Population growth could grind to a halt by 2050, before decreasing to as little as 6 billion humans on Earth in 2100, a new analysis of birth trends has revealed.
According to a recent research, the world's population could reach 8.5 billion by 2050 before declining to 7 billion by 2100. By 2050, population growth might come to a halt. The world population continues to grow at an alarming rate that is breaking previous records every day.
Eventually, Earth's population could decline to between 6 and 7 billion people by the 22nd century, according to population researchers. One reason for the projected shift is the declining average number of births per woman, especially among more developed regions with more educated women.
The UN Population Division has calculated the future population of the world's countries, based on current demographic trends. In 2022, world population reached 8 billion. The UN's 2022 report projects world population to be 9.7 billion people in 2050, and about 10.3 billion by 2100.
The world population is projected to reach 8.5 billion in 2030, and to increase further to 9.7 billion in 2050 and 10.4 billion by 2100.
Earth's capacity
Many scientists think Earth has a maximum carrying capacity of 9 billion to 10 billion people. [ How Do You Count 7 Billion People?] One such scientist, the eminent Harvard University sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, bases his estimate on calculations of the Earth's available resources.
Other possible negative impacts of a declining population are: A rise in the dependency ratio which would increase the economic pressure on the workforce. A loss of culture and the diminishment of trust among citizens. A crisis in end-of-life care for the elderly because there are insufficient caregivers for them.
Historic growth of world population
500 years BCE it was 100 million, and in the year 0 around 200 million people were estimated to live on Earth. After the Great Famine of 1315–17 and the Black Death in 1350, the world population was around 370 million people and around 1800 it reached 1 billion.
The global population drop is in motion. An economist believes the diminishing birth rate will have a detrimental impact on labor supply. The reason for our impending global population shortage is attributed to falling birth rates because of increased living standards.
Demographers have marked Musk's words—but they don't agree with his dire predictions. “With 8 billion people and counting on the earth, we don't see a collapse happening at present time, and it's not even projected,” says Tomas Sobotka at the Vienna Institute of Demography.
Moreover, he suggests that human numbers have already passed the long-term capacity of the Earth to sustain us and that an optimum world population lies perhaps in the range of 2 to 3 billion.
Current United Nations estimates show China's total population falling by up to 100 or 200 million by 2050. China's demographic trajectory is far from unusual. It is following in the path set by the rest of East Asia.
Overcrowding leads to further demand for limited resources and this, in turn, can lead to more conflict and warfare. As humans seek out more resources, they take over land that was once the habitat of other species leading to huge biodiversity loss.
It is estimated that more than 70 years will be needed for the global population to double again to more than 10 billion by 2059. The growth in population is partly caused by declining levels of mortality and increased levels of life expectancy at birth.
Busy urban lifestyles and long working hours leave little time for some Japanese to start families, and the rising costs of living that mean having a baby is simply too expensive for many young people.
The belief that global population levels will become too large to sustain is a point of contentious debate. Those who believe global human overpopulation to be a valid concern, argue that increased levels of resource consumption and pollution exceed the environment's carrying capacity, leading to population overshoot.
In the past 20 years, South Korea has recorded some of the lowest fertility and marriage levels in the world. As of 2021, South Korea is the country with the world's lowest total fertility rate at 0.81. The TFR of the capital Seoul was 0.63 in 2021.
China's population decline can be traced back to the restrictive family-planning policies launched in the 1970s and an impressive economic boom fueled by China's huge labor force. China's modernization brought rapid urbanization, rising income levels, and better education to large parts of the country.
Assuming a constant growth rate and birth rates of 80 per 1000 through 1 A.D., 60 per 1000 from 2 A.D. to 1750, and the low 30s per 1000 by modern times, 105 billion people have lived on earth, of whom 5.5% are alive today.
A late human population bottleneck is postulated by some scholars at approximately 70,000 years ago, during the Toba catastrophe, when Homo sapiens population may have dropped to as low as between 1,000 and 10,000 individuals.
From 1 million humans in 10,000 B.C., all the way to 7.02 billion. The journey of our kind on Earth, all in numbers! By 10,000 B.C., the world's population was around 1 million. 2,000 years later there were about 5 million people on Earth—the same number that live in Finland today.
History suggests that once a country crosses the threshold of negative population growth, there is little that its government can do to reverse it. And as a country's population grows more top-heavy, a smaller, younger generation bears the increasing costs of caring for a larger, older one.
The Population Bomb has been characterized by critics as primarily a repetition of the Malthusian catastrophe argument that population growth will outpace agricultural growth unless controlled.
After peaking in 2008, Japan's population has since shrunk steadily due to a declining birthrate. The country saw a record low of 771,801 births last year.