The World 39;s Wife Global Issues
Andreas Mbili
This dramatic growth has been driven largely by increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age, the gradual increase in human lifespan, increasing urbanization, and accelerating migration. Major changes in fertility rate have accompanied this growth. These trends will have far-reaching implications for generations to come.
India's population is expected to keep growing for several decades. Meanwhile, China's population recently reached its maximum size and has shown a decline since 2022. According to projections, the number of people in China will continue to decrease and may fall below 1 billion before the end of the century. (Source: UN DESA Policy Brief No. 153)
The world population is projected to reach 8.5 billion in 2030, and to increase further to 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion by 2100. As with any type of projection, there is a degree of uncertainty surrounding these latest population projections. These figures are based on the medium projection variant, which assumes a decline of fertility for countries where large families are still prevalent, as well as a slight increase of fertility in several countries with fewer than two children per woman on average. Survival prospects are also projected to improve in all countries.
In sharp contrast, the populations of 61 countries or areas in the world are expected to decrease by 2050, of which 26 may see a reduction of at least ten per cent. Several countries are expected to see their populations decline by more than 15 per cent by 2050, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine. Fertility in all European countries is now below the level required for full replacement of the population in the long run (around 2.1 children per woman), and in the majority of cases, fertility has been below the replacement level for several decades.
Future population growth is highly dependent on the path that future fertility will take. According to the World Population Prospects (2022 Revision), global fertility is projected to fall from 2.3 children per woman in 2021 to 2.1 in 2050.
Overall, significant gains in life expectancy have been achieved in recent years. Globally, life expectancy at birth is expected to rise from 72.8 years in 2019 to 77.2 years in 2050. While considerable progress has been made in closing the longevity differential between countries, large gaps remain. In 2021, life expectancy at birth in the least developed countries lags 7 years behind the global average, due largely to persistently high levels of child and maternal mortality, as well as violence, conflict and the continuing impact of the HIV epidemic.
International migration is a much smaller component of population change than births or deaths. However, in some countries and areas the impact of migration on population size is significant, namely in countries that send or receive large numbers of economic migrants and those affected by refugee flows. Between 2010 and 2021, seventeen countries or areas will see a net inflow of more than one million migrants, while ten countries will see a net outflow of similar magnitude.
The UN Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs pulls together information on such issues as international migration and development, urbanization, world population prospects and policies, and marriage and fertility statistics. It supports UN bodies such as the Commission on Population and Development, and supports implementation of the Programme of Action adopted by the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (IPCD).
The Population Division prepares the official United Nations demographic estimates and projections for all countries and areas of the world, helps States build capacity to formulate population policies, and enhances coordination of related UN system activities through its participation in the Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities.
A Survey by the IMF staff usually published twice a year. It presents IMF staff economists' analyses of global economic developments during the near and medium term. Chapters give an overview as well as more detailed analysis of the world economy; consider issues affecting industrial countries, developing countries, and economies in transition to market; and address topics of pressing current interest. Annexes, boxes, charts, and an extensive statistical appendix augment the text.
Global growth is projected to be in line with the April 2024 World Economic Outlook (WEO) forecast, at 3.2 percent in 2024 and 3.3 percent in 2025. Services inflation is holding up progress on disinflation, which is complicating monetary policy normalization. Upside risks to inflation have thus increased, raising the prospect of higher for even longer interest rates, in the context of escalating trade tensions and increased policy uncertainty. The policy mix should thus be sequenced carefully to achieve price stability and replenish diminished buffers.
Description: Global growth is projected to stay at 3.1 percent in 2024 and rise to 3.2 percent in 2025. Elevated central bank rates to fight inflation and a withdrawal of fiscal support amid high debt weigh on economic activity. Inflation is falling faster than expected in most regions, amid unwinding supply-side issues and restrictive monetary policy. Global headline inflation is expected to fall to 5.8 percent in 2024 and 4.4 percent in 2025, with the 2025 forecast having been revised down.
1. Risks from artificial intelligenceThe development of AI is likely to greatly influence the course we take as a society. We think that if it goes badly, however, it could pose an existential threat.
We also prioritise issues that enable others to have a greater impact regardless of which issues turn out to be most pressing, through building community and infrastructure, research, and better decision making.
Improving decision making (especially in important institutions)Can the decision-making processes of the most powerful institutions be improved to make important decisions better in a range of areas?
We may soon create machines capable of experiencing happiness and suffering, whose wellbeing will matter just like our own. But our understanding of consciousness is so incomplete, we might not even realise when this becomes possible.
Moreover, assessments of the scale and tractability of different global issues depend on your values and worldview. You can see some of the most important aspects of our worldview in our advanced series, especially our article on how we define social impact.
For this reason, we think our most important advice for people who want to make a big positive difference with their careers is to choose a very pressing problem to work on. This page is meant to help readers make that choice. Read more about the importance of choosing the right problem.
A key consideration for where to work is how society is currently allocating resources. If an important problem is already widely recognised, then it is likely that a lot of people are already trying to solve it, in which case it will usually be harder for a few extra people who decide to work on the issue to have a very large impact. All else equal, you are likely to be able to do far more good in an area that is not getting the attention it deserves.
The most important and unusual driver of our lists is probably that we especially focus on the impact different issues can have on all future generations, an idea called longtermism. This increases the importance we place on reducing existential risks and on shaping other events that could affect the long-run future.
If we were to reject longtermism, issues that contribute to existential risk would stand out much less (including most of our top-recommended issues), while issues like ending factory farming, improving global health, speeding up economic growth, improving science, and migration reform would all be boosted.
That said, even if we rejected longtermism, we still think positively shaping AI and reducing the chance of a catastrophic pandemic would be top problems for more people to work on due to their large near-term and medium-term effects, as well as their neglectedness.
When it comes to these, we roughly try to allocate our efforts in line with what we think are the most pressing issues. This means we aim to spend most of our time learning, writing, and thinking about our highest-priority issues and less time on issues we think are less pressing.
However, the distribution of our effort does not exactly match our views about which issues are most pressing. This is because we are a small team and there are returns to focusing and really learning about some issues, and we are better positioned to help people work on some issues vs. others.
This means that we tend to put more effort into having great advice about the very top issues we prioritise and those for which we can have stellar advice compared to the other sources. In practice, that means we put more effort into having great advice and support in AI safety, biorisk, and building the effective altruism community.
Clarify your broad worldview and values
What do you think is important? And how do you come to know the answers to that? Your answers to these questions are part of your worldview.
Learn more about frameworks for comparing issues
For example, we often use the importance, neglectedness, and tractability framework, in which how you assess the importance and tractability of problems is partially determined by your worldview. Also, see the article on this framework in our advanced series.
Identify key uncertainties about your list, work out what research you might do to resolve those uncertainties, then go ahead and do it, and then reassess and repeat. If some of the issues on your list overlap with ours, you can use our problem profiles as a jumping-off point for learning more.
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