The future fertility and demographic pressure of Bangladesh

Abu H. M. K. Hossain, University of Dhaka

Background: At the time of independence in 1971 the population size of Bangladesh was around 70 million people. After 29 years of the independence of Bangladesh, the country’s population was almost double, approximately 129.3 million people. Bangladesh has a medium Total Fertility Rate, a moderate life expectancy and it is an emigration country. This aim of the study is to forecast the number of births, deaths, total population size and demographic pressure of Bangladesh for 2040. Method: Cohort component method has been used in this study. The Leslie population model has been applied for calculation. Two projections have been made based on different assumptions. Results: In the period of 2000-2020, respectively 16.6 million babies (projection 1) and 18.4 million babies (projection 2) will be born according to the projections. In the period 2020-2040 respectively 13.6 million babies (projection 1) and 17.8 million babies (projection 2) will be born. In the first projection the number of deaths is decreasing from about 1.09 million deaths in the period 1995-2000 till about 0.86 million in the period 2035-2040. In 2040, the age distributed population pyramid of projection two looks like pyramid of middle aged people or mature pyramid. In 2040 the projected population size is increased till respectively 210.4 million people (projection 1) and 218.1 million people (projection 2). The base year (2000) demographic pressure was 0.74 and it would be around 0.45 in 2040. Conclusions: The Bangladeshi population will increase further in the future a range of 210 million (projection 1) to 218 million (projection 2) in 2040. The population size is still increasing, but no longer as fast as in the last century. The demographic pressure rate will decrease in the future. In 2040, there will be more people in working age groups than people in non-working age groups.