I used to talk a lot about developing countries — how the successful ones accelerated their growth, and what lessons the others could learn from those successes. Here’s a whole series I wrote about the more promising development stories:
And when I was at Bloomberg, I wrote a lot about the prospects for African industrialization (which has been disappointing in the years since), and about the need for humanitarian aid to help some of the very worst-off countries.
These days, I’ve been writing a lot less about developing countries, for several reasons. First of all, developed countries aren’t doing so well themselves these days — most have slow growth, stagnating or shrinking populations, and internal political turmoil. Second, with the rise of economic nationalism, there is much less appetite among rich countries for altruistic crusades to help the developing world. China did have a big idea — the Belt and Road program — but it didn’t help very much, and created a lot of problems, meaning China will also probably retreat from development promotion. Meanwhile, protectionism in the U.S., China, and elsewhere will make it harder for developing countries to pursue traditional export-led growth.
But the window when developed countries (including China) can afford to treat poor countries like an afterthought is rapidly drawing to a close. The reason is simple demographics. The whole developed world is about to start shrinking. If not for immigration, it already would be:
Meanwhile, the world’s poorest countries are going to experience strong population growth through the end of this century:
The result of this disparity is visible in the chart at the top of this post. By 2100, six out of the fifteen most populous countries in the world — and three of the top five — will be places that as of 2025 have under $7,000 in per capita GDP (PPP). The biggest ones will be Pakistan, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with Ethiopia and Tanzania not far behind. Altogether, over 2 billion people — a fifth or more of humanity’s peak population — is projected to live in those five countries.
And that percentage will only grow after that, at least unless some sort of radical unexpected change happens to demographic patterns. Fertility is falling everywhere, but in the Big 5 poor countries, it’s not falling much faster than in the world as a whole:
