Sunday, September 21, 2014

Contrary to previous literature, world population is unlikely to stop growing in the 21st century

There is an 80% probability that world population, now 7.2 billion, will increase to between 9.6 and 12.3 billion in 2100. Much of the increase is expected to happen in Africa, in part due to higher fertility and a recent slowdown in the pace of fertility decline. In Africa, the population is projected to quadruple from around 1 billion today to 4 billion by the end of the 21st century because birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been going down as fast as had been expected. There is an 80% chance that the population in Africa at the end of the century will be between 3.5 billion and 5.1 billion people.

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