The Future of Population in LMICs

The world reached 8 billion people in November 2022. That number is expected to increase to 10.4 billion by the mid-2080s before stabilizing and beginning to decline. Population growth in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) will account for all this growth and Africa alone will see an increase of 2.5 billion people between 2022 and 2100. While continuing rapid population growth in some LMIC regions remains a concern, especially in the face of the current climate crisis, many other LMIC regions are beginning to experience population decline. However, most current attention to population decline focus on High Income Countries (HIC), and on aging, care for the elderly, and pension systems; population decline in LMICs is assumed to follow the experiences of HICs. But there are reasons to expect that the experiences of LMICs with declining population will be vastly different from those of HICs. Not only will population decline faster in LMICs because their fertility has also declined much faster than in HICs, they will not be able to attract immigrants from poorer countries as rich countries do, and they will continue to experience the emigration of their youth in search of better opportunities in richer countries. This work will examine new forms of population change in LMICs and what they mean for these countries.