World population reached 8 billion. According to World Population Prospects 2022, released today on World Population Day, the global population is expected to reach 8 billion on November 15, 2022, and India is expected to overtake China as the world’s most populous country in 2023.
The global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, and is expected to fall below 1% by 2020. According to the United Nations’ most recent projections, the world’s population could reach 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050. It is expected to reach a peak of around 10.4 billion people in the 2080s and stay there until 2100.
According to World Population Prospects 2022, fertility has declined significantly in many countries in recent decades.
Today, two-thirds of the world’s population lives in a country or region where lifetime fertility is less than 2.1 births per woman, which is roughly the level required for long-run zero growth in a population with low mortality. The populations of 61 countries or areas are expected to decline by 1% or more between 2022 and 2050, owing to low fertility and, in some cases, high emigration rates.
More than half of the projected global population increase between now and 2050 will be concentrated in eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and the United Republic of Tanzania. Sub-Saharan African countries are expected to contribute more than half of the projected increase through 2050.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on all three aspects of population change. In 2021, global life expectancy at birth will be 71.0 years. In some countries, successive waves of the pandemic may have resulted in short-term reductions in the number of pregnancies and births, whereas there is little evidence of an impact on fertility levels or trends in many other countries. All forms of human mobility, including international migration, were severely hampered by the pandemic. But somehow, World population reached 8 billion.
