The growth of the world’s population will stop sooner than expected – thanks to women

In the past 100 years, the world’s population has literally exploded. By the mid-1920s, there were only about two billion people. In 1974 it was four billion, twice that in just about 50 years. And today, almost 50 years later, the number of people on earth has doubled again – according to UN calculations, the world’s population broke through the 8 billion mark in mid-November.

However, population growth has slowed significantly since the 1960s. Since 2020, the increase is less than one percent; the world’s population is growing at the slowest rate since 1950. But the peak has not yet been reached – we are still growing: according to the UNO’s average projection from the summer of 2022, there will be about 9.7 billion people running around on this planet in 2050 and 10.4 billion in the mid-2080s. After this peak, the world’s population should gradually shrink again.

In their working paper “People and Planet”, scientists from the Earth4All initiative associated with the “Club of Rome” refute this scenario, which is already much more optimistic than previous predictions. In both scenarios they foresee, the world population will peak lower and earlier than the UN forecast.

The Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital (WIC) also predicts somewhat lower figures than the UN. In his optimistic scenario, there will be a peak of almost 8.7 billion in 2055; In the most likely scenario (the red curve in the graph below), the world’s population will increase to approximately 9.8 billion in 2070 and then decline in the long term.

The forecasts of the Earth4All researchers are even more optimistic. In their pessimistic scenario, they see the peak as early as 2050 with 8.6 billion people. According to this, the world’s population is expected to fall to 7 billion by the end of the century – the same as in 2011. In the optimistic scenario, the peak will already be around 2040 and then only 8.5 billion. By 2100 there should be only around 6 billion. This corresponds to the population in 1999.

In Earth4All’s pessimistic scenario (“Too Little Too Late”), the world is developing economically similar to that of the past 50 years. In this case, many of the poorest countries will escape extreme poverty – much like China, the world’s most populous country. In 1990, 61 percent of the people there fell below the poverty line. In 2016, that was only four percent.

The more optimistic scenario (“Giant Leap”) assumes that there will be significantly more global investment in poverty reduction – a development that seems unlikely at the moment.

The experts at Earth4All are convinced that the importance of rapid economic development is often underestimated in other prominent population projections such as those of the UNO or the WIC. When the world’s population reaches its peak and how high it will be, depends mainly on how those countries develop that currently have very high birth rates and are therefore driving growth. If living conditions improve there, the number of births will fall and population growth will shrink.

An important element is the position of women: “We know that rapid economic development in low-income countries has a huge impact on fertility rates,” says Per Espen Stoknes, director of the Earth4All project. “Fertility rates fall as girls gain access to education and women become economically stronger and have access to better health care.”

Once women can decide how many children they want, the number of births decreases. Parents who are not in the poverty trap also prefer a good work-life balance. This inevitably leads to pregnancies being postponed – and this also causes the number of births to decrease.

In fact, birth rates are already falling in many African and South Asian countries, as economist Beniamino Callegari, who contributed to the Earth4All paper, explains. A clearer and faster improvement in living conditions could accelerate this trend, as the giant leap scenario shows.

Despite this optimistic view of demographics, Callegari warns against underestimating the problems. After all, the world's population will increase by some 500 million people over the next two to three decades, even in the most optimistic scenario. The consequences are foreseeable: more planetary boundaries will be crossed – just as many have already been crossed, the economist emphasizes. A major global effort is therefore needed not only to adapt to the new natural conditions, but also to restore them. Callegari warns: "We are still heading for a critical moment in human history." (i.e)