Yesterday, the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) released its 2008 World Population Data Sheet. Required reading for anyone interested in how population trends are changing our world, this year’s publication focuses renewed attention on the growing “demographic divide” between the rich and poor areas of the world. 

In releasing the report, Bill Butz, PRB’s president, observed that “Nearly all of world population growth is now concentrated in the world’s poor countries.”  Mary Mederios Kent, one of the co-authors of the report, noted that on one side of the “demographic divide” “are mostly poor countries with high birth rates and low life expectancies.  On the other side are mostly wealthy countries with low birth rates and rapid aging.”

The PRB report looked at several population trends.  Highlights include discussion of:

• Increased urbanization:  More than half the world now lives in a city, town or village;
• Education and nutrition:  Mothers in developing countries who have low educational status are more likely to have malnourished children whose growth is stunted.
• Declining fertility rates:  In the past half centuries fertility rates have dropped sharply in many countries, but not all.  In countries like Yemen and Niger women, on average, still have six or more children during their lifetimes.
• World population growth:  Due to high fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, world population is expected to grow from 6.7 billion in 2008 to 9.3 billion by 2050.

To illustrate the impact of the demographic divide, PRB looked at the demographic profiles of Italy and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), two countries that are very close in terms of population size (60 million and 67 million respectively), but on opposite sides of the “demographic divide.”  Most importantly, 74% percent of children in the DRC are undernourished, compared to less than 2.5 percent in Italy.  Despite high mortality rates, the population of the DRC could nearly triple by 2050, reaching a projected population of 189 million, while Italy’s population in 2050 will remain largely unchanged (62 million).

Numbers alone, of course, do not paint a complete picture of life on the other side of the “demographic divide.”  As it happens, the BBC just completed a short documentary piece (“Why They’re Dying in the Congo”) looking at life in the DRC, where despite the end of a bloody civil war, 45,000 people a month are still dying, the vast majority from conditions like malaria and malnutrition.

Having worked on two presidential campaigns, I know that presidential candidates read voluminous amounts of information in the form of briefing papers, newspapers and the occasional report.  It’s probably safe to assume that PRB’s data sheet will not make it on to McCain or Obama’s reading list. Too bad.  U.S. elections don’t turn on global population trends, but the world does.