On November 15, 2022, the United Nations marked the day the world's population reached about 8 billion. That same year, Japan recorded its fewest births in over a century, China's population fell for the first time in about six decades, and Canada was about to add more than a million people in a year. Population change is not one story but many, and each one creates issues: who will care for aging parents, where young people will live, who will fill the jobs, and how the world will respond to more than 100 million people forced from their homes. This lesson pulls together the whole unit to look at those issues and at what people, organizations and governments are doing about them.
How population change affects Canadians
| Population change | Effects | Who feels it |
|---|---|---|
| An aging population (20.0% aged 65+ in 2026) | More demand for doctors, home care and long-term care; more people drawing pensions; retirements leave jobs to fill | Seniors and their families; health workers; taxpayers; rural towns with many older residents |
| Fewer young workers per retiree (81 people aged 15–24 for every 100 aged 55–64 in 2021) | Labour shortages in health care, construction, skilled trades and trucking; more job openings for young people | Employers, especially in small and rural communities; young people entering the workforce |
| Rapid growth, 2022–2024 | Housing demand far above construction; rising rents; crowded classrooms, clinics and transit in fast-growing suburbs | Renters, first-time buyers, newcomers, students |
| Slower growth, 2025–2026 | Less pressure on rents in some cities; colleges and universities cut programs as international student numbers fall; some employers short of workers | Colleges, universities and their towns; temporary residents whose permits end; businesses |
| A young, fast-growing Indigenous population | Need for schools, housing and jobs in First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities; a growing share of the future workforce and leadership | Indigenous youth and communities; governments and employers |
| A more diverse population | New languages, foods, festivals and businesses; debates about integration and services in many languages | Communities across Canada, especially large cities |
Aging is the slowest but most certain change. The baby boomers will all be 65 or older by the end of 2030, and the oldest are now entering their eighties, when health care needs rise steeply. Canadians aged 65 and over account for a much larger share of health care spending than of the population. At the same time, each retirement is a job opening, so aging creates opportunities for young workers and newcomers as well as challenges for health care and pension systems. Housing was one of the issues Canadians felt most sharply in the early 2020s: in 2022 the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) estimated that Canada would need about 3.5 million more homes by 2030 than were expected to be built, to bring prices back within reach.
Strategies: what governments and organizations are doing
| Issue | Strategy | Trade-offs to weigh |
|---|---|---|
| Labour shortages and aging | The Immigration Levels Plan admits mostly economic immigrants chosen for their skills (rising to about 64% of places in the 2026–2028 plan) | Newcomers fill jobs and pay taxes, but immigration only slightly slows aging, because immigrants grow older too; it also adds to housing demand |
| Pensions | The Canada Pension Plan enhancement (phased in from 2019) raises future pensions; the Old Age Security age stays at 65 (a plan to raise it to 67 was reversed in 2016); OAS rose 10% for people 75 and over in 2022 | Higher contributions from today's workers vs more secure retirement incomes |
| Housing | The federal Housing Accelerator Fund (2023) pays cities that allow more homes; provinces and cities change zoning to permit more homes on existing lots | More homes near transit vs neighbourhood concerns about change; construction takes years |
| Health care and aging at home | More home care, training more nurses and personal support workers, faster licensing of internationally trained health workers | Cost and a shortage of workers; home care is cheaper and preferred, but needs staff |
| Young families and low birth rates | Child benefits and the Canada-wide child care plan (aiming for an average of 10 dollars a day) | Helps families with costs, but evidence shows such policies raise birth rates only a little |
| Growth that outpaces services | Caps on study permits (2024) and lower temporary resident targets (2026–2028) | Less pressure on housing vs less revenue for colleges and fewer workers for some employers |
Strategies affect people differently. A young adult may find more job openings as boomers retire but face high rents; a senior may want to stay at home but find home care hard to get; a newcomer may have skills employers need but wait years for credentials to be recognized; a small rural town may lose its school as families move away; Indigenous youth in a growing community may need new schools and housing but also represent much of the future workforce and leadership in their regions. Asking "who benefits, who pays and who decides?" is the key to evaluating any strategy.
Global population issues
The world passed about 8 billion people in November 2022 and about 8.2 billion in 2025, and the UN's 2024 projections expect it to peak at about 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s before slowly declining. Growth is very uneven. Most future growth will be in sub-Saharan Africa, while Japan, Italy, South Korea, China and many other countries are already shrinking or close to it. The demographic transition model explains why: as countries develop, death rates fall first and birth rates fall later, so populations grow quickly for a time and then level off.
| Nigeria | Canada | Japan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stage of transition | Stage 2 moving into Stage 3: high birth rate, falling death rate | Stage 4: low birth and death rates; growth comes from immigration | Stage 4, or a fifth stage some geographers add: deaths outnumber births and the population shrinks |
| Age structure | Expansive: more than 40% under 15 | Constrictive: 15.0% under 15, 20.0% aged 65+ (2026) | Strongly constrictive: nearly 30% aged 65+ |
| Main issues | Creating enough schools, jobs, housing and clean water for a fast-growing young population; rapid urbanization | Aging, housing, labour shortages, managing immigration levels | Shrinking workforce, caring for many elderly people, empty homes in rural areas |
| Responses | Expanding education, especially for girls, and family planning; job creation | Immigration, pension and housing policies (above) | Encouraging more women and older people to work, robots and automation, admitting more foreign workers |
Refugees and displaced people
War, persecution and violence had forced 123.2 million people from their homes worldwide by the end of 2024, a record at the time (UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency). Most never leave their own country (they are internally displaced), and most refugees who cross a border live in countries next to their own, many of them low- and middle-income countries. Only a small fraction are ever resettled to a country like Canada. Canada has a long role here. In 1979–1980 it took in about 60 000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, many through a new program that let groups of ordinary Canadians privately sponsor refugees; in 1986 the UN gave its Nansen Refugee Award to the people of Canada. Between November 2015 and February 2016 Canada resettled more than 25 000 Syrian refugees, and it reached a commitment to resettle 40 000 Afghans in 2023. Canada's private sponsorship model has since been copied by other countries.
- Individuals: join or donate to a sponsorship group, volunteer with newcomers (tutoring, conversation circles, driving to appointments), support fair-trade and relief campaigns, and learn and share accurate information.
- Organizations: UNHCR runs camps and resettlement referrals; the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and others give emergency aid; settlement agencies in Canadian cities help newcomers find housing, language classes and jobs.
- Governments: set refugee targets (49 300 refugees and protected persons a year in the 2026–2028 plan), fund humanitarian aid and development, and work through the UN on the causes of displacement, such as conflict and climate disasters.
- Other global issues that reach Canada: food security, climate-driven migration, rapid urban growth in developing countries and global health; each links to the population patterns in this unit.