According to the, Washington-based Population Reference Bureau 2009 data sheet, the world is already on target to reach the projected seven billion people by 2011, 12 years after what was then its unprecedented growth from five to six billion over a 12-year period.

Ninety-seven per cent of the growth, the report projects, will take place in the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa.

But local demographers say the Caribbean by itself and, in fact, Jamaica will experience very little growth based on its demographic make-up.

"Based on our current growth rate and the assumptions that we are making, the population pretty much will be stabilising (by 2050)," senior demographer at the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), Toni-Shae Freckleton, says.

"We won't have significant growth to the point that it will cause concern," she says.

Jamaica's population is projected to increase by only a million people by 2050, compared with developing countries like Uganda, which is expected to double Canada's population by that time.

Freckleton says what is changing is the structure of the population.

Child population decreasing

Jamaica's child population is decreasing. By 2050, the 0 to 14 year-old age group would have declined by more than 26,000, while the working-age population and the elderly would have increased by more than 715,000 and 484,000, respectively.

Freckleton notes that these dynamics create their own challenges that need to be planned for.

"We have a surplus in the working-age population and we have to put the necessary strategies in place to capitalise on this increasing population," she says, noting that otherwise the country could see an increased brain drain or growing stress on urban resources as that segment of the population migrate in search of opportunities.

Likewise, resources need to be put in place to cater to the elderly.

"How is that going to affect NIS (National Insurance Scheme)?" Freckleton says are questions that should be considered by the Government as it plans for the new demography.