World population will reach 8 billion by November, says UN
Topline
The world population will exceed eight billion people on November 15, according to projections in a United Nations report released on Monday – although population growth is at its lowest level in decades.
Pictured is the skyline of Mumbai, India’s most populous city.
Highlights
The UN estimates that the world’s population is now 7.942 billion, and the world’s population exceeded seven billion in 2011.
In 2020, the world’s annual population growth rate fell below 1% for the first time since 1950, according to the UN, largely due to falling fertility rates.
Even still, the UN predicts that the population will reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.4 billion by the 2080s.
India will overtake China in total population by next year, report says, overtaking China as the world’s most populous country for the first time since the UN started tracking the metric in 1950.
Most of the population growth will occur in the least developed countries: the 46 least developed countries will increase their population from 1.11 billion to 1.91 billion between 2022 and 2050, according to UN estimates, while the population of Europe and North America will increase from 1.12 billion to 1.13 billion. billion in the same time frame.
Surprising fact
Global life expectancy in 2021 was 71 years, down from 72.8 years in 2019. The UN attributed much of the fall to the Covid-19 pandemic. More than six million people have died from Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Tangent
The UN population report comes amid a spike in interest in population issues spurred by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. Musk tweeted last week that “collapse in the birth rate is by far the greatest danger facing civilization”, and said the newsworthy births of his eighth and ninth living children were his way of coping with the “crisis of the underpopulation”.
Further reading
Musk comments on having twins with top employee: “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis” (Forbes)