S. Census Bureau calculated that life expectancy in Bostwana had fallen in Bostwana from 62 to 40 years and in Zimbabwe from 61 to 39. One of the biggest exponents of the incidence of AIDS in Africa is that UN population agencies in Zimbabwe have been limited by the number of working hours funerals. Now you can only go to a week.

Brown says: "The world is divided into two parts: one that the growth of the population is decreasing with the decrease of fertility and another that remains with the increase of mortality."

It is unclear what the prognosis for the AIDS pandemic is: a vaccine suitable for developing territories over the next twenty years depends on the speed at which science can deliver. However, productivity rates are easier to predict. According to the United Nations Population Division of New York, fertility rates are in 61 countries below the long-term representation level of 2.1. These include Europe, the Caribbean and East Asia, including China. American women have an average of 2 children, the British have 1.7 and in Catholic countries, such as Italy and Spain, the level is 1.2.

Some prestigious United Nations demographers claim that this line cannot continue and fertility rates will rise again. No detailed explanation is given to defend such thoughts, although some argue that many women today are delaying their childhood. Based on these ideas, United Nations XXI. They predict that at the end of the 20th century the population will settle between 10,000 and 11 billion.

Warren Robinson of Pennsylvania State University states: "To think that the average intention of all couples of the next generations will be to reach the level of representation requires a lot of faith."

And in the short-term forecasts of the United Nations there is also the tone of doubt of the idea between 10,000 and 11,000. The 1998 World Population Prospects study shows that 18 countries, including Russia and Japan, will lose 15% of the population by 2050. Such studies encourage the idea of reducing the population. Within two years, the expected population in Bulgaria by 2050 has gone from 7.8 million to 6.7 million. The current population is 8.3 million.

Nafis Sadi, executive director of the United Nations Population Foundation, approved in September: "Once the reduction has begun, there has been no historical territory that has had an increasing rate of long-term birth." Luis announces that the population will begin to decline by 2070. Many United Nations demographers agree. And the downward projection of the United Nations has less impact; in the latter, the reading has been moderate. In the year 2040 the population will reach its maximum, around 7.7 billion people, and thereafter will plunge into the distance in the long term. By the year 2100 could return to the current situation of 6,000 million people and the projection for the year 2150 is 3,600 million.

The 20th century explodes demographically. The twenty-first seems to see the beginning of the opposite process. The short-term consequence of these demographic changes will be the increase of the larger population. China, with its single-parent family policy in 1980, is the first in the population aging process. Current trends indicate that by 2030 it will have the oldest population in world history. Around 2050, the country will have 150 million people over 75.

Already in Europe one in five people is over 60 years old. However, the population is still getting older. According to Lutz, by the end of the following century half of the European population can be over 60 years old. Greater economic effects.

Some futurists believe that new technologies for health and creative approaches to leisure will do more than compensate. But the fear of many is that mitigation processes, along with the decline of the general population, deplete the energy and social services of peoples, eliminating innovative ideas and dynamism and creating a grey and conformist society. In other words, the fall of the human empire.