A population boom may not necessarily translate into economic prosperity for African economies, Justin Fox writes for Bloomberg. While African countries theoretically stand to reap the greatest “demographic dividend” in the future as their populations continue to grow, a comparative analysis of the UN and World Bank’s global birth rate and age-dependency ratio projections points to a potentially different scenario: Not only do these economies often struggle to meet the growing needs of their populations, an anticipated overall decline in global birth and fertility rates may mean that the world’s total population could soon begin to shrink, he suggests.“The current total fertility rate of 2.4 children per woman is above the zero-population-growth rate of 2.1, but it’s less than half the rate of 1968…and still falling.”

Egypt, for example, is set to become the world’s 12th most populous nation by 2050, but its age-dependency ratio (which compares the number of those under 15 to those between 15-64 and above) remains at a plateau of just above 50% after 2030 and well into the future.