The 8 billion population milestone was hit just a few months ago, on November 15, 2022 and there’s a lot of interesting data to look at for the future. The world is still growing at a rate of 0.83% per year, but while many countries are still growing, there are a number that have significantly slower growth and some are even losing population.
With the quality of living in many countries getting higher and higher, we’re seeing the global life expectancy shoot up, causing the fertility rate to go down as more are getting older. Many countries in Europe are facing this problem of an older population as more people age out of the working class and need more resources devoted to their care. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa on the other hand are seeing massive amounts of growth – the population in this region is projected to double by 2050. This is because these countries have higher growth rates than anywhere else in the world and have a much larger effective labor size than the Americas and Europe.
Learn more about the challenges and changes we will face on our road to 9 billion people here.
