11 countries expected to shrink dramatically this century

Latest U.N. population report says 48 countries around the world are expected to see their populations decline by 2050

Wednesday 23 December 2015 23:51 GMT

Japan iwill 34.3 per cent of its population by 2100 at current rates of decline (Getty)

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Generally, it's a safe assumption to predict that the world will be more crowded in the future.

People are continually reproducing and, barring some kind of major incident, the world's population is set to rise pretty steadily in the coming decades.

Case in point: The Population Division of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs recently released an updated set of population projections that estimated the world would reach 11.2 billion people by 2100, a 52 percent increase over current estimates.

As dramatic as this growth would be, some regions of the world are expected to grow far more than others. More than half of the global population growth in the next 35 years is expected to happen in Africa, for example, but on the the other hand, some countries aren't expected to see any population growth at all.

In fact, the latest U.N. population report says 48 countries around the world are expected to see their populations decline by 2050. It also identifies 11 countries that, for reasons such as declining birth rates and emigration, are expected to lose more than 15 percent of their population in the coming decades.

If trends continue, things could get even more dramatic. According to the latest U.N. prediction, some countries are expected to lose more than half of their population by 2100. Of course, these are just projections and things could certainly go another way -- the United Nations believes there is a 23 percent chance the world's population will stabilize or even drop by 2100, for example.

Below you can see charts for the 11 countries expected to lose the most population by 2100.