The 8 countries driving world population growth from 8bn to 9.7bn – and China’s not one of them
Just eight of the world’s nations are expected to account for more than half of the world’s population increase in the year ahead, according to a UN report which states that the world’s population will pass eight billion on Tuesday.
The eight billion landmark has been surpassed little more than a decade after the global population reached seven billion in 2011, but growth is now at its slowest rate since 1950, according to World Population Prospects 2022.
The UN projects that the population will reach 8.5bn in 2030 and 9.7bn in 2050. It is expected to reach a peak of 10.4bn in the 2080s and it will remain around that mark until the end of millenium.
More than half of the projected increase up to 2050 will be accounted for by just eight countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania. Countries of sub-Saharan Africa are expected to contribute more than half of the increase anticipated through 2050, the UN states.
China has not been included and it is expected to be surpassed by India as the world’s most populous country next year. “China is expected to experience an absolute decline in its population as early as 2023,” the report states.
Falling birth rates in much of the world account for slow growth. “Two-thirds of the global population live in a country or area where lifetime fertility is below 2.1 births per woman, roughly the level required for zero growth in the long run for a population with low mortality,” said the UN.
The populations of 61 countries are projected to decrease between now and 2050. Populations are also ageing with the proportion aged 65 or above projected to rise from 10 per cent today to 16 per cent in 2050.
The population of sub-Saharan Africa is forecast to grow at 2.5 per cent per year, more than treble the global average. Projections for the continent’s most populous nation Nigeria is for the total to rise from 216 million today to 375 million in 2050, which would be the fourth-largest in the world after China, India, and the US.
There are concerns about the strain this would place on services. “We are already overstretching what we have – the housing, roads, the hospitals, schools. Everything is overstretched,” said Gyang Dalyop, an urban planning and development consultant in Nigeria.
Birth rates are likely to remain high in sub-Saharan Africa, where governments have discouraged the use of birth control. Tanzania’s former president, John Magafuli, attacked the use of contraceptives as “lazy” prior to his death in 2021.
Reference: Kieron-monks