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PARIS – The soaring birth rates in developing countries is fueling a global baby boom, but women in dozens of wealthier countries are not producing enough children to maintain the population level, according to figures released. Friday.
An overview of birth, death and disease rates, evaluating thousands of country-by-country datasets, also revealed that heart disease has become the leading cause of death worldwide.
The Institute of Metrology and Health Evaluation (IHME), established at the University of Washington by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, used more than 8,000 data sources, including more than 600 new ones, to compile the one of the most detailed public health.
Their sources include country surveys, social media and open source documents.
He noted that while the world population had skyrocketed from 2.6 billion in 1950 to 7.6 billion last year, this growth was profoundly uneven across regions and incomes.
Ninety-one countries, mainly from Europe and North and South America, were not producing enough children to support their current population, according to the IHME study .
But in Africa and Asia, fertility rates have continued to rise, with the average woman in Niger giving birth to seven children in her lifetime.
Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrology at IHME, told AFP that the most important factor in determining population growth was education.
"It's a socio-economic factor, but it's a function of the education of women," he said. "The more a woman goes to school, she spends more years in school, she delays her pregnancy and therefore has fewer babies."
The IHME found that Cyprus was the least fertile nation in the world, with the average woman giving birth only once in her life.
In contrast, women in Mali, Chad and Afghanistan have on average more than six babies.
The United Nations predicts that there will be more than 10 billion people on the planet by mid-century, which is broadly in line with IHME's forecasts.
This raises the question of how many people our world can support, called the "carrying capacity" of the Earth.
Mokdad said that while people in developing countries continued to grow, their economies generally grew.
This usually has a training effect on fertility rates over time.
"In Asia and Africa, the population continues to grow and people are moving from poverty to better incomes, unless there are wars or unrest," he said.
"We expect countries to come out better economically and it is more likely that fertility will fall and stabilize."
We are not only billions more than 70 years ago, but we are living longer than ever before.
The study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, showed that men's life expectancy increased from 48 years to 71 years to 71 years. Women are now expected to live at 76, compared with 53 in 1950.
Living longer causes one's own health problems. further burdening our health care systems.
IHME said heart disease was now the leading cause of death in the world. In 1990, neonatal diseases were the leading cause of death, followed by lung diseases and diarrhea.
Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Azerbaijan had the highest mortality rates from heart disease. South Korea, Japan and France were among the lowest.
"There is less mortality due to infectious diseases as countries get richer, but also more disabilities as people live longer," said Mokdad.
He pointed out that although the number of deaths from infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis has significantly decreased since 1990, new noncommunicable killers have taken their place.
"Some behaviors lead to an increase in cardiovascular disease and cancer. Obesity is # 1 – it increases every year and our behavior contributes to that. "
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