World’s population to hit 9.7 billion in 2050 – UN report

The world population is expected to increase by two billion people in the next 30 years, from 7.7 billion currently to 9.7 billion in 2050, according to The World Population Prospects 2019 report.

According the report, the world’s population could reach its peak around the end of the current century, at a level of nearly 11 billion.

The report stated that the world’s population is growing older due to increasing life expectancy and falling fertility levels, and the number of countries experiencing a reduction in population size is growing.

Sub-Sahara Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is set to double over the next 30 years, adding an additional 1bn people and putting it on track to overtake central and south Asia soon after as the world’s most populous region.

The high fertility rates south of the Sahara mean that region of Africa will account for more than half of global population growth between now and 2050.

The region’s population will still be rising fast at the end of the century, when the number of people living in much of Asia and elsewhere will be in decline. The trend is exemplified by Nigeria, whose population has already surged from 95m in 1990 to 201m this year.

China and India

China, with 1.43 billion people in 2019, and India, with 1.37 billion, have long been the two most populous countries of the world, comprising 19 and 18 per cent, respectively, of the global total in 2019. They are followed by the United States of America, with 329 million in 2019, and Indonesia, with 271 million.

The populations of both Pakistan and Nigeria more than doubled in size between 1990 and 2019, with Pakistan moving up in rank from the 8th to the 5th position and Nigeria from the 10th to the 7th position. Current projections indicate that India will surpass China as the world’s most populous country around 2027.

After this re-ordering between 2019 and 2050, the ranking of the five largest countries is projected to be preserved through the end of the century, when India could remain the world’s most populous country with nearly 1.5 billion inhabitants, followed by China with just under 1.1 billion, Nigeria with 733 million, the United States with 434 million, and Pakistan with 403 million inhabitants.

Nigeria’s population is set to double again to more than 400m by 2050, when it will have overtaken the US as the world’s third most inhabited country.

In Niger, where women on average have seven children, the highest birth rate in the world, the population is projected to almost triple to 66m over the same time period. “In 2050 it is expected that Niger will be the only country in the world experiencing a fertility level greater than four births per woman over a lifetime,” the report said.

The 2019 revision of the World Population Prospects is the twenty-sixth edition of the official United Nations population estimates and projections.

It presents population estimates from 1950 to the present for 235 countries or areas, underpinned by analyses of historical demographic trends.

This latest assessment considers the results of 1,690 national population censuses conducted between 1950 and 2018, as well as information from vital registration systems and from 2,700 nationally representative sample surveys.

The 2019 revision also presents population projections to the year 2100 that reflect a range of plausible outcomes at the global, regional and country levels.