The world’s population increased by 74 million people to a total of 7.8 billion in 2021, according to the US census bureau, the Daily Mail of UK reported on Friday.
China remains the world’s most-populous country with 1.4 billion people, though it is only narrowly ahead of India on 1.38 billion which is set to overtake it by 2025.
The US is third with 332 million, followed by Indonesia on 275 million and Pakistan on 238 million.
Figures for 2021 mean the global rate of growth is 0.9 per cent, lower than the 0.96 per cent forecast and coming against the backdrop of the COVID pandemic.
While the global populations are still rising overall, the rate of increase has been falling more-or-less consistently since the mid-1960s when it peaked around two per cent-with global population set to peak before 2100 after which it will decline.
Half of the world’s population already live in countries where lifetime fertility -the number of children a woman is expected to give birth to on average in her lifetime-has fallen below two, meaning the population will decline overall.
According to UN data, the global population will continue to grow until 2100 but growth will be concentrated in fewer and fewer places.
More than half of population growth in the next three decades is expected to be concentrated in just eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, and the United States.
Meanwhile 55 countries are expected to see their population fall by one per cent or more over the same period.
The most-dramatic falls, according to UN data, will come in Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine – where populations are expected to fall by 20 per cent.
Those trends will be driven by falling fertility rates along with net emigration, the UN predicts.
It means that a growing number of countries will have to contend with ageing populations in which the burden of caring for a growing number of elderly people will fall on an ever-shrinking number of working-age people.
and then