The world’s population will reach 10.3 billion at mid-century before leveling off and then slowly falling to end the century at 10.2 billion, according to a new report from the United Nations World Population Prospects. Massive retractions in only a few years, the peak was forecasted to be 10.4 or so billion.
“The demographic landscape has evolved greatly in recent years,” said Li Junhua, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. For instance, due to the downgrade of fertility in such giant countries as China, whose numbers are expected to slide from 1.4 billion in 2024 to 633 million by 2100, that early peak could be nearer at hand than anyone had suspected.
On average, women the world over are giving birth to one fewer child compared to 1990. More than half of all countries fall below 2.1 births per woman, the replacement rate threshold. Being below the threshold of 2.1, countries such as China, South Korea, Spain, and Italy have crossed into “ultra-low” fertility rates below 1.4 live births per woman.
It says 63 countries, among them China, Germany, Japan, and Russia, have already reached peak populations. Along this path, these countries will lose at least 14% of their total population in the upcoming three decades. The report added that nine countries, among them Niger, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo whose populations were expected to double between the years 2024 and 2054, had bright prospects for rapid population growth for the upcoming 30 years.
According to the UN, India, which overtook China in population last year to take the top spot as the most populous country in the world, indeed shall continue to grow, as shall its population, at least through mid-century. Powered chiefly by immigration, the United States is forecast to grow from 345 million people in 2024 to 421 million by the century’s end.
“Just because a challenge might be emerging six decades into the future doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense to be talking about it now,” said Dean Spears, an associate professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin. He emphasized that future discussions on population changes will likely mirror the current discourse on climate change.
This also means that in the period under review, global life expectancy had recovered to 73.2 years in 2023 from a pandemic low of 70.9 in 2021. Life expectancy would gallop to 81.7 by the year 2100. The rise in life expectancy and falling fertility rates will greatly age the global population. Those aged 65 and older will outnumber children younger than 18 by the year 2080.
While the report underlines the challenge of population expansion, it also heads in the opposite direction by pointing out uneven contributions to climatic changes. Many of the fastest-growing regions are those whose people are, as a whole, the least contributors to global warming but whose people are, proportionately, the worst hit by its consequences.
Therefore, such UN findings require innovative policies aimed at the diversity of demographic challenges. To this respect, fast-growing countries will mainly invest in the efforts directed towards the eradication of poverty and hunger, while on the other side, countries with structural decline may not have any other way out but to adopt strategies aimed at managing problems linked with the labor market and social protection.
The choices made today will set the course of humanity in these demographic shifts as the world navigates into the future. “What really matters is our behaviors and the choices we make,” said John Wilmoth, head of the UN Population Division.
The report concludes with the extrapolation of the most populous countries in the world during 2100, where India would retain its top slot and would be followed by a far smaller China. The USA, which is currently the third most populous nation on earth, will slip down to the sixth position behind Nigeria, Congo, and Pakistan.
The demographic situation, as observed above, is full of challenges and opportunities, and the world as a global community has to move fast in mooting what is herein contained in securing a livable future for all.