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Census Update: What the World Will Look like in 2050

Here is the world in 2050, as imagined by the U.S. Census Bureau: India will be

the most populous nation, surpassing China sometime around 2025. The U.S. will

remain exactly where it is now: in third place, with a population of 423

million (up from 308 million in 2010). And declining birth rates in two of the

world's most economically and politically influential countries, Japan and

Russia, will cause them to fall from their current positions as the 9th and

10th most populous nations, respectively, to 16th and 17th.

The findings are the result of population estimates and projections of 228

countries compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau's International Data Base (IDB).

They offer a revealing look into the future. "One of the biggest changes we've

seen has been the decline in fertility in some developed countries such as

China," says Loraine West , an IDB project manager, "while others are

experiencing a slight increase." In other words, China's population boom is

finally slowing down while Western Europe's long-declining birth rate is - in

some places, at least - rising again. Spain and Italy are "on an uptick," says

West, "but how high will [the birth rate] rise? Or will it simply fluctuate up

and down on some long term level? We'll have to see." According to Italy's The

National Institute of Statistics, the country's recent population increase can

be largely attributed to its own immigrant population. See TIME's "Intelligent

Cities.")

The two countries on track to make the biggest population gains are Nigeria and

Ethiopia. Nigeria currently boasts 166 million people, but by 2050 its

population is expected jump to 402 million. Ethiopia's population will likely

triple from 91 million to 278 million, bringing the east African nation into

the one of the top 10 most populous countries in the world for the first time.

In fact, according to the United Nations Population Division, although only 18%

of the world's population lives in so-called "high-fertility" countries (places

where women have more than 1.5 daughters on average), most of those countries

are in Africa; the continent is expected to experience significant population

growth in the coming decades, which could compound the already-dire food supply

issues in some African nations.

While the U.S. appears relatively stable - it's the only country in the top 10

whose ranking is not expected to change in the next 40 years - previous census

reports have highlighted dramatic demographic shifts within the country's

borders. Last week, the Census Bureau announced that more than half of children

under two in the U.S. are ethnic minorities. Add to that the non-Hispanic white

population's increasing age (in California, for example, the median age for

non-Hispanic whites is almost 10 years older than that of the state as a whole)

and America in 2050 will look a lot different than the America we know today.

(See TIME's video: 10 Questions for Robert Groves.)

Perhaps the most unfortunate change is the one currently experienced by Russia.

The cold, vast country has been undergoing steady depopulation since 1992 and

the U.S. Census Bureau expects it to decline further, from 139 million people

to 109 million by 2050. That's a 21% drop, even more than country suffered

during World War II. Like many countries, Russia is experiencing declining

birth rates, but it's also suffering form a relatively low life expectancy.

According to the World Health Organization, Russian men have a life expectancy

of just 62 years, a fact that is often attributed to the country's high rate of

alcoholism and poor diet. (For comparison, Japan is also struggling with

depopulation, but the World Health Organization puts its life expectancy at 80

for men and 86 for women).

So what does this mean? The U.S. is not yet experiencing the kind of population

decline that Europe experienced in the 1990s and 2000s, although immigration

and differing birth rates among races means that the country's ethnic

composition is changing. Something similar will be going on in the rest of the

world, as well: Africa and India's boom, Russia's decline and China's expected

plateau (holding steady around 1.3 billion people between now and 2050) will

change the makeup of the estimated 9.4 billion people who will call Earth home

in 2050. The future, it seems, is not as distant as we think.