Human Population Demographics Perceptions Vs Reality

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06 December 2024.

Paul Ehrlich’s IPAT model demonstrates the crucial impacts of human population on the environment (Liu 283). The model argues that environmental impact is a function of population growth, affluence, and technology (Liu 283). Given the crucial role that population growth plays in environmental protection, it is prudent that environmentalists understand the dynamics and structure of human populations across the globe, how these have evolved, and future trends.

The Gapminder quiz provides an important starting point for assessing one’s understanding of human populations and their likely impact. The image below presents my score on the Gapminder quiz.

While most of the responses that I got wrong were generally surprising, three of these were particularly interesting:

What share of the world’s population lives in countries where women on average have less than 3 babies?

There has been a general trend to have fewer children as more and more women prefer small family sizes (Gilbert and Schlenker 183). However, I thought that this trend was more relevant in high-income countries, while low-income countries were yet to adopt the same. Therefore, I expected the percentage to be lower, less than 50 percent to be precise. It was interesting to discover that contrary to my expectations, 80 percent of the global population currently lives in countries where women on average have less than 3 babies.

The total number of old people worldwide (age 65+) is expected to increase by 800 million by 2050. How much of the increase will happen in high-income countries?

Since high-income countries have higher life expectancy than low-income countries, I expected that these countries would account for a majority of old people worldwide by 2050. I was surprised that the correct answer was only 15 percent, and not 55 percent. This points to a huge improvement in life expectancy rates in low-income countries by 2050.

Today, more than 5 times more people live in towns and cities than in 1950. What happened to the rural population?

My expectation was that an increase in the urban population would be matched by a decrease in the rural population due to rural-urban migration. Therefore, I expected that the rural population would have decreased. Surprisingly, the right answer is that the rural population almost doubled as the urban population grew, and this is because the world population has equally grown.

My responses demonstrate a relatively pessimistic view about trends in low-income countries or regions of the world. I seem to have serious misconceptions when it comes to low-income countries and the steps they are taking towards improving their citizens’ quality of life. For instance, like 74 percent of people, I answered incorrectly, question 5, which measured how the total number of old people is expected to increase in high-income versus low-income countries by 2050.

The popular idea is that high-income countries have high life expectancy. Therefore, like most people, I believed that high-income countries would have higher numbers of old people. This indicates that a majority of people underestimate or lack knowledge on the steps that low-income countries are taking to improve their life expectancy.