1107: ‘Population decline,’ or “I was in the pool!”
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/04/26
The 2024 revision of the United Nations World Population Prospects (medium-variant series) describes 42 of the 193 UN member states — excluding the Holy See and the State of Palestine — having a ‘shrinkage’ or an absolute demographic decline (48 if micro-states and non-sovereign areas are included). All-time peak populations for those 42 were between 1980 and 2023:
1980s
- Hungary (1980)
- Bulgaria (1989)
1990s
- Albania (1990)
- Estonia (1990)
- Latvia (1990)
- Romania (1990)
- Armenia (1991)
- Bosnia and Herzegovina (1991)
- Croatia (1991)
- Lithuania (1991)
- Georgia (1992)
- Belarus (1993)
- Moldova (1993)
- Russia (1993)
- Ukraine (1993)
- Serbia (1995)
2000s
- Barbados (2000)
- Dominica (2000)
- Saint Lucia (2000)
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (2000)
- North Macedonia (2001)
- Cuba (2006)
- Andorra (2008)
- Portugal (2008)
- Japan (2008)
2010s
- Greece (2010)
- Montenegro (2011)
- Poland (2012)
- Grenada (2012)
- Saint Kitts and Nevis (2013)
- Italy (2014)
- Slovenia (2014)
- Trinidad and Tobago (2014)
- Mauritius (2019)
- Tonga (2019)
2020s
- South Korea (2020)
- China (2021)
- Slovakia (2021)
- Monaco (2022)
- San Marino (2022)
- Uruguay (2022)
- Seychelles (2023)
Gender equity and automation will fill some of the gap for those and some upcoming cold pool divers. 151 out of 193 member states aren’t shrinking. 63 have peaked, 42 are shrinking — many only recently, and the rest are growing.
The United Nations’ World Population Prospects 2024 approximates a peak of 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in The Lancet estimated a peak of 9.73 billion in 2064, and the Wittgenstein Centre’s 2023 estimate is a peak of 10.13 billion in 2080.
Therefore: Is this the issue?
No, not even close to the most important. Anthropogenic climate change, nuclear war, reduction of democratic tendencies, gender parity regression, rights abuse, extreme weather, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, geopolitical conflict, large-scale involuntary migration, social distrust, misinformation and disinformation, seem more salient now, than simply more consumers, more units, in societies — for now.
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