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According to the latest U.N. estimates, the global population will peak earlier than previously predicted. The population is now expected to peak in 2086 at just over 10.4 billion. (The Washington Post) |
NH: The U.N. has released World Population Prospects 2022, its latest set of projections for global and national populations through the year 2100.
In its previous 2019 projection report, the U.N. predicted (according to its “medium scenario”) that the global population would grow to around 10.9B by 2100 and begin to fall very shortly thereafter. In this update, they now project that the world’s population will peak in 2086 at just over 10.4B.
Why? The U.N. expects fertility in low-income countries to decline more rapidly than it had previously assumed. And it expects the “rebound” in fertility rates in high-income countries to be smaller than it had previously assumed.
I’ve noted before that other demographers argue that there’s no reason to expect fertility rates to gravitate back up to replacement rate TFRs as the U.N. does. While the U.N. hasn’t come over entirely to the declinists’ side, they’ve certainly become less optimistic over the past three years.
Of all major institutions that calculate global demographic projections, the U.N. remains the most sanguine about future population growth. (See “New Projection Speeds Up Global Population Decline.")
According to the U.N., the population will reach 8.0B by November of this year and 9.0 by 2037. It will take another 21 years to reach 10.0B. But the University of Washington's IHME and the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital in Vienna ("EU-JRC" in the chart below) envision much lower-growth scenarios: They don't see the world population ever reaching 10.0B.
Although the global population is expected to grow steadily before peaking in 2086, the magnitude of population growth and decline is expected to vary hugely across different regions.
- Negative growth: The population of Eastern and Southeast Asia, which was the world's most populous region in 2022, will peak around 2034 at 2.4B people before declining sharply to around 1.5B by the end of the century.
- Little or no growth: The population of Europe and North America will peak in 2038 at 1.1B and thereafter will decline slowly to 1.0B by 2100. The population of Latin America and the Caribbean will peak 15 years later around 2056 before beginning to decline, but by only about 100M. Meanwhile, the populations of Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania are expected to basically remain flat during the entire period.
- Some growth: The population of Northern Africa and Western Asia will continue to grow, but by less than half a billion people by the end of the century.
- High growth: The population of Central and Southern Asia, which is currently the second-most populous region, will continue growing for the next 50 years. It is not expected to peak until 2072 at 2.7B. But far and away the leader in global growth will be sub-Saharan Africa, which will more than triple in size from around 1.0B people today to 3.4B by 2100. Beginning sometime in the 2050s into the indefinite future, sub-Saharan Africa will provide more than all of global population growth. It is expected to become the most populous region in the world by the late 2060s.
This is not a new prediction. Again, I would argue that it cannot be taken seriously since this region cannot support a population anywhere near this large without a miraculous economic transformation. (See “Africa Expected to Carry the World’s Population Growth.”)
Ultimately, the bulk of future population growth is expected to come from just a handful of countries. With fertility rates in much of the developed world slowing (see “Nations Labor to Raise Their Birthrates”), more than half of the projected population increase between 2022 and 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Tanzania.
The following chart identifies the five largest contributors to (absolute) population growth after 2050.
What are the takeaways?
- India is expected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country by 2023. In light of China's rapid recent fertility decline, we have been saying that India is now only a year or two away from overtaking China in total population (see "India's TFR Falls Below Replacement"). Apparently, the U.N. now agrees with us.
- China will lose more than 10M people a year in the 2050s and beyond. This chart really drives home the magnitude of China's impending population swing, from positive to negative. We've never before witnessed such a low TFR in a country with a large population. It is going to generate massive yearly population losses.
- Though India's population will keep growing in the near term, the increases will shrink over time and turn increasingly negative after the 2060s. India today is only slightly above replacement-rate TFR. Soon its TFR will sink below replacement, which will lead eventually to steady population losses. Because India (like China) has a very large population, even a slightly negative population growth rate is going produce big declines in absolute numbers.
- Several large sub-Saharan African countries, plus Pakistan, will grow continuously through the end of the projection period. Many of these countries have very high TFRs--above 6. And sub-Saharan Africa as a whole will continue to have an average TFR of 4.5 by the year 2100. These TFRs imply very high population growth rates. The absolute gains for each of them are more modest than China's or India's losses only because their total populations are much smaller to begin with.
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ABOUT NEIL HOWE
Neil Howe is a renowned authority on generations and social change in America. An acclaimed bestselling author and speaker, he is the nation's leading thinker on today's generations—who they are, what motivates them, and how they will shape America's future.
A historian, economist, and demographer, Howe is also a recognized authority on global aging, long-term fiscal policy, and migration. He is a senior associate to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., where he helps direct the CSIS Global Aging Initiative.
Howe has written over a dozen books on generations, demographic change, and fiscal policy, many of them with William Strauss. Howe and Strauss' first book, Generations is a history of America told as a sequence of generational biographies. Vice President Al Gore called it "the most stimulating book on American history that I have ever read" and sent a copy to every member of Congress. Newt Gingrich called it "an intellectual tour de force." Of their book, The Fourth Turning, The Boston Globe wrote, "If Howe and Strauss are right, they will take their place among the great American prophets."
Howe and Strauss originally coined the term "Millennial Generation" in 1991, and wrote the pioneering book on this generation, Millennials Rising. His work has been featured frequently in the media, including USA Today, CNN, the New York Times, and CBS' 60 Minutes.
Previously, with Peter G. Peterson, Howe co-authored On Borrowed Time, a pioneering call for budgetary reform and The Graying of the Great Powers with Richard Jackson.
Howe received his B.A. at U.C. Berkeley and later earned graduate degrees in economics and history from Yale University.
