Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been citing evidence that the United Nations world population projection group has been massively wrong on global population projections and on the population of China and India. This is hugely important because population projections are the foundation upon which economic and business projections are made. Population projections feed into all national and regional planning for the future. They are the basis of policy planning. The false UN population projections are like temperature reports given to frogs sitting in a frying pan.
If the degree of error is proven, then it is the difference between a world population of 11 billion in 2100 and a world population of 6 billion. How would that much error effect some climate change projection?
India is completing a delayed population Census in 2024. If the UN is massively wrong about India’s population then it will show that the UN’s projections for global population are completely broken. The UN was biased into inflating forward population estimates to encourage a policy of population control.
India’s National Family Health Survey indicated a fertility rate of 1.99 in 2017-19, in contrast to the WPP’s estimate of 2.16. If a population estimate is off by 10% on the key metric of current fertility rate and is overestimating future fertility as 1.8 instead of 1.2 then the projected population will be double the correct projection.
China’s fertility rate (births per woman) fell to 1.0-1.1, well below the official forecast of 1.8. The number of births in China dropped sharply to 9.56 million, the fewest since 1790, despite China’s shift to a two-child policy in 2016. The UN projections for China to have a population of 767 million assumes that China’s fertility rate will recover to 1.5. The prior UN forecast was China to have a population of 1.05 billion in 2100.
A sample survey from 2016 in China showed a fertility rate of 1.25 and only 13 million births, which was later inflated to 18.83 million.
If the number of births in China is half what was estimated then by 2040-2050, there will be half as many fertile women as the prior estimate. What was already a rapidly declining population becomes insanely low. The high UN estimate of 767 million could be hiding an actual realistic projection in the 300-440 million range.
All real data from China and India indicate that the UN World Population Prospects group has been massively overestimating the current and past few years of fertility. the UN World Population Prospects group has been massively overestimating the future population of China, India and other countries.
The WPP projects that India’s fertility rate will bounce back to 1.78 in 2050 before declining to 1.69 by 2100. But in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia, the fertility rates of Indian populations are barely higher than those of Chinese communities. For example, between 2000 and 2022, the average fertility rate for Indians and Chinese in Singapore was 1.19 and 1.09, respectively. Similarly, from 2016 to 2021, the average fertility rate in Malaysia was 1.1 for Chinese and 1.23 for Indians.
The UN has financially supported both countries’ population-control policies in the 1970s. There is description of how China ended up adopting the One Child Policy by Susan Green Halgh. China adopted Western Science in a flawed way. Some of the key people involved in the new population policy were influenced by the Club of Rome, limited population dogma. The Club of Rome had been discredited in the West but the criticism of the population control dogma did not reach into China.
A recent survey in China showed declining interest in childbearing. If this survey is right then China will struggle to stabilize its fertility rate at 0.8, and its population will fall to less than 1.02 billion by 2050 and 310 million in 2100. If China succeeds in increasing its fertility rate to 1.1 and prevents it from declining, its population will likely fall to 1.08 billion by 2050 and 440 million by 2100.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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