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Academics have warned that South Africa's population may be growing at only a third of the official estimate of 1.8 percent per year, due largely to HIV and AIDS.
If the latest figures are correct, this could have a negative impact on the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, as poverty and inequality are likely to be exacerbated.
University of KwaZulu-Natal's health, economics and HIV research professor, Allan Whiteside, said if the decline in population growth meant people in their productive years were dying, this could also make it a "systemic long-term problem".
A local newspaper, Sunday Independent, quoted Whiteside as saying: "We've never seen this demographic event in a developing country before ... at the moment we have a chance to move away from poverty, but if you lose people, you have an orphan generation."
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