The latest census figures are released this week, but the long-term trends are already clear: we will soon be more Māori and more Asian, fertility rates are dropping, and more citizens are leaving.
Older bodies are often more susceptible to heat illnesses.
AP Photo/Manu Fernandez
Australia’s latest population projection figures have just come out. This is what they show about our demographics and where the country is heading in the future.
Most of the problems confronting the world come down to population growth. But where women are given the choice, they limit the number of children they have.
Crowds gather at the Saturday market in Lalibela, Ethiopia in 2019. Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is growing three times faster than the global average.
(Shutterstock)
Environmental policymakers and scholars must listen to sub-Saharan Africans’ voices and recognize the importance of population for achieving sustainable development goals.
In general, an ageing population puts added pressure on the working-age population to be more productive – just to maintain total output – amid growing fiscal constraints.
Deaths have exceeded births by 3 million over the past two years. China’s working-age population is set to plunge to one-fifth of its peak.
A woman fills up her vehicle with gas in Toronto in 2019. Governments the world over are stuck between being accused of doing nothing to address climate change or taking actions which often incur a political backlash.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov
We look to politicians to provide climate change solutions, but there is only so much they can do. Beyond regulation, governments should remember the key role they play in promoting innovation.
South Korea’s fertility rate fell below the level needed to sustain a population in the mid-1980s – and it never recovered. It is now below one child per woman during her reproductive years.
Guineans living in Ivory Coast wait for their turn during a census on March 26, 2010 in Adjame, a popular district in Abidjan.
SIA Kambou/AFP via Getty images
There’s no simple “yes” or “no” answer to whether we should produce more children when Earth is in such dire straits.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford talks to the media on a construction site in Brampton, Ont., in May 2022. Later in the year, the Ford government justified its adoption of sweeping housing legislation and the opening of parts of the Greater Toronto Area Greenbelt for development, stating that it was needed to address “the housing supply crisis.”
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Evidence suggests that Ontario neither had a shortage of pre-authorized housing starts to accommodate its growing population, nor did it have a shortage of designated land to build such homes.
Anthropologue et démographe, professeur émérite au Muséum national d’histoire naturelle et conseiller de la direction de l'INED, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN)