
The global population pyramid - wormold
https://ourworldindata.org/global-population-pyramid
======
bhouston
My concern is that population will shrink after 2100 globally but it will
already be shrinking in the rich countries long before that. And all
indicators right now is that shrinkage will speed up.

There is something wrong with rich modern secular society here or anywhere (it
happens to all societies right now whether they are European, Japanese,
Chinese, etc) in that it currently leads to sub replacement reproduction. This
is the next global issue as it will lead to instability in modern rich
societies in that they are not sustainable.

Japan is the future of all other rich societies, rapid shrinkage if you
exclude immigration.

And if you encourage immigration as the solution to shrinkage you end up with
rising racism and other reactionary trends to these changing demographics.

Right now the only societies that are growing or even stable are either
developing/poor or highly conservative/religious societies.

If we do not address this issue then the world's future is likely poor or
highly religious (most likely both) as demographics is the future whether we
like it or not.

Also societies with shrinking populations will tend to have horrid economies
and probably negative growth as the pyramid is inverted. Probably again like
Japan.

~~~
koonsolo
I'm going to give my not so popular answer for this.

Western society is moving away from traditional families. When I ask my son
what he wants to become when he's older, he says he wants to be a police
officer.

When I ask my 2 girls, they both want to become a mom. My social engineered
response to this was "maybe you should become a school teacher, that way you
can work with kids and be home when your kids are home". Because let's face
it, being only a mom as a girl is not socially acceptable. It's a weak
position to be in. We are told to push them into engineering, STEM fields,
becoming CEO's, world leaders, whatever. That's what we should do. But my
girls, at this age, just want to become a mom.

Western society is trying to make boys out of girls, and girls out of boys. I
have no problem with women working in tech fields, and I worked with many
great ones. But the question needs to be asked is if our society will survive
such a thing.

On one hand it's great that women have all these new rights, are getting more
"equal" to men. But if your own culture is unable to produce enough children,
and you have to import families and children from regions where womens rights
are questionable, you need to ask how sustainable your democratic equal
society is.

This is still a big question for myself, so any real discussion is welcome,
because maybe I'm overlooking something (so please don't just downvote).

Maybe if we want our society to survive, we need to accept that although women
are equal to men, they are very different. A family is made up of a man and a
women, who support each other in their strengths and interests, and raise
children together. Maybe our society should steer away from pushing women into
a 'male' role that on one hands makes sense, but on the other hand is
questionable. Maybe instead of pushing women into 'male' roles, we should
support them better in how they benefit our society.

I know this comes across as really terrible, because history has shown that
stay at home moms are in a really weak position. But on the other hand, modern
society is unable to produce enough kids, and so import people from 'stay at
home mom' cultures.

Any constructive discussion is welcome.

~~~
threeseed
Words fail me reading comments like this.

To say that "women" should be "women" and not do "men" things is an attitude
that belongs in the dark ages. It's sexist. It's degrading. It treats women
like mindless children who can't make their own choices about what work they
want to do.

Nobody is forcing women to go into STEM. We are encouraging them because
unfortunately they have to deal with toxic attitudes all the time and simply
don't stick around.

And seriously to act like western society is forcing transgenderism is utterly
ridiculous and ridicules the stressful and tough choices these people have to
make.

~~~
trabant00
We should support any woman that wants to work in STEM. We should NOT
encourage anybody to work in STEM. Women are more likely to want to work with
people, not sit in a chair looking at a screen, droning for the corporation 8
hours per day.

The "toxic environment" is just what the field is. Dehumanizing by definition.
It's got nothing to do with patriarchy or whatever else trending buzzword
corporations push promoting more people take a career path working for them.

> To say that "women" should be "women" and not do "men" things is an attitude
> that belongs in the dark ages

We need more women on construction sites, mines, fighting on the front line,
fighting men in MMA, etc. If you say no you are soooo dark ages. /s

~~~
mr_overalls
People should be free to do what interests them, and should be encouraged to
follow careers that benefit society and themselves.

Maybe we need _fewer_ people - men and women - giving each other head injuries
in combat sports. Fewer people fighting in senseless wars.

