The population of the Earth is projected somewhere around 7.2 billion people right now. If you had to guess, what do you think the population of the Earth will be in the year 2100? Many scholars have debated this question in recent years, and some came to the conclusion that the human population was arriving at a sort of tipping point, where birth rates would slow down and, eventually, we would reach our “maximum” population.
This theory was based in part on reduced fertility rates in Africa, but the projections have not lived up to the reality. As a result, some new projections were recently put forth by a team of researchers, and they believe that since Africa’s slowing fertility rate hasn’t “progressed” as originally thought, it is very possible that the Earth’s human population will be 12.3 billion people by the year 2100.
Now you may be asking yourself “why are they talking about this on an immigration blog?” Well, an interesting idea has come out of this new report: that immigration, which has always been, and would always have been, a very important issue will be even more important going forward.
As the population rises and countries reach their unsustainable points, people will seek new places to live in better situations. Immigration will become very important — and the writer of our source article believes that the “rich” countries (or the countries that want to try to become “rich”) will do so by welcoming immigrants with open arms.
Source: New York Times, “A Strategy for Rich Countries: Absorb More Immigrants,” Tyler Cowen, Nov. 8, 2014