Population in Colombia would have already fallen, according to analysis by the Bank of the Republic

Last Friday, hours after the President Gustavo Petro said that “we should already be discussing” as lower the pension agethe National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane) revealed that In the first seven months of the current year, the birth rate in Colombia was the lowest in more than a decade, falling 15.2% compared to 2023.

The relationship between the data and the opinion coming from the Government is that the pension system approved last semester at the initiative of the Government depends on the population increasing, because the main component is the pay-as-you-go system: retired seniors are paid with the contributions of those who still work.

(Also: Aging of the population requires a different path than lowering the pension age).

For the new scheme to work, More young people need to enter the labor system to contribute, which for the future is increasingly in questionsince without births there will be more elderly to support with fewer young workers. For this reason, this mechanism is compared in certain sectors to a financial pyramid.

But as the Dane has been recording its vital statistics, record after record of drop in births in the country, researchers from the Bank of the Republic They have analyzed how this trend will have an effect on the size of the population in the country in the near future.

According to the study, experts show How many millions of inhabitants could the population living in the national territory fall between now and the middle of the century?. These estimates are part of four scenarios that experts consider possible and that they present in their calculations.

First population drop

In the analysis, experts from the Bank of the Republic warn that what is observed in Colombia is “an unprecedented drop in the fertility of the Colombian population which, combined with emigration, implies that the Colombian population would have fallen in 2022 for the first time in recent history and would probably have also done so in 2023“.

(More: Births in Colombia continue in free fall, while deaths rise slightly).

Furthermore, they point out that, for now, Dane has not included this new data in its demographic projections, in which it was expected that, For the first time, the Colombian population would fall within 28 years, that is, in 2052.

In the projection exercise carried out by the Issuer’s experts, four scenarios are presented, where the first of them corresponds to the current Dane projections that were made based on the results of the 2018 Population Census..

The researchers assure that the projections are out of date with the data observed since 2020, “when the Dane projection implies a birth rate of 1.5% versus an observed rate of 1.27%“.

They add that “By 2023, the projected birth rate is 1.39%, which is higher than the observed rate of 0.99%“.

(We recommend: In Colombia, 769 private schools have closed in the last year and a half, why?).

In the other possible scenarios, The observed birth data are taken into account until April 2024.. In the first, it is assumed that the rate of decline in births is temporary and is reversed in 2025 and 2026. Later the fall continues at the same rate that Dane had originally projected. “It is important to point out -say the experts- that international experience does not show reversals of this magnitude in the fall in the birth rate“.

In the second alternative scenario, the observed data are included, but it is assumed that the temporary drop is not reversed, but immediately returns to the same rate of fall that the Dane had originally projected.

Already in the last scenario, It is assumed that the drop in birth rates will continue to persist and, therefore, the drop in births will continue to occur for several years, before stabilizing..

From the application of these scenarios, experts from the Bank of the Republic find when the size of the population in Colombia could begin to fall, considering that in the original Dane projection it was expected that this decrease would only occur from 2052.

What would the population decline be like in the next three decades?

The experts found that, in the first scenario, the decline in the country’s population would begin in the year 2043. In the second, said demographic phenomenon would appear from the 2032 and, in the third scenario, the fall in population size would begin by 2027.

(Continue reading: ‘From problem to solution’: how the plummeting birth rate can raise education).

Regarding the second scenario, in which the departure of compatriots from the country is taken into account, according to what has been seen in recent years, “the decrease would have started from 2022, that is, 30 years earlier than expected in the current population tables of the Dane“conclude the researchers. And in this scenario, By the year 2050, Colombia’s population would be 45.4 million inhabitants.that is, almost seven million people less than the 52.2 million people who would inhabit the territory today, according to the projections of the statistical entity.

“(…) the demographic transition is expected to have substantial effects on the productive capacity of the economy, public finances, and the demand for public goods, which is why it should be a central concern of public policy“, close the analysts.

PORTFOLIO
*With information from EL TIEMPO – ECONOMÍA