UN projects world's population to peak within this century
United Nations, July 12: The United Nations has released a report projecting that the global population will peak this century.
According to the World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results, it is expected that the world's population will peak in the mid-2080s, growing over the next 60 years from 8.2 billion people in 2024 to around 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s, and then returning to around 10.2 billion by the end of the century, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday.
The size of the world's population in 2100 is now expected to be six per cent lower—or 700 million fewer—than anticipated a decade ago.
"The demographic landscape has evolved greatly in recent years," said Li Junhua, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.
"In some countries, the birth rate is now even lower than previously anticipated, and we are also seeing slightly faster declines in some high-fertility regions."
"The earlier and lower peak is a hopeful sign. This could mean reduced environmental pressures from human impact due to lower aggregate consumption. However, slower population growth will not eliminate the need to reduce the average impact attributable to the activities of each individual person," he noted.
The earlier population peak is due to several factors, including lower levels of fertility in some of the world's largest countries. Globally, women are having one child fewer, on average, than they did around 1990, according to the report.
In more than half of all countries and areas, the average number of live births per woman is below 2.1—the level required for a population to maintain a constant size over the long term without migration—and nearly a fifth of all countries and areas now have "ultra-low" fertility, with fewer than 1.4 live births per woman over a lifetime.
Early pregnancies remain a challenge, particularly in low-income countries.
In 2024, 4.7 million babies, or about 3.5 per cent of the total worldwide, were born to mothers under the age of 18. Of these, some 340,000 were born to children under the age of 15, with serious consequences for the health and well-being of both the young mothers and their children.
The report found that investing in the education of young people, especially girls, and increasing the age of marriage and first childbearing in countries where these have an early onset will have positive outcomes for women's health, educational attainment, and labour force participation. These efforts will also contribute to slowing population growth and reducing the scale of the investments required to achieve sustainable development while ensuring that no one is left behind.
Over the past three decades, mortality rates have decreased and life expectancy has increased significantly.
After a brief decline during the Covid-19 pandemic, global life expectancy at birth is rising again, reaching 73.3 years in 2024, up from 70.9 years during the pandemic. By the late 2050s, more than half of all global deaths will occur at the age of 80 or higher, a substantial increase from 17 per cent in 1995.
By the late 2070s, the number of persons aged 65 years or older is projected to surpass the number of children (under the age of 18), while the number of persons at the age of 80 and higher is projected to be larger than the number of infants (under the age of one) already by the mid-2030s.
Even in countries that are still growing rapidly and have a relatively young population, the number of persons aged 65 years or older is expected to rise over the next 30 years, according to the report.