The infographic above was taken from Visual Capitalist.
Much commentary will be made about 42% of world GDP having been produced by the U. S. and China between the two countries. I want to draw attention to the small green parallelogram representing the GDP of African countries. In aggregate that’s about the GDP of the UK.
Of the ten countries with the fastest-growing populations nine are in sub-Saharan Africa. None of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa are among the fastest-growing economies. My interpretation of that is the per capita GDP in those countries may actually be declining and in terms of standard of living they are getting ever farther behind the rest of the world.
I suspect that Europe in particular will experience increasing pressures from African migrants. That will be quite a challenge for the ethnic states of Europe. In some of them there is already no such thing as a legal immigrant.
It’s could actually be the reverse. Sub Sahara Africa maybe hitting the demographic sweet spot — when declining population growth rates start reaping the demographic transition dividend.
Who knows; young workers maybe welcomed; given young workers may become a precious commodity in most of the world in next few decades.
The US just reported its slowest population growth ever (just 300K in 2021). Birth rates have collapsed 20% since the pandemic; and that collapse followed 2 decades of declining birth rates.
Then look at Asia, Japan is the most elderly population in the world; China is aging the most rapidly (and probably about to decline in population in the next couple of years if not already); Korea has the fewest children per couple in the world.
Russia has had a declining population since the USSR dissolved 30 years ago.
Even India is now reporting a its total fertility rate is below 2.0.
IMO a declining population is fine as long as per capita GDP, income, and standards of living improve. Contrariwise, a rising dependency ratio in the face of stagnant wages is probably not a good thing.
And I think the problem in sub-Saharan Africa is overwhelmingly bad government.
I think Iran is not correct