At current growth rates, forecasters expect to see a total of 9.1 billion humans on Earth by 2050, although small shifts in the birth rate might add or subtract one billion people. The rise could be slowed without taking any direct measures to control population. The most effective way to reduce fertility rates is to educate women: worldwide, each additional year of female education lowers the average birth rate further. Greater education correlates with more abstinence, birth control and female employment, each of which lowers birth rates.
Source: United Nations Population Division
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Add CommentAs useless predictions go, one with an error margin of more than 10% seems especially useless. It's a good job they don't employ that kind of margin in climate predictio .... oh!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately religions like Catholicism are against birth control, abortion or even sex without procreative intentions. Islam can be even worse, with multiple wives and tens of children seen as power and status.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis goes directly against any type of population control.
Unfortunately humans are behaving just like bacteria in a petrie dish, only our petrie dish is Earth.
So, you think the population will go DOWN??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCandide
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am curious as to why you single out catholics. You must know that birth rates worldwide are actually higher for believes of Islam. Both superstitions have their beliefs that it is ok to breed without limits, and both feel it is a path to additional power
Too bad the UN chart combines most countries into a single low and middle income group - that makes it impossible to determine the population and growth rate of each group separately...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article states:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The most effective way to reduce fertility rates is to educate women..."
While not brave enough to advocate adoption of punitive measures, the article's assertion seems to ignore the results of China's financial penalties for more than (I think) 1 child.
The problem is, we can't effectively predict when certain technologies will occur.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnti-aging drugs are being worked on by many parties and seeing progress. Cancer research is making good strides in many areas- lifespans could start increasing at a rate greater than these models predict.
Also, a revolution on how food is produced- such as extracing food from a nutrient-fed bacterial vat would put less pressure on developing countries to have fewer children.
To the best of my knowledge- these models fail to predict these types of changes- or indeed government intervention. Countries such as China could reverse plans to prevent "greying populations" and encourage families to have more children.
9 million is a nice guess- but it is purely academic. Technology could allow populations to climb much higher- At 1 billion people 7 billion might have seemed ludicrous and unsustainable.
If life-spans increase and food becomes even more plentiful- why could population not keep increasing up and beyond 20 billion? We're only using 20% of the earth's energy now supposedly- there is room to use more (although at what cost). Obviously 20 billion by 2050 is highly improbable- but but 2150 technology might paint a very different picture.
The projections, while they have some significant variations, are still useful in helping to predict to some extent where resource contention issues may arise. Africa has plenty of resource allocation issues now, and it may get worse in the future without significant planning efforts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs time goes on, more of the world's population (as a percentage as well as overall) is becoming urban. Raising children in an urban lifestyle is more expensive, leading to lower birth rates even in relatively uneducated populations. There's an advantage to more kids on a farm, but more kids are an economic penalty in the city.
There are a lot of possible changes. There are technologies that could vastly improve survival such as the aforementioned algal extracts, or perhaps someone will figure out how to clone meat at a useful level. Male birth control could take hold. There are disasters that could wipe out swaths of the population--imagine a hemorrhagic fever with a 3-4 day incubation period getting loose in a major city. We can, and should, at least take a guess at it. We can change things if we're wrong.
I did not single out Catholics, I also mentioned Islam.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I had only mentioned Catholics that would be singling them out.
They are simply two of the "big four (with Hinduism and Judaism)" with the highest birth rates, thus contributing most to the existing and coming population problems.
In Europe during the 18th century 95% of all children born to poor families died before age 6, If you were born to a rich family there was a 75% chance you would die before age 6. Birth rates evolved to support this and maintain static populations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs the graph illustrates, development of hygiene & medicine lowering the rate of loss of infants & was accompanied by a reduction in birth rates. But this is in educated countries, some European Catholic countries still export vast quantities of their excessive population.
The child death rate was as high in most of the world, till catholic soul harvesters in the guise of do-gooders, save the child and abandon the adult. Islam used Petrol-dollars to do the same to increase its flock. In democracies numbers count. Catholicism had almost won the war by installing fascist dictatorships across most of the world, Islam started to do the same. The Catholic dictators are history, now the Islamic dictators could go the same way.
Still the population grows and destroys habitat and biodiversity. All are food is now reprocessed mineral oil. But religion rules especially the Catholics and Moslems. The petri dish is now overflowing. Extinction follows.
Good riddance to a bad species.
Still haven't put your money where your mouth is and died to set the example yet? Hippocrite.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am an observer and it gives me pleasure. For me the greatest pleasure is mental stimulation acquired from reading and observing. This will cease when I die and return to being nothing but the ever changing chemical compounds that make me. Most of the microbial life that exists in me and probably controls me to some extent will also die. In spite of being an absolute atheist I read the irrational dribble that you and your kind pass off as the words of imaginary gods, it makes me laugh. Why should I sacrifice my extremely short existence to gratify idiots like you? That does not mean I put much value in either my or any other life-forms existence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLife is about nothing, it is an accidental result of events that took place in the universe. It has no purpose, it has no future, extinction of all life is the end result universe wide, and the universe too will dissipate into nothingness. Hopefully never to reform.
human population needs guidence and fullfilling methods for regular justification made for women liberation and also treat equal permission for men to avoid collapse in human consiousness to evolve new reforms to guarantee equality between women and men and allow them to contribute for balancing the needs and utility justification in the field of reproduction, culture, natural resources, life liberation and uncontrolled society and family.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnew ideas will change the human population to have availiability in abundance for them to choose from choice, will balance all socalled negative impacts in the human population worldwide.
for example take india and china, population increase is in a high and if now new reforms are not brought in, to control population, the risks of all negative growth at this time can be altered buy giving people of their own orgin, free living in their country if they promise the country that they will not reproduce new humans. some to name like free government jobs, free pention every month, free travel inside country, medical care for free, house rent allowance or fully furnished house for free living and much more.
this is just a thought.
blessed are the ones who consicioully willing to reproduce and saved us to have this strengh of population at this hour.
action plans can comes thick and fast if it wants to come.
if we dont from time to time bring this balancing act in human population we all will suffer soon and we witness the start in our present time.