Chapter Seven: Things to Come: Demographic Possibilities, 2025

Natural and human events influence the play of demographic forces, making the future of populations hard to predict.

The findings of this report highlight trends that are likely or at least possible over the next few decades. The classification of age structures suggests policies and programs through which governments can encourage favorable and balanced age structures. Through this lens, lessons emerge from the experiences of countries that have taken steps to positively influence the direction of population dynamics.

Population projections produced by the United Nations Population Division for 2025 under a range of scenarios show overall improvements in countries' progress along the demographic transition. Both the low- and high-fertility variants show an increase in the number of countries with transitional and mature age structures. The consistent correlations between such age structures and reduced vulnerability to emerging civil conflict, as well as to higher income and democratic governance, suggest a robust linkage between these structures and development outcomes. In the low-fertility projection for 2025, which assumes further declines in their already low birth rates, eight countries would move into the aged age structure. This type of population would be characterized by unprecedently high median ages. So far, no country's population has reached this category. Barring unforeseen developments that will shape future demographics in ways we have no way of knowing, these projections suggest both opportunities and threats. The opportunity is that more countries will move into transitional and mature age structures–assuming fertility rates continue to decline and that neither HIV/AIDS nor any unforeseen factor sharply boosts death rates. As this study has found, more balanced age structures tend generally to favor national stability and development. Countries such as Nigeria, that have stalled or reversed progress in the demographic transition and have very young age structures, face serious demographic challenges likely to undermine political and economic development and cause scarcities of natural resources.

Figure 7.1
Projections of Age Structure Types in 2025¹

The number of countries classified in each of the four major age structure types in 2005 is compared to two different projections of populations in 2025, based on assumptions of dramatic declines in fertility rates (the low variant) and smaller, though still significant, drops in fertility (the high variant).

The projection that more countries will move into transitional and mature age structures in the future does not equate to certain prediction that there will be less conflict and better overall security in the world. Nor can we be assured that reduced population pressures will free up more financial resources for governments to allocate to education, employment and other investments that promote development.

Governments should be aware that even the high-fertility scenario of future population growth assumes continued strong improvements in use of contraception, provision of reproductive health care and a mitigation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In this scenario, the number of countries in the very young age structure type would decline from 35 percent to 20 percent of all countries.

To achieve the high-fertility projection, which assumes a relatively modest decline in birthrates, 36 million additional married women of reproductive age in sub-Saharan Africa will need to be using modern methods of contraception by 2025. Meeting the low-fertility projection, a more ambitious goal, would mean that 76 million women of reproductive age in sub-Saharan Africa would be using contraceptives, nearly five times as many as today.

All of the population projections, even those suggesting the most rapid growth, assume greater future spending on contraceptive and related services than the world has ever seen. The variations in projected future family planning spending are merely differences of degree. Because of the nature of family planning and reproductive health service provision, especially in developing countries, much of this spending must come from country governments. Foreign assistance from donors is also critical. Unfortunately, funding for family planning and reproductive health has been stagnant in recent years.

Clearly, the advancements in age structure projected for 2025 will require significant progress along the demographic transition by many countries that today have very young and youthful populations. Getting past the early stages of the demographic transition requires continued declines in death and birth rates. Such declines occur when access to health care improves, diminishing the impact of infectious diseases and improving life expectancy. Next, fertility rates drop as more children survive through their earliest, vulnerable years. Parents who know they can expect most children to live generally choose to have fewer and to invest more in the nutrition, general health and education of each one.

For national governments and international donors, the costs of completing the demographic transition come in the provision of supplies and the implementation of comprehensive health systems that provide counseling and treatment. Distributed across the developing world through decades of successful family planning programs run cooperatively by national governments, NGOs and international donors, contraceptives also are key to preventing unintended pregnancies and thus reducing fertility rates. Among other supplies needed to improve reproductive health are materials to make birth safer, anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) to prolong the lives of people infected with HIV and nevirapine to reduce the chance that HIV-positive mothers will transmit the infection to their babies during pregnancy or birth. By preventing unintended pregnancies among HIV-positive women, condoms and other contraceptives slow the spread of HIV/AIDS.

By 2015, the number of contraceptive users in the developing world is projected to grow by 28 percent, due to population growth and increased demand for–and, hopefully, better access to–family planning services. However, in 2004, the gap between funding for condoms and other contraceptives from international donors and estimated need for such supplies in the developing world was about $800 million, leaving hundreds of millions of women with an unmet need for family planning.² The estimated cost of meeting such need in contraceptives and other supplies would be $696 million, with personnel and capital expenses more than four times higher. However, these expenditures would save 1.5 million lives per year in countries with youthful populations, and would create significant progress along the demographic transition.³ Meeting current and future needs for health and education, including demand for reproductive health supplies, is a public policy challenge, but one that governments understand and have successfully addressed in many countries in recent decades. In such cases, governments, donors and civil society have worked together to expand access to health and other social programs. Over a few decades, the populations of most countries have made remarkable progress through the demographic transition and into more mature, favorable age structures. The examples of these countries' past successes, such as Mexico and Tunisia, can serve as models today for governments and institutions that recognize the importance of age structure to their development.