Maybe we need safer worksites, so that people - men and women - can work in
construction or mining if it appeals to them.

~~~
adwn
> _Maybe we need safer worksites, so that people - men and women - can work in
> construction or mining if it appeals to them._

Are you implying that construction site work is almost exclusively a male
domain because it is relatively unsafe work?

I'm not saying that I'd disagree with that statement, not at all.

------
harimau777
It seems to me that the segment of the population that is most affected by
societal/political policies are the young to middle age adults who are raising
kids, establishing their careers, building wealth, etc.

My understanding is that in the past, due to shorter life expectancies, this
was also the generation that was generally in the majority; so each generation
got a fair shot at making sure society served their needs during those key
years.

However, as life expectancy has increased, it now seems like there is a large
enough cohort of people who have already established themselves that they can
push for society/government not to spend resources on the policies that
benefited them during their formative years.

~~~
rogerkirkness
People seem to like asking for and getting things but slamming the door behind
them. Can't have it both ways, although which default is better is an open
question.

------
distant_hat
Its an interesting visualization. Another site that shows this for individual
countries is
[https://www.populationpyramid.net/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/)

It is interesting to contrast countries at different points on their
development. E.g., in Japan, where the population has already started
contracting, vs say, Kenya, where the population is still growing rapidly.

However, these curves should come with error bars that grow as you go farther
out. There could be all kinds of black swan events we know nothing about right
now. A major antibiotic resistant bug could sweep the world, there could a
nuclear war, risks of climate change could be worse than we are projecting. If
someone in 1900 had made similar curves, I wonder how they would look to us.
On that count, I wonder if there are similar projections from, say, 1950 that
we could look at and see how they turned out.

~~~
jetrink
> If someone in 1900 had made similar curves, I wonder how they would look to
> us. On that count, I wonder if there are similar projections from, say, 1950
> that we could look at and see how they turned out.

Thomas Malthus attempted to describe the future of the world population in
1798 in his book, An Essay on the Principle of Population. He predicted a
doubling of the global population every 25 years until a lack of food limited
the population through hardship or famine and death. Pierre François Verhulst
went on to mathematically model this bounded exponential growth and, in doing
so, created the logistic function. The necessary data to create a chart like
the one in the article didn't exist then, but Malthus' book did contribute to
the passage of the Census Act of 1800, which enabled the first census of
England, Scotland and Wales.

~~~
iguy
Mathus didn't quite predict that, he was smarter than that.

The fact that exponential growth of population was a rare and short-lived
phenomenon in world history (he had numbers from new england or quebec, and
knew they were highly unusual) led him to conclude that there must be other
forces. The equilibrium population is set by the balance of such forces.

And not just in humans, obviously. Any animal could reproduce exponentially,
but the world is not 100-km-deep in rabbits just yet. And this observation was
an important ingredient for Darwin.

------
atemerev
At this point it is useful to reiterate that global population growth right
now is no longer exponential. Not even linear. It is sublinear, and the
population expected to be stabilized around 2070, in the vicinity of 9-10B.

~~~
ourworldindata
Yes, that is right the population growth rate started declining more than half
a century ago. In 1962 the growth rate peaked at 2.2% and has halved since
then: [https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#the-
globa...](https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth#the-global-
population-growth-rate-peaked-long-ago)

The projections from different research teams differ in when they expect the
population population to peak. IIASA suggests what you say, the UN expects it
later. I looked at the different projections (and what is behind the
differences) here [https://ourworldindata.org/peak-
child](https://ourworldindata.org/peak-child)

------
lordnacho
Perhaps a bit grim, but I'm actually visting my dad, who ended up in hospital
a couple of days ago. He's survived, but he's not been in great health
recently and I've been thinking a lot about life and death.

In 1950 he'd have been about 6 years old. If you then look at the 2018 curve
for 74 year olds, you can see a fairly large part of his cohort has passed.
Looks like more than half actually, if I'm interpreting this right.

If you look at it, he's also on that part of the chart where your annual
hurdle rate is rapidly increasing. Nobody's surprised that people in their 80s
and 90s pass away.

What's maybe a bit more surprising is for younger people, even though your
annual loss is quite low, it's still there and accumulating. If you look at
1980, those of us nearing 40 in 2018 are slightly fewer, but it's noticeable.

I'm also of an age where a few of those have started to hit home. I went to a
small high school, maybe 90 people in my year plus the two adjacent years. At
least 4 have passed away.

~~~
scruple
We're around the same age, and our fathers are, as well. My father was
recently hospitalized, another minor heart attack. He's been alive for the
past 14 years thanks to a pacemaker. My oldest living uncle had bypass (5
bypasses!) surgery last week. My wife and I are well into the third trimester
of a spontaneous multiples pregnancy. It feels like life and death are
literally chomping at the bit on either side of me right now, and it's
bringing out a lot of emotion. I'm trying to funnel that emotion and it's raw
energy into journaling, to keep it from spilling out into my personal or
professional life.

