The United Nations said on Monday it expects the world’s population to reach 8 billion by November 15 this year – and it predicts that India will replace China as the world’s most populous nation next year.
The report, released on World Population Day, says world population growth fell below 1% in 2020 and is growing at the slowest pace since 1950.
According to the latest UN projections, the world population could grow to about 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and a peak of about 10.4 billion people during the 2080s. It is expected to remain at that level until 2100.
Along with India, more than half of the world’s population growth between now and 2050 is likely to come from seven countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls 2022 a “milestone year” with “the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant.”
The report, World Population Prospects 2022, puts the population at 7.942 billion and predicts that it will reach 8 billion by November 15.
“This is an opportunity to celebrate our diversity, to acknowledge our common humanity and to marvel at advances in health that have extended life expectancy and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates,” Guterres said in a statement. “At the same time, it’s a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our obligations to each other.”
Along with the decline in world population growth came a decline in fertility over much of the world – almost 66% of the world population live in an area of fertility around the levels “required for zero growth in the long run, for” a population with low mortality, “according to the report.
The global COVID-19 pandemic has also reduced the average life expectancy to 71 years, from 72.9 in 2019. By 2050, the UN report predicts that the average life expectancy will reach 77.2 – but also noted that the composition of the general population is likely to be older come the same year, with the number of individuals over the age of 65 projected to be more than twice the size of the population under five years old.
“Further action by governments aimed at reducing fertility will have little impact on the rate of population growth between now and the middle of the century, due to the youthful age structure of today’s global population,” said John Wilmoth, director of the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, wrote in a statement. “Nevertheless, the cumulative effect of lower fertility, if maintained over several decades, could be a more significant slowdown in world population growth in the second half of the century.”
According to the United Nations, the world last reached its 7 billion population milestone in 2011, and the report notes that “the same concerns and challenges raised 11 years ago have persisted or worsened: climate change, violence, discrimination.”
The earth also reached another “grim” milestone in May, the UN noted: 100 million people have been displaced worldwide, an increase driven in part by the millions of people who have either fled Ukraine in the months since Russia’s invasion or the millions more internally. displaced within the country due to the conflict.
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