Projections of population growth

Projections of population growth established in 2015 predict that the human population will keep growing until at least 2050, reaching an estimated 8 billion people in 2024 and 9 billion by 2040, while the 7 billion milestone was reached in 2011. As the demographic transition follows its course worldwide, the population will age significantly, with most countries outside Africa trending towards a rectangular age pyramid.

According to the 2015 edition of the United Nations' World Population Prospects report, the world population is currently growing by approximately 83 million people each year. The growth rate keeps slowing, having decreased from 1.55% per year in 1995 to 1.25% in 2005 and 1.18% in 2015. The median estimate for future growth sees the world population reaching 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, assuming a continuing decrease in average fertility rate from 2.5 in 2015 to 2.25 in 2050 and 2.0 in 2100. With longevity trending towards uniform and stable values worldwide, the main driver of future population growth is the evolution of the fertility rate.

While most scenarios still predict continued growth into the 22nd century, there is a roughly 23% chance that the total population could stabilize or begin to fall before 2100. Longer-term speculative scenarios over the next two centuries can predict anything between runaway growth to radical decline (36.4 billion or 2.3 billion people in 2300), with the median projection showing a slight decrease followed by a stabilization around 9 billion people.

By 2050, the bulk of the world's population growth will take place in Africa: of the additional 2.4 billion people projected between 2015 and 2050, 1.3 billion will be added in Africa, 0.9 billion in Asia and only 0.2 billion in the rest of the world. Africa's share of global population is projected to grow from 16% in 2015 to 25% in 2050 and 39% by 2100, while the share of Asia will fall from 60% in 2015 to 54% in 2050 and 44% in 2100. The strong growth of the African population will happen regardless of the rate of decrease of fertility, because of the exceptional proportion of young people already living today. For example, the UN projects that the population of Nigeria will surpass that of the United States by 2050. The population of the more developed regions is slated to remain mostly unchanged, at 1.2 billion, as international migrations from high-growth regions compensate the fertility deficit of richer countries.

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