All of this backstory lends this visualization a bit of a different meaning or
context for people like us who are in the middle of these situations.

> What's maybe a bit more surprising is for younger people, even though your
> annual loss is quite low, it's still there and accumulating. If you look at
> 1980, those of us nearing 40 in 2018 are slightly fewer, but it's
> noticeable.

This struck me, as well. But, for different reasons. My graduating class was
marked with death by the 5th grade. We lost 7 kids between the 5th grade and
graduation (a couple of suicides and a terrible car accident involving 2 cars
of class mates). We lost 3 or 4 more before we had turned 20 (suicide, drugs
and alcohol related deaths). Another half dozen or so in our 20s (drug and
alcohol related deaths). In our 30s, cancer and other terminal disease have
claimed a few. My graduating class was < 100 people, so for a while there this
was a frequent topic with the group of people that I remain in contact with. I
suppose that there have to be instances like this but it's interesting to see
it presented in this visualization. Thinking about it now, we actually haven't
lost anyone that I'm aware of since in the second half of our 30s. Maybe we're
turning a new leaf.

~~~
lordnacho
Sounds like a real outlier that you lost that much of a class. I guess the car
accident is actually one event, but it's still a big and shocking loss.

For me the surprise was that two of the four were murdered. Your chances of
dying at all in a given year before 40 is something like a quarter of a
percent. Your chances of being murdered has got to be some tiny fraction of
that.

------
diNgUrAndI
Pensions are not sustainable. Current mandatory CPP contribution in Canada
seems like that. It's a promise that government makes that we contribute now
which is taken to cover the current senior citizens. What if there isn't
enough working force when we get older? How would the government keep the
promise?

~~~
Sileni
Social Security in the US as well. Most of my generation that I've talked to
have just accepted it as another tax; there's not going to be anything left of
it by the time we would actually expect to withdraw from it.

~~~
goodells
I (and many others) maintain that social security at the federal level is
completely unconstitutional, and lament the system that has evolved around
using it as the de-facto national identification in the United States. Of
course there are externalities associated with the lack of a social safety net
for the elderly, and at this point it very well may be "worth it" for the
younger generation to pay it to avoid the consequences. What a mess.

------
throw0101a
There's a good presentation by Hans Rosling about why population will peak at
11B (stick with until 26m):

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E&t=19m12s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E&t=19m12s)

Further on he explains why we may not have to worry about resource use given
growing prosperity:

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E&t=35m36s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E&t=35m36s)

------
rlue
This is a really interesting visual presentation of the data. Some cool
observations:

1\. The first five curves (1950–1990) are all in 10-year increments, so for
instance, 1950's 20-year-old population maps very directly to 1960's 30-year-
old population (hence the "rippling" effect produced by those six curves).

2\. What's with the sudden pinch in the population of 20-year-olds in 2018? It
tapers in very heavily from the corresponding point on the 1990 curve, and
apart from the newborn population, is the only local maximum anywhere on the
chart. Did I miss something in the news? Why would such a large number of kids
born in 1990 be dead by now, compared to previous generations?

3\. Why do curves for previous years have such pronounced staggering, while
projections for the future are comparatively much smoother?

~~~
ourworldindata
Hi rlue!

This is largely due to China's population dynamics.

Here I've made a chart that shows the number of births (and deaths) in China
over the last 69 years: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/births-and-deaths-
project...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/births-and-deaths-projected-
to-2100?time=1950..2019&country=CHN) 30 and also 50 years ago China had large
cohorts of newborns, these are the 'ripples' you see going through the global
population pyramid.

The number of births is always determined by two factors: the number of
children per woman in the reproductive age bracket (called the Total Fertility
Rate). And the number in the reproductive age bracket.

Here is the Total Fertility Rate for China:
[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-
un?tab...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-
un?tab=chart&time=1950..2015&country=OWID_WRL+CHN)

The large cohort born around 50 years ago is the parent generation of the
large cohort born 30 years ago.

So the question is what explains the large cohort in the 1960s? That is the
cohort born right before the rapid reduction of the Total Fertility Rate (from
6.4 children per woman in 1965 to half of that 15 years later as the chart
above shows; this is largely before the introduction of the strict one-child-
policy by the way). And it is the cohort born after one of the largest mass
deaths in history. The Great Leap Forward Famine from around 1951 to 61
[https://ourworldindata.org/famines#great-leap-forward-
famine...](https://ourworldindata.org/famines#great-leap-forward-famine-
china-1959-61) Around 30 million died and as in all famines the fertility rate
declined substantially, to then jump again right after the famine.

