Where are all the people going?

When people think about the population they tend to focus on the growing global population and the environmental impacts of so many people. But that myopic perspective misses the true story.

According to the UN Population Fund, on 15 November 2022, the world’s population reached a landmark 8 billion people. But that growth is not equal across the world. Populations are rising, falling, and shifting unevenly.

The most obvious population stat is birth rate. The United Nations Population Fund estimates two-thirds of the world's people are living in an area with sub-replacement fertility. Countries like Japan, China, and Germany no longer have a high enough birth rate to sustain their populations. Countries like Angola and Niger are growing rapidly. But the question “Is a country's birth rate at replacement levels?” doesn’t capture the full population shift challenge.

Birth rate is not the only factor in population shift. There are shifts from rural to urban areas, migration from poor areas to rich areas (both inside countries and between countries), shifts in age, and a new breed of nomadism.

In the United States, 24% of counties experienced declining populations and 91% of these counties are in rural areas. China's rapid economic growth over the past 30 years was fueled in large part by workers moving from rural areas to urban manufacturing hubs. These are just two examples of a trend common around the world: movement from rural to urban as people look for more economic opportunities. So a country may have replacement level birth rates but still have large swaths of the country facing massive depopulation.

Many countries with replacement-level birth rates may still experience depopulation as people migrate in search of jobs. Again, this shift occurs within countries (competition for talent between US states can be fierce) and between countries as countries compete for highly-trained and skilled workers. This "brain drain" can be devastating for the losers and drive tremendous economic benefit for the winners.

Migration drives another often overlooked population shift: age shift. Typically young people -who are either highly skilled or physically capable of hard work- are the ones leaving one area in search of economic opportunity in another area. This leaves a rapidly aging and poorly educated population behind without the services necessary to support an aging population.

Also often overlooked is transient temporary population shift. The coronavirus pandemic drove improvements in remote work technology and a culture shift in how we view work. Scores of tech workers became digital nomads, traveling the globe and working from hotels, cafes, and co-working spaces in desirable locations. This influx of wealthy foreign tech workers can bolster a cities economy and provide opportunities for local business, but they can also wreak havoc on the culture and character of a place. And what happens to the locals when the nomads leave for the next hot new location?

Birth rate only tells one small part of the population shift story. Aging populations, brain drain, rural flight, and transient populations are driving massive societal changes and potentially the loss of entire cultures. How we as a society recognize and respond to these changes will shape the future of our world. With governments increasingly locked in partisan theater as opposed to meaningful governance it will increasingly be the job of communities to devise plans for counteracting and adapting to population shift.