Demographers warn that new research reveals the world is headed for a population collapse, not an era of overpopulation, contrary to UN projections.
While the UN anticipates that humanity’s population will continue to expand until 2100, peaking at nearly 11 billion people, a demographic study (pdf below) published in The Lancet concluded that the world is only a few decades away from a sharp and substantial population decline.
Researchers in an October 2020 study titled “Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study” theorize that while the human population will continue to grow until 2064, reaching approximately 9.73 billion – right now, the population is around 8 billion – the population will dwindle by over a billion in the remaining part of the century due to low fertility rates.
According to the report, China would have a population of 773 million by the year 2100, compared to 1.39 billion today, with fertility rates significantly below the replacement level of 2.1 child per woman. Such a drop represents a decrease in population of nearly 50%.
While China is expected to face the greatest fall in raw numbers, countries such as Thailand, Japan, and Spain will see population reductions of more than 50%.
Many countries are already experiencing rapid population declines based just on fertility rates, without taking immigration into consideration.
The fertility rate in the United States was 1.6 children per woman in 2020, down from 3.7 children per woman in 1960. These figures are significantly lower in countries like...