In demography, replacement migration is a theory of migration needed for a region to achieve a particular objective (demographic, economic or social). [1] Generally, studies using this concept have as an objective to avoid the decline of total population and the decline of the working-age population.
Often, these overall declines in the population are influenced by low fertility rates. When fertility is lower than the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman and there is a longer life expectancy, this changes the age structure over time. [2] Overall, the population will start to decline as there will not be enough children born to replace the population of people lost and the proportion of older individuals composing the population will continue to increase. One concern from this is that the age-dependency ratio will be affected, as the working-age population will have more dependents in older age to support. Therefore, replacement migration has been a proposed mechanism to try and combat declining population size, aging populations and help replenish the number of people in the working age groups.
Projections calculating migration replacement are primarily demographics and theoretical exercises and not forecasts or recommendations. However, this demographic information can help prompt governments to facilitate replacement migration by making policy changes. [3]
The concept of replacement migration may vary according to the study and depending on the context in which it applies. It may be a number of annual immigrants, [4] a net migration, [5] an additional number of immigrants compared to a reference scenario, [6] etc.
Replacement migration may take several forms because several scenarios of projections population can achieve the same aim. However, two forms predominate: minimal replacement migration and constant replacement migration.
Replacement migration is a minimum migration without surplus to achieve a chosen objective. This form of replacement migration may result in large fluctuations between periods. Its calculation will depend on the chosen objective. For example, Marois (2008) calculates the gross number of immigrants needed to prevent total population decline in Quebec. [7] The formula is then the following:
Where:
The constant replacement migration does not fluctuate and remains the same throughout the projection. For example, it will be calculated with a projection providing a migration of X throughout the temporal horizon.[ citation needed ]
The raw results of replacement migration are not necessarily comparable depending on the type of replacement migration used by the author. Nevertheless, major demographics conclusions are recurrent:
Replacement migration as presented by the United Nations Population Division in 2000 is largely perceived as unrealistic as a singular way of fighting population ageing. [8] [9] [10] One reason being that replacement migration tends to only be a temporary fix to aging populations. Instead of using replacement migration to combat declining and aging populations, government policy and social changes could be implemented. [11] Therefore, replacement migration is said to be more useful as an analytical or hypothetical tool. [9]
Increased migration could decrease the old age dependency ratio, which is expected to grow considerably in the next decades. [9] However, the immigration need to effectively counter the greying of many industrialised economies is unrealistically high. [12]
Replacement migration is also feared to negatively impact the environment. [11] Declining and aging populations are typically seen in more developed countries, as more developed countries have better health care infrastructure and access to education that both decreases mortality rates and subsequently fertility rates in the population. [13] Immigrants are typically moving from areas that have fewer resources or economic opportunities, as access to more resources and economic prosperity can be a pull factors for these migrants to move to a new country. A large influx of immigrants from an area that is low or lacks resources to a country that has more resources may change the availability of resources since there will be more people. [11] Resources could be food, water, land, energy etc.
Certain countries may be opposed to international immigration. Reasons such as xenophobia can subject new immigrants to discrimination, thus, the immigrants may have trouble assimilating to their new country. [13] The native population of said countries may also resent and oppose the loss of national identity, homogeneous national culture, and the loss of advantages for native people that replacement immigration leads to.
Advances in robotics and AI could diminish the need for migrant workers, especially in low-skilled jobs. [14]
A 2019 paper reasserted the conclusions of the 2000 UN Population Division paper, arguing that while immigration could play a role in moderating the effects of an ageing population, the number of immigrants required to actually halt the ageing of the population (expressed in terms of maintaining the potential support ratio) was too high to be realistic. [15] A 2016 paper on the impact of migration on the projected population trends of the Scandinavian countries reached similar conclusions. [16]
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Statistics Canada conducts a country-wide census that collects demographic data every five years on the first and sixth year of each decade. The 2021 Canadian census enumerated a total population of 36,991,981, an increase of around 5.2 percent over the 2016 figure, Between 2011 and May 2016, Canada's population grew by 1.7 million people, with immigrants accounting for two-thirds of the increase. Between 1990 and 2008, the population increased by 5.6 million, equivalent to 20.4 percent overall growth. The main driver of population growth is immigration, and to a lesser extent, natural growth.
Demographic features of the population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo include ethnicity, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
The demography of Sweden is monitored by the Statistiska centralbyrån. Sweden's population was 10,538,026, making it the 15th-most populous country in Europe after Czech Republic, the 10th-most populous member state of the European Union, and the 87th-most populous country in the world. The total fertility rate was rated at 1.66 in 2020, which is far below the replacement rate of 2.1.
The population of the United Kingdom was estimated at over 67.0 million in 2020. It is the 21st most populated country in the world and has a population density of 270 people per square kilometre, with England having significantly greater density than Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Almost a third of the population lives in south east England, which is predominantly urban and suburban, with about 9 million in the capital city, London, whose population density is just over 5,200 per square kilometre.
Demography is the statistical study of human populations: their size, composition, and how they change through the interplay of fertility (births), mortality (deaths), and migration.
The demography of France is monitored by the Institut national d'études démographiques (INED) and the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE). As of 1 January 2021, 65,250,000 people lived in Metropolitan France, while 2,785,000 lived in overseas France, for a total of 68,035,000 inhabitants in the French Republic.
The United States had an official estimated resident population of 333,287,557 on July 1, 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This figure includes the 50 states and the District of Columbia but excludes the population of five unincorporated U.S. territories as well as several minor island possessions. The United States is the third most populous country in the world. The Census Bureau showed a population increase of 0.4% for the twelve-month period ending in July 2022, below the world average annual rate of 0.9%. The total fertility rate in the United States estimated for 2022 is 1.665 children per woman, which is below the replacement fertility rate of approximately 2.1.
Zero population growth, sometimes abbreviated ZPG, is a condition of demographic balance where the number of people in a specified population neither grows nor declines; that is, the number of births plus in-migrants equals the number of deaths plus out-migrants. ZPG has been a prominent political movement since the 1960s.
The dependency ratio is an age-population ratio of those typically not in the labor force and those typically in the labor force. It is used to measure the pressure on the productive population.
The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of a population is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime if:
Sub-replacement fertility is a total fertility rate (TFR) that leads to each new generation being less populous than the older, previous one in a given area. The United Nations Population Division defines sub-replacement fertility as any rate below approximately 2.1 children born per woman of childbearing age, but the threshold can be as high as 3.4 in some developing countries because of higher mortality rates. Taken globally, the total fertility rate at replacement was 2.33 children per woman in 2003. This can be "translated" as 2 children per woman to replace the parents, plus a "third of a child" to make up for the higher probability of males born and mortality prior to the end of a person's fertile life. In 2020, the average global fertility rate was around 2.4 children born per woman.
Population decline, also known as depopulation, is a reduction in a human population size. Throughout history, Earth's total human population has continued to grow; however, current projections suggest that this long-term trend of steady population growth may be coming to an end.
Population ageing is an increasing median age in a population because of declining fertility rates and rising life expectancy. Most countries have rising life expectancy and an ageing population, trends that emerged first in developed countries but are now seen in virtually all developing countries. That is the case for every country in the world except the 18 countries designated as "demographic outliers" by the United Nations. The aged population is currently at its highest level in human history. The UN predicts the rate of population ageing in the 21st century will exceed that of the previous century. The number of people aged 60 years and over has tripled since 1950 and reached 600 million in 2000 and surpassed 700 million in 2006. It is projected that the combined senior and geriatric population will reach 2.1 billion by 2050. Countries vary significantly in terms of the degree and pace of ageing, and the UN expects populations that began ageing later will have less time to adapt to its implications.
Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 83 million annually, or 1.1% per year. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.9 billion in 2020. The UN projected population to keep growing, and estimates have put the total population at 8.6 billion by mid-2030, 9.8 billion by mid-2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. However, some academics outside the UN have increasingly developed human population models that account for additional downward pressures on population growth; in such a scenario population would peak before 2100. Others have challenged many recent population projections as having underestimated population growth.
Income and fertility is the association between monetary gain on one hand, and the tendency to produce offspring on the other. There is generally an inverse correlation between income and the total fertility rate within and between nations. The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population, subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any developed country. In a 1974 United Nations population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this trend by stating "Development is the best contraceptive." In 2015, this thesis was supported by Vogl, T.S., who concluded that increasing the cumulative educational attainment of a generation of parents was by far the most important predictor of the inverse correlation between income and fertility based on a sample of 48 developing countries.
The ageing of Europe, also known as the greying of Europe, is a demographic phenomenon in Europe characterised by a decrease in fertility, a decrease in mortality rate, and a higher life expectancy among European populations. Low birth rates and higher life expectancy contribute to the transformation of Europe's population pyramid shape. The most significant change is the transition towards a much older population structure, resulting in a decrease in the proportion of the working age while the number of the retired population increases. The total number of the older population is projected to increase greatly within the coming decades, with rising proportions of the post-war baby-boom generations reaching retirement. This will cause a high burden on the working age population as they provide for the increasing number of the older population.
Japan has the highest proportion of elderly citizens of any country in the world. 2014 estimates showed that about 38% of the Japanese population was above the age of 60, and 25.9% was above the age of 65, a figure that increased to 29.1% by 2022. By 2050, an estimated one-third of the population in Japan is expected to be 65 and older.
Population decline has many potential effects on individual and national economy. The single best gauge of economic success is growth in GDP per capita, not GDP. GDP per capita is an approximate indicator of average living standards, for individual prosperity. Therefore, whether population decline has a positive or negative economic impact on a country's citizens depends on the rate of growth of GDP per capita, or alternatively, GDP growth relative to the rate of decline in the population.
The population of the United Kingdom is getting increasingly older, due to longer life expectancy and a sub-replacement fertility rate for little under 50 years. The society is expected to change as a result culturally and economically. By 2050, 1 in every 4 people is expected to be above the age of 65 and this will be more extreme in certain areas of the country.
Immigration has had a major influence on the demographics and culture of the Western world. Immigration to the West started happening in significant numbers during the 1960s and afterward, as Europe made its post-war economic recovery and the United States passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 allowing non-European immigration.