The U.S. Census Bureau has predicted a rapid growth of the Nigeria’s population to over 400 million by year 2050.
The findings are the result of population estimates and projections of 228 countries compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau's International Data Base (IDB) and released recently. They offer a revealing peep into the future.
According to the census Bureau, the two countries on track to make the biggest population gains are Nigeria and Ethiopia. Nigeria currently boasts 166 million people, but by 2050 its population, is expected to jump to 402 million.
Ethiopia's population will likely triple from 91 million to 278 million, making the east African nation one of the top 10 most populous countries in the world for the first time.
In fact, according to the United Nations Population Division, although only 18 percent of the world's population lives in the so-called “high-fertility” countries (places where women have more than 1.5 daughters on average), most of those countries are in Africa; the continent is expected to experience significant population growth in the coming decades, which could compound the already-dire food supply issues in some African nations.
Here is the world in 2050, as imagined by the U.S. Census Bureau: India will be the most populous nation, surpassing China sometime around 2025. The U.S. will remain exactly where it is now: in third place, with a population of 423 million (up from 308 million in 2010). Declining birth rates in two of the world's most economically and politically influential countries, Japan and Russia, will cause them to fall from their current positions as the 9th and 10th most populous nations, respectively, to 16th and 17th.
“One of the biggest changes we've seen has been the decline in fertility in some developed countries such as China,” says Loraine West, an IDB project manager, “while others are experiencing a slight increase.” In other words, China's population boom is finally slowing down while Western Europe's long-declining birth rate is – in some places, at least – rising again. Spain and Italy are “on an uptick,” says West, “but how high will [the birth rate] rise? Or will it simply fluctuate up and down on some long term level? We'll have to see.”
According to Italy's The National Institute of Statistics, the country's recent population increase can be largely attributed to its own immigrant population.
While the U.S. appears relatively stable – it's the only country in the top 10 whose ranking is not expected to change in the next 40 years – previous census reports have highlighted dramatic demographic shifts within the country's borders.
Last week, the Census Bureau announced that more than half of children under two in the U.S. are ethnic minorities. Add to that the non-Hispanic white population's increasing age (in California, for example, the median age for non-Hispanic whites is almost 10 years older than that of the state as a whole) and America in 2050 will look a lot different than the America we know today.
Perhaps the most unfortunate change is the one currently experienced by Russia. The cold, vast country has been undergoing steady depopulation since 1992 and the U.S. Census Bureau expects it to decline further, from 139 million people to 109 million by 2050. That's a 21 percent drop, even more than the country suffered during World War II. Like many countries, Russia is experiencing declining birth rates, but it's also suffering from a relatively low life expectancy.
According to the World Health Organization, Russian men have a life expectancy of just 62 years, a fact that is often attributed to the country's high rate of alcoholism and poor diet. (For comparison, Japan is also struggling with depopulation, but the World Health Organization puts its life expectancy at 80 for men and 86 for women).