The world’s population, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday.
Growth in Africa remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s 1 billion to 3.6 billion, the report said — a sobering forecast for a continent already struggling to provide food and water for its people.
The new report comes just ahead of a demographic milestone, with the world population expected to pass 7 billion in late October, only a dozen years after it surpassed 6 billion. The projections were made by the U.N. population division, which has a track record of fairly accurate forecasts. In the new report, the division raised its forecast for the year 2050, estimating the world would likely have 9.3 billion people then, an increase of 156 million over the previous estimate for that year, published in 2008.
Among the factors behind the upward revisions is that fertility is not declining as rapidly as expected in some poor countries and has shown a slight uptick in some wealthier countries. The United States is growing faster than many rich countries, largely because of high immigration and higher fertility among Latino immigrants. The new report projects that the U.S. population will rise from today’s 311 million to 478 million by 2100.
The New York Times
