Almost all countries of the world have experienced fertility rates decrease in recent decades, but the birth rate of a region are still so high that it should provide more than half of the increase in the world’s population until 2050: sub-Sabite Africa.
The world rate of fertility was 2.2 births per woman last year, against five in the 1960s and 3.3 in 1990, according to the The United Nations World fertility 2024 report. It is set to reach the replacement level of 2.1 (required to maintain a stable population without immigration) in 2050 and lower below the replacement rate to 1.8 in 2100.
The American fertility rate is already lower than the replacement rate, at 1.6 births per woman, according to the Congress budget officeThe latest forecasts are published this year.
But the fertility numbers of sub -Saharan Africa are the highest in all world region, at 4.3 children by woman. This high figure is despite the fact that the region, made up of 49 distinct African nations, also had a drop – from 6.5 in the 1960s, to 5.3 in 2000.
The United Nations Commission on Population and Development estimates that in the coming decades, more than half of all new people added to the planet will be in Sub-Sahan Africa.
“Generally, the countries of sub -Saharan Africa are at an anterior stage of the demographic transition, characterized by a relatively large share of children and young people,” said Patrick Gerland, chief of the population and the projection section, Nowsweek.
In other words, while the countries of the Sahara have followed the rest of the world to reduce mortality rates, which means that there are more elderly people than before, their higher birth rates mean that their populations are mainly children and adolescents.
This means that, unlike the rich countries, which are faced with a labor crisis (not enough people worked to support the growing elderly population), nations in sub-Saharan Africa have an increasing population of age.
But “investments in areas like education and infrastructure will be crucial” so that it is as beneficial as it could be, said Gerland. “Many African countries are currently experiencing an” window of opportunity “for economic growth,” he said.
Could it be the workforce of tomorrow?
Professor Giovanni Peri, economist University of CaliforniaAparted from this dynamic – an increasing workforce in sub -Saharan Africa with “demographic pressures increasing in rich countries as they age, have fewer workers and higher dependence ratios”.
“From an economic point of view, it would be logical to think that it would generate a change in attitude towards migration,” he said Nowsweek. “So far, this is not the case, and it seems unlikely in the next two decades, at least for me.”
“From a point of view of the economist, any reasonable policy that would plan migration in order from South Africa and South Africa and employment to jobs and universities in Europe, well applied would generate enormous economic gains,” he said. “I don’t see that happening.”
Likewise, William Frey, a main demographer and researcher at Brookings Institution, said Nowsweek: “It is clear that most developed countries, including the United States, will have to count on immigration to counter the aging of the advanced population and the decline in their labor populations.”
“In the years to come, the United States will need even higher immigration than it receives in order to avoid this scenario,” said Frey.
But “security problems, culture will predominate economic justification,” said Professor Peri.
Why does sub-Saharan Africa have such high birth rate?
“Fertility transitions in sub -Saharan Africa have distinctive characteristics compared to other low and intermediate income countries,” said the United Nations Ministry of Economic and Social Affairs in its report.
“The drop in fertility started later, and the pace of the drop in fertility was much slower in sub-Saharan Africa than in Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean,” he said.
There are many practical reasons for high fertility rates in sub -Saharan Africa, including limited access to contraception, lower education levels for girls and women and high levels of children’s marriages.
But there are also important cultural reasons, with children considered to be important contributors to the means of subsistence of households and caregivers of parents in old age.
Men and women in sub -Saharan Africa express a preference for larger families – in Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, the size of the ideal family is 3.5 and four, according to the latest demographic and health surveys (carried out between 2010 and 2022).
Meanwhile, in Chad, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, the size of the ideal family is greater than six.
Conversely, the families of richer countries have fewer children while cultural traditions are moving away from the hierarchy of parenting in general, according to a new study Nowsweek reported on here.