A Perspective on Long-Term Population Growth

Abstract

This paper presents some of the results of projections prepared by the World Bank in 1983 for all the worlds countries. The projections (presented against a background of recent demographic trends as estimated by the United Nations) trace the approach of each individual country to a stationary state. Implications of the underlying fertility and mortality assumptions are shown mainly in terms of time trends of total population to the year 2100 annual rates of growth and absolute annual increments. These indices are shown for the largest individual countries for world regions and for country groupings according to economic criteria. The detailed predictive performance of such projections is likely to be poor but the projections indicate orders of magnitude characterizing certain aggregate demographic phenomena whose occurrence is highly probable and set clearly interpretable reference points useful in discussing contemporary issues of policy. (authors)