The world population will continue to grow, but at an increasingly slow pace. In particular, its growth rate, which peaked (over 2% per year) sixty years ago, has halved (0.9%) in 2022 and will continue to decline until a possible stabilization at the end of our century, according always to “interim” opinion script United States. The acceleration of its growth in the last two centuries is associated with the successive entry of different regions into the demographic transition, with the highest rates being recorded at a time when the birth rate is still high in all countries of the “South” (5-7 children per woman on average), and mortality is already started to decline.

These are the items included in 44o episode of the seriesDemoNewson the topic “Population of the planet and China on the horizon of 2050”, electronic bulletin of the Laboratory of Demographic and Social Analysis (EDKA) Pan. Thessaly, in which the authors (about prof. Byron Kotzamanis and PhD Fellow George Kontoyannis), present and comment on the results of recent (2022) United Nations projections. They say that the slowdown in world population growth is due to the fact that fertility began to decline very rapidly in many countries in Asia and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, and then, at a slower pace, in Africa. Neverthelessthis did not prevent rapid population growth due to the inertia of demographic phenomena (the younger the population, even if couples have fewer and fewer children, the total number of births remains high).

Africa course, especially south of the Saharasignificantly different in recent decades from the corresponding trends in Asia and Latin America, since the decline in fertility in large parts of this continent has been -And remains- relatively slow, while the continent still has a very young population (the average age today is 17.6 years south of the Sahara and 18.6 years for Africa as a whole, compared to 41.7 years for Europe). Its population is not south of the Sahara Africa may even double by the end of the century (from 1.1 billion today at 2.1 billion in 2050 and in 3.4 billion in 2100, with the result that if today 1 in 6 of the world’s inhabitants live in Africa, the corresponding ratio will rise to 1 in 4 in 2050 (and probably more than 1 in 3 in 2100. Unlike Africa, the population Europe will not only not increase, but on the contrary will decrease in the coming decades (out of 746 million in 2021 to 704 million in 2050), as a result of which, if in 1950 the population of the “old continent” was 22% of the world’s population, today it is only 9.5%, and in 2050 Greece with 1.41% of the European population in 2021 to 1.3% in 2050).

Case of China

As for China, its population has grown from 539 million in 1950 to 1,426. billion in 2021 will multiply by 2.6 times when the world population in the same period will multiply by 3.2. China, which was -And remains the most populous country on earth (it had 22 out of 100 inhabitants of the planet in 1950 and 18 out of 100 today), it will soon give way to India as its population continues to decline. At the same time, in this country, due to the rapid decline in mortality after 1965 and the birth rate after 1969-1970. -And will continue he received- and the extremely rapid increase in the number of people aged 65 and over will soon create many problems for him, as it is time to prepare to deal with an aging population, as opposed to what they had -And they have- European countries are limited at their disposal.

Speaking in Athenaikos -Macedonian To the news agency, University of Thessaly professor Byron Kotzamanis states that “the size of the world’s population is largely known, as population projections are relatively safe for the next thirty years. These predictions are quite realistic, since most of the people who will live then have already been born, we know the number of people living today, and we can estimate without a big error the number of people who will die, and the number of births that will be. Moreover, this can be estimated also because women who will give birth to their children in the next 25-30 years have already given birth.

The population of our planet today is unevenly distributed, and will remain so, with the only difference being the speed with which the center of gravity is shifting to Africa. Humanity cannot escape 2 billion growth in the next thirty years due to demographic inertia that no one can prevent. But the real question on which the long-term survival of mankind depends is not so much in numbers, but in the way of life. Even today, when we are 8 billion, if everyone adopted the model (see consumption) of the most developed countries, then the available resources would be exhausted in a few decades and life on Earth would become unsustainable (only tentatively and I will mention to you that 6.7 of its 8 billion world population ” crops” the planet in 2022 less than 1.3 billion people in rich countries). Therefore, we must continue to think about how we can, on the one hand, improve the standard of living of the majority of the world’s population, while limiting any negative impact on the environment, and on the other hand, preserve the well-being of a smaller part of it by reducing its ecological footprint.

^{Source: APE-MEB}