World Population Predicted to Reach 8 billion in Coming Days
- AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A
VIVA – The United Nations (UN) has announced that Earth will reach a massive population in the coming days. The UN Population Division estimates that by November 15, there will be eight billion humans on Earth.
This number is a shocking increase from the 2.5 billion population in 1950 or about 72 years ago. In just three decades the population increased to 8.5 billion, and now experts also say there will be an increase in average life expectancy to 77.2 years by 2050.
By 2080, they believe that the world population will peak at 10.4 billion, after which it is likely to decrease by 50 percent by 2100.
This prediction is not universally agreed upon as more conservative models such as research published in the Lancet in 2020, predict the population will grow much more slowly, reaching 8.8 billion people by the end of the century.
Ilustrasi populasi penduduk bumi
- U-Report
Rachel Snow of the UN Population Fund notes that despite the increase, the world population growth rate has slowed dramatically to below 1 percent.
The UN predicts that this growth rate could drop further to around 0.5 percent by 2050 as fertility rates continue to decline from their peak in the 1950s.
They also found that in 2021 the average fertility rate was 2.3 children per woman, with the figure projected to drop further to 2.1 by 2050, according to the Express website, Tuesday, November 8, 2022.
"We have reached a stage in the world where the majority of countries and the majority of people in this world live in countries that are below the fertility rate," she said.
Meanwhile, growth rates are declining, the driving factor for the population increase is the fact that average life expectancy continues to rise, reaching 72.8 years in 2019, nine years more than in 1990.
In addition, declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancy mean that the number of people over 65 will increase from 10 percent in 2022 to 16 percent of the population in 2050.
However, this trend is not the same around the world. In some countries such as Japan, birth rates are starting to slow down, with other countries experiencing a population high increases.
The United Nations estimates that by 2050, more than half of the population growth will come from just eight countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and also Tanzania.
