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The number of kids in the groups of 0-15 aged people, as you can see is decreasing. This also means that the birth rates in Japan are decreasing. Over the time it will shrink even more, and the number of older people will increase, as more people of the middle aged group (aged 15-64) will move up to the elder people (65+).
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It will look more like this in the future, and the bottom groups will be even thinner and the top will be thicker. There are several reasons for Japan having such a high life expectancy, and one of these reasons could be assigned to the world in the future. They have good health care. This will increase globally, and as third world countries will be more economically developed they’ll have longer life expectancies as well. They also have good and healthy diets allowing the people to live healthier and longer. This is more a cultural aspect of Japan. And we can’t say for most countries that their diets improve as the wealth goes up (e.g. USA).
As countries have longer life expectancy, more people move in the 65+ zone, where they are allowed to retire. Those people don’t work anymore and get money from the governments taxes. These people are called the old dependents, because they depend on the active group (people aged 15-64) that work hard and give taxes to the government. In Europe it is also expected for most countries to experience the same problems that Japan will be facing. The average fertility rate of Europe is currently about 1.5. The replacement population level is 2.1. That means that a woman must have an average of 2.1 kids in a country. This replacement level indicates the amount of children needed in order to replace the parents themselves. The problem most countries with fertility rates under 2.1 will face in the future is that there will be so much old dependents and less people in the active group, so the people in the active group will have to pay more tax. Because as the old dependents increase, they aren’t paying anymore taxes. So the active group will have to work longer and harder to pay their taxes, as there are more dependents and less ‘workers’. Health care costs will go up as well due to common older health problems. The government will need more income to sustain the older people, while the decreasing group of workers will have to work harder and longer to get those harder-required taxes.
In Africa the population seems to continue growing, despite the AIDS epidemic, the starvation and the poverty. The problem in LEDC’s (lower economically developed countries) is that due to their poverty and lack of knowledge they use less contraceptives. It is also harder to find in those countries than in MEDC’s. And as the infant mortality rates are high in Africa, the people tend to make more babies in order to have more certainty of keeping the amount of children high. Approximately 1 to 2 out of 10 children dies in Africa. Children are also viewed differently in those countries. In Africa children are merely seen as young working forces. Because children in Africa already help with working in the fields when they’re five years old. And when the parents are older, they see their kids as a financial net, helping them to get through their last years. In contrary to LEDC’s, in MEDC’s children are merely seen as a financial burden, and therefore they’re competing with wealth.
The high birth rates in Africa are causing a problem opposite to Japan’s problem. They’re causing what’s called a youthful population. Let’s take for example Gambia, which has one of the most youthful populations in the world. Gambia has a dependency ratio of 92,3! This means that about 92 Gambians are dependent for every 100 Gambians. In other words, 92 Gambians are being maintained by 8 other Gambians. The biggest reasons for the high birth rates are as I mentioned the way children are mostly seen in Africa. And it’s also sort of a tradition in Africa to have a lot of kids and it’s also macho for a man to have much kids in those countries. In Gambia the Muslim religion is against contraception, resulting in less Gambians using them.
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As you can see in the upper pyramid, there is a huge amount of children. This also signifies a high birth rate.
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With this situation there are more problems associated than the high dependency ratio. It’s clear that due to this people have to work harder and longer in order to maintain mostly the young dependents (aged under 15). But of course in Africa kids are seen as labor – more hands! So this will be less hard and longer than normally. But there also has to be shelter for everyone which is a big problem as there is a lack of shelter. Deforestation is caused by the wood fuel crisis. As more trees need to be cut for a lot of people. And of course for this big majority of kids there need to be resources. There has to be basic needs, education and health care for everyone. These problems are expanding as their population grows. And as the lower pyramid for Gambia suggests, in the future the population will still grow. And it’s expected that Gambia’s population will double in 17,5 years, unless they manage to lower their birth rates.
So will it really be a problem if the populations stay growing or shrinking like they are now? Who can tell what will really happen in the future? No one. But we can predict some things on the basis of information by trends. For the LEDC’s the population will still grow more until they start to reach their peak and this counts even for most of the MEDC’s at the moment, except for Japan of course. The predicted situations are threatening to the planet because the first sufferers will be the MEDC’s that currently ‘control’ the economics in the world and therefore most facilities in the world. But of course if population will decrease, fewer facilities will be needed. As they’ll experience this population change first, they’ll have to adapt to it first. But only the future will tell if these predicted situations are really true. So who knows what will happen…
