- The global population surpassed the 7 billion mark in 2011 and is expected to reach 10.3 billion by the mid-2080s.
- The number of people aged 65 and over is expected to outnumber children aged 18 and under by 2080. The global population is expected to grow to around 10.3 billion people by the mid-2080s.
- By the mid-2030s, the number of people aged 80 and over will be 265 million, greater than the number of children — those aged 1 or younger.
The world’s population is expected to grow to around 10.3 billion people by the mid-2080s, according to a new United Nations report.
That’s more than the current global population of 8.2 billion people.
The United Nations report identified the following population trends:
- The estimated size of the world population at the end of the century (2100) is expected to be 6% smaller than estimated a decade ago.
- Worldwide, one in four people lives in a country whose population has already peaked.
- In 63 countries, population size peaked before 2024. Some of these countries include China, Germany, Japan, and the Russian Federation.
The world’s population is experiencing dramatic growth
The UN Population Fund said the global population surpassed the 7 billion mark in 2011. Historically, it took hundreds of thousands of years to reach a single billion before growing sevenfold in roughly two centuries, the UN said.
Recent dramatic growth has been driven largely by increased survival of people to reproductive age, coupled with increased urbanization and large-scale migration.
Calculating future population numbers is not a perfect science with “many sources of uncertainty in global population estimates,” the Census Bureau said. It estimated the world reached 8 billion people last September, while the UN timed the milestone nearