Geografie 1965, 70, 112-126
The Future Population Growth and Its Geographical Distribution
The purpose of this paper is to describe the latest views on the future growth of world population. The first part explains the basic principles which must be taken into account in estimating prospective populations. Here estimates are given for the more and less developed areas, as well as for eight major geographic regions and 24 sub-regions (table 5). The second part is concerned with projections for world population as divided between the more and less developed areas (according to the three variants - low, medium, high) and as compared with past population growth (table 1). Detailed analysis is offered only for the medium variant (table 2), including changes in population density per 1 km2. The third part describes changes in age structure. Particular attention is given to the tendency toward demographic aging, a factor of increasing importance for the technologically advanced area (table 3). Part four deals with the active proportion of the population and analyses the dependency ratio (table 4). In the last part, an expression of opinion is given as to the main results from the future population growth. According to the medium variant, world population, nearly 3 billion in 1960, may attain about six billion by the year 2000, i. e. may nearly double. The largest contribution to world population growth is made by the less developed area. The medium variant suggests that in the less developed area, population would more than double, increasing from some 2 billion in 1960 to more than 4,4 billion by 2000. The influence which this future population growth will have on the age structure must also be noted. Using a criterion which has been applied by UN, the world population can be considered as aging (4,9 % being aged 65 years and over) and it will continue in this phase, at an advancing rate, up to the century's end. A great contrast appears, however, when the criterion is applied separately to the more and less developed areas and their individual regions. In the more developed area, the population was an aged one already in 1960 (8,3 % at ages 65 an over) and yet the aging process will continue, so that it is estimated the percentage of persons of advanced age will reach 10,8 % by 1980 and 11,4 % by 2000. In the underdeveloped area only about 3,3 % of population were aged 65 and over in 1960, 4 % may be atteined by 1980 and 4,9 % by the century's end. An interesting tendency is observed in the dependency ratio, especially considering children and old persons separately. Old-age dependency tends to increase, whereas child dependency to decrease. This fact emphasized the problem of aging as a topic for study, particularly its social and economic aspects. It, is the opinion of the author, that the present and future principal world population problems are demographic aging and enormous population growth in the underdeveloped area. Both problems will require investigation with regard to each geographical region separately.
