Post-transitional Demography and Convergence: What Can We Learn from Half a Century of World Population Prospects?

After the Demographic Transition, convergence towards similar fertility and mortality levels, is the prevailing hypothesis in UN World Population Prospects Revisions. This chapter questions this assumption of “weak convergence” comparing actual data with the forecasted fertility, mortality, and migration trends computed by UN over the last half century. The “weak convergence” during 1985–2015 is not confirmed in countries that had a Total Fertility Rate below 2.5 children per woman before 1985. Moreover, in the period 2000–2015 the differences between groups of homogeneous countries actually increase. Further research can identify new regularities in order to predict future trends more accurately.