Culture and Society
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Until recently, the world’s population growth showed no signs of slowing, yet over the last few years it has quite spectacularly ground to a halt. In fact, populations are now thought to have peaked in many countries, and are set to decline between now and the end of the century.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.In 2024, planet Earth hit a new landmark by becoming home to eight billion humans. According to the latest UN forecasts, however, things are now slowing down considerably, with only another two billion expected to be added to the world’s population over the next 60 years.
Some time during the 2080s, our numbers are predicted to hit 10.3 billion, before falling to 10.2 billion by the end of the century. Experts now think there’s an 80 percent chance that the world population will peak before 2100.
Yet just a decade ago, the chance of that happening was estimated to be just 30 percent, with some models predicting a global population of over 12 billion by 2100. For the most part, this change of pace can be explained by a drastic reduction in fertility rates, which refers to the number of babies born to each adult woman.
For any country to maintain its population, fertility rates need to be around 2.1. Yet the figure is now below this crucial mark in more than half of all nations.
In fact, nearly a fifth of all countries now have “ultra-low fertility”, meaning there are fewer than 1.4 live births per woman. Significantly, this group includes China, which until recently was the world’s most populous country.
Along with Russia, Japan and more than 60 other countries, China has now surpassed its peak and is on the way down. Between now and 2054, the population in these nations is forecast to decrease by about 14 percent.
And while there are many factors that affect fertility rate, it’s thought that this widespread drop-off can be largely explained by a phenomenon known as demographic transition, whereby women tend to have less babies as nations become increasingly industrialized. In such societies, women have more career opportunities and therefore often choose to start families later in life, while decreases in child mortality and a reduction in the need for large families to work the land means less babies tend to be born.
When combined with an ever-increasing life expectancy, this downturn in fertility rates has the capacity to fundamentally shift the demographic make-up of a population, with older people now representing a larger chunk of the total. In addition to predicting an overall reduction in population growth, statisticians now also predict that people over the age of 65 will start to out-number under 18s by around 2070.
