New UN Forecasts Point Toward Continuing Population Growth

New United Nations (UN) models reveal that the earth’s population reached 8 billion Wednesday, the 15th of November. Less than a century before, the world could accommodate just 2 billion people, and now, only 12 years since, the population has surpassed 7 billion.

It is impossible to affirm that the 15th of November is the actual ”Day of the 8 billion”, as the UN named it, but one thing is sure. According to the latest UN population update report published in the summer, it is forecasted that a slow decrease will appear after rapid growth, leading to a population shrinkage within the next few decades.

“It is a crude approximation that is more of a symbolic finding. We may have passed it, or it may be a little later, but it’s around this time that humanity is reaching 8 billion.”

Ptrick Gerland, Leader for demographic work at the UN Population Division, New York City

This could be the UN’s most accurate assessment to date. The company recently switched from using five-yearly to annual intervals for data analysis. And many nations’ capability and ability to gather data have steadily improved in recent decades. However, there are still a lot of gaps, especially for nations that are going through humanitarian crises and wars like Somalia, Yemen, and Syria.

DIFFERING ESTIMATES

The tremendous population growth that occurred throughout the 20th century (see “People of the globe”) was caused by improvements in public health and medicine that made it possible for more children to live to maturity. At the same time, low-income nations that lack access to all parenting needs, such as education and proper medical care, continued to have high fertility rates determined by the number of children per woman.

Because these variables influence what will happen to the world’s population in the future, demographers are particularly interested in fertility rates and how they are predicted to evolve. For instance, the world’s population in 2100 has deviated significantly from what several models had previously predicted due to differences in expected fertility rates.