Posted Sep 29, 2022, 7:00 AM
The planet will have more than 8 billion inhabitants before the end of 2022. Eight times more than in the 19th century. The world’s population continues to grow, and could reach 10 billion by the end of the century. Its rate of growth nevertheless continues to slow down markedly, points out the National Institute for Demographic Studies in its latest table of world population.
In 2022, the number of inhabitants on the planet has only increased by 1%, whereas it was still climbing by 2% each year sixty years ago. The cause is the decline in fertility. Today there are 2.3 children on average per woman in the world, compared to 5 in 1950.
Africa’s population tripled
So much so that some forecasts deviate from UN projections and estimate that the world population risks halving by 2100, after peaking at just under 9 billion people around the middle. of the century. For its part, INED, which aligns itself with UN projections, considers it likely that population growth will continue “to decline until the virtual stabilization of the world population by the end of the century around 10 billion people”.
At the level of regions and countries, demographic trends differ. Demographic growth is, for example, much more sustained in the majority of countries in Africa and the Middle East, and in northern India. “This is where most of the world’s population growth will take place in the coming decades,” says INED. The institute predicts that Africa’s population “could almost triple” by 2100, from 1.4 billion to 3.9 billion.
In 2023, India should also steal the title of the most populous country in the world from China: it currently has a fertility rate of 2 children per woman, compared to 1.2 in China, while the two countries each had half -2022, just over 1.4 billion inhabitants. By 2050, the United States also risks losing its position as the third most populous country in the world, in favor of Nigeria.
Conversely, Europe is marked by the aging of its population. 21% of its population is currently aged 65 or over, while the global average for this indicator is 10%. Its fertility rate is also 0.8 points lower than the world average. Consequence: the annual natural growth rate of the European Union is negative, at -0.2%.
With an aging index of 22% and an average of 1.8 children per woman, France has an annual natural growth rate of 0.1% (compared to more than 3% in Niger, Congo, Uganda or in Angola). This indicator is negative in Germany, Italy and Japan.