Good questions! I should have mentioned them in the post. Let me know if you
want to know more.

~~~
rlue
Wow, wasn't expecting a response! Taken together, the data and the historical
context tell a really powerful story.

So the chosen UN projections for this graph don't stagger like the historic
data because they assume no famines or other high-death-toll events in the
given period then?

On the one hand, I imagine we must have a big disaster coming our way
eventually. On the other, if you factored it into your projections, you'd have
to guess at the approximate time and magnitude of such an event, which I'm
sure is not the business of whoever's making these projections.

------
dollarsand
That visualization of the population pyramid is just very beautifully done.

And I was saying this exact point for some time. "We are at a turning point in
global population history. ... Not children will be added to the world
population, but people of working age and old age."

Super important post this one!

------
doorbellguy
I went through the interactive chart following the references. Asia seems to
be on a bell curve with the continent reaching saturation in the next 3 to 4
decades. Will be really interesting to see how the world deals with population
explosion about to happen in Africa.

Will be it the next Asia? The next continent we outsource our industries to?
Does it have any significant advantages or disadvantages owing to its
geographical location?

~~~
alecco
It will be also interesting what will happen when the population pyramid
inverts in Europe and North America.

------
jstanley
It took me a few minutes to understand the chart shown here, I think because
it has the dependent and independent axes inverted.

To look at the number of people of a given age in a given year, you follow the
line for that year, go down the left to find the given age, and see where it
lines up at the top to get the number of people.

The shading between the lines is irrelevant and just serves to confuse: the
area under the line doesn't mean much.

~~~
dan-robertson
The area under a line is the global population, no?

~~~
jstanley
Ah, yes, you're right.

------
philshem
These types of graphs are one unique example where using “time” not on the
x-axis is preferred. I think because it highlights the symmetry around x=0.

------
_nalply
I just had an idea how to visualize the population pyramid by an animation.
Start with 1950 then show the pyramid for each year till 2100. But also have
black dots representing a group of people of same age moving upwards as to
show their age with time.

------
jrochkind1
It kind of seems like wealthier countries, as their population demographics
become tipped toward older people, would benefit from immigration of younger
people, no?

------
cerealbad
Religious and wealthy people will continue above replacement forever. Probably
why these two strategies persist. Who is the poorest person you know? Are they
religious and do they have many children? Who is the wealthiest and how many
children do they have? Flattening this curve has been the world project of the
Anglo-American establishment post WW2, with dubious results - unless replacing
themselves and their own populations was the goal. The demographic winter
largely of their own making, a case of idealism meeting unintended
consequences which may go down as the biggest blunder in world history.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Are you really saying that Anglo-American's not having enough children is the
biggest blunder in world history?

~~~
cerealbad
The Anglo-American establishment is a power consensus after the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire, two world wars and decolonisation. It refers to the hand
off of power from Great Britain to the US. It has nothing to do with "Anglo-
Americans" unless you're talking about a specific small group of anglophile
elite families from the north-east of America with political and industrial
wealth. A ruling consensus was established after the Yalta conference and
Bretton Woods accord. In the immediate post war period the USSR has lost 30
million people and there is only one global nuclear power. Losing this
dominance to the degree of the present world order is the second biggest
blunder, should these people also then be completely minimized inside their
own nation states by the force of global capital they allowed to emerge would
be the biggest yes. It's the equivalent of receiving the entire wealth of the
world then losing it in a few generations. What do you find controversial
about this? A blunder is an unforced error which greatly diminishes your own
position in a game, perhaps leading to a total loss. Or do you believe all
human beings are playing equally for the interest of all others?

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
I believe calling it a game and using those analogies trivializes the ethical
implication of some of your views. And while I definitely don't think "all
human beings are playing equally for the interest of all others", I do think
if the "ruling consensus" elects to share power with a more diverse group of
people that would be in the greater interest of humanity in the long term.

~~~
cerealbad
Power diffusion leads to asymmetric instability (and inverse). It is dangerous
to assume non relativistic ethics in a pluralist world.

Conflict will happen in a persons head when holding oppositions simultaneously
or inevitably between persons opposing heads simultaneously.

Self interest is true, self negating and both.

