Global Regional Consistent Population/Urbanization Projections for Developing Socioeconomic Scenarios

Leiwen Jiang, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
Raphael Nawrotzki, University of Minnesota

Urbanization projections and population projections are the two basic elements included in the new socioeconomic scenarios for climate change researches - the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). While the two projections signify the plausible trends in urbanization levels and national population compositions respectively and separately, there is no projection of changes in age and gender structure of rural and urban population, information important for studying the needs and challenges to socioeconomic development and environmental change. We develop a multiregional population/urbanization model to project the changes of rural and urban population composition of 31 global regions, consistent with the SSPs’ urbanization and population scenarios. Based on the projection results, we explore the implied patterns of future urban population change through natural growth vs. rural-urban migration under different scenarios; analyze the impacts of rural-urban population dynamics on population structures and socioeconomic development in the rural and urban areas of different regions.