A graphic overview of the most important demographic developments around the globe.
Population policy is en vogue around the world: Germany wants to recruit skilled workers from Kenya. Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, awards baby bonuses of the equivalent of 500 francs for the first child and up to 1,400 francs for the third. The government in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, encourages women and men to marry later – and to leave a longer gap between pregnancies.
While some countries struggle with an ageing population and declining birth rates, other governments are trying to increase women’s education levels and facilitate access to contraception.
On Thursday, the UN presented its latest forecasts on the development of the world population in New York. The UN makes these calculations every few years. It is interesting to see how previous forecasts have changed and where the UN has corrected itself. These are the most important points.
The world population could have reached its peak as early as 2080
The population will continue to grow, but the world’s food and resources are limited – this catastrophic scenario of a brutal struggle for distribution was long assumed. To this day, it is deeply rooted and causes fear. It can be traced back to the economist Thomas Robert Malthus and his influential text “An Essay on the Principle of Population” from 1798.
This idea has long been outdated. We now know that the population curve does not simply increase exponentially, but first flattens out and then begins to decline. The only question is when.
Today there are 8.2 billion people. In its latest report, the UN assumes that the peak – the highest number of people on planet Earth – could occur as early as 2084 with around 10.3 billion people; two years earlier than it had estimated in its 2022 report. By the end of the century, the population could have shrunk again to 10.2 billion people. According to the UN, the probability that the peak will be reached this century is 80 percent.
The change since the last report is relatively small. But that does not mean that the UN already knows exactly how the world population will develop. It calculates an average from various scenarios. In the extreme scenarios, the population will grow to 14 billion by 2100 – or it will reach its peak in 2053 at just under 9 billion.
The reason for the UN’s course correction is primarily two continents: Africa and Asia. There, birth rates are falling faster than expected.
Significantly fewer people are expected in Asia and Africa
Population forecasts always conclude that Africa and Asia are growing while Europe and North America are shrinking. This is not wrong. According to the latest UN forecasts, in the year 2100 eight out of ten people will live in either Asia or Africa.
Compared to previous forecasts, the UN has revised the figures for expected population growth in Africa and Asia significantly downwards. How can this be explained?
The UN expects lower net migration for Africa – that is, more people will emigrate than immigrate. The UN has therefore revised its population forecast for Africa for the year 2100 downwards by 109 million people. In North America and Europe, however, higher net migration is expected.
The UN has also taken into account that the birth rate has continued to fall in many countries in Asia. For example, in China: in 2022, the UN estimated that the fertility rate, i.e. the number of children per woman on average, in China would be 1.2. Now it is just under one child per woman. That makes a big difference in the long term. Here, too, the UN has revised its forecast downwards. By the end of the century, there will probably be 133 million fewer Chinese people than expected.
What is important is that the population in Africa and Asia will continue to grow in the coming decades – just not as much as previously expected. Countries with large numbers of children, such as India and Nigeria, will drive population growth for decades to come.
On average, women have one child less than in the 1990s
The current global fertility rate is 2.3 births per woman. In 1990, it was 3.3 births per woman. In more than half of all regions of the world, the fertility rate is now below 2.1. This is remarkable. 2.1 is the number that would be needed for the population to remain constant.
A fifth of all countries even have a fertility rate of less than 1.4 births per woman, including China, Italy, South Korea and Spain.
Fertility has a major influence on population forecasts. But its effect only becomes apparent over time. It takes around 30 years for the low birth rate to cause the population to start shrinking. By then, the many children born in the years of strong growth have children of their own and compensate for the lower birth rate.
After the Corona pandemic: Global life expectancy is rising again
Global life expectancy had been rising steadily since 1971. But during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, it fell for the first time since the Great Chinese Famine (1959 to 1962), by a total of 1.8 years.
Now it is rising again and is therefore in line with the long-term trend. A baby born in 2024 has a global average life expectancy of 73.3 years. This means that it will live 8.4 years longer than a baby born in 1995. By 2054, the UN expects an average life expectancy of 77.4 years.
Despite the war, Russia’s population is shrinking less than expected
The UN has also revised its forecasts for Russia. Russia reached its peak in the 1990s and will therefore continue to shrink in the coming decades – albeit less than expected. The population figures predicted for the year 2100 are 14 million higher than predicted two years ago. Then there will be 126 million Russians. Currently there are 144 million.
In 2022, the UN assumed that the war of aggression against Ukraine would have a major impact on Russian migration numbers. Official data are not available, but estimates by the Russian exile think tank Re:Russia based on figures from destination countries suggest that between 820,000 and 920,000 Russians have left the country since the war.
More than two years after the war, however, it is clear that the war had only a short-term impact on migration movements. Russia remains a popular destination for workers from abroad, especially from the former Soviet republics. The UN now assumes that Russia’s migration statistics in the future will not differ noticeably from the years 2003 to 2021.