The Future Of Mass Population Distribution Shifts

I recently listened to a talk by Elon Musk about the future (For the life of me I can’t find the talk) and he responds to a question by saying that the world population is slowing down and as countries become more developed, will stop growing almost entirely. He has a point to this statement, as we can see countries like Japan, Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, all losing a percentage of their population per year, increasingly. However this fact doesn’t take into account countries that are growing at staggering rates, like Lebanon which grew 9.37% or Zimbabwe, which grew a large 4.36 % in 2016. In fact almost all of Africa is consistently growing at a fast rate every year and this is within countries that have many deaths due to factors that most of the first world could avoid. Rather than seeing a global population decrease, I foresee a mass population distribution shift happening in the next 50-100 years.

Developed countries in the western world, specifically in Europe seem to be lacking population growth while population within countries in the middle east and Africa are predicted to grow exponentially. In addition as we continue to see strong population growth in countries like China and India, bringing large amounts of people into areas that don’t possess the infrastructure to support them, we will most likely see a spillage over into other countries. I strongly believe there is a strong possibility of completely undeveloped countries in Africa and the middle east surpassing the population of countries like China and India in the next 100 years.

As countries are becoming more and more developed, the need for a large amount of children falls, which means a decrease in their birth rates, however countries that still rely on a large families to work agriculturally in the fields to support their families will continue strong growth. Little investment is going into these undeveloped countries, but there is still strong growth regardless. If we see infrastructure creation, production of medical vaccines and other additions that will increase the life expectancy, population growth will be even greater. The world’s population in undeveloped countries is going to completely shift the distribution globally. Europe, Canada and America will be dwarfed by the Eastern world in terms of population.

If the population continues to shrink in western nations, there will no doubt be a need for more immigration from countries like China and India to support current economies. Countries that are relatively homogeneous, over time will start to diversify because of this needed immigration. However, some countries are almost entirely against immigration and it is starting to have more noticeable effects over time. Japan for example who barely takes in any immigrants, and the ones they do, society treats them as outsiders, is struggling because they are not taking the smartest minds in the world and educating them. This has been one of the main reason why America has stayed so competitive, but Japan ‘s population does not want immigration.

So while I do partly agree with Elon Musk, I do think that globally we are going to see the same trend in population we have seen in the past, just the distribution of where the population is, will shift dramatically. The US is still growing but has definitely slowed down in the past few decades as we have entered a more modern era. I don’t foresee shrinkage there any time soon though. However compared to other countries that are literally doubling every couple of decades, eventually US population will look small. Many places like China have the room to include large amounts of new people into their society, but other places do not. When you factor in that most people will be moving towards and working in cities, we are getting closer to an age of metropolis. The population distribution that I believe will happen in the next 100 years will create new economically powerful cities and countries that we couldn’t even predict now.

-Calaber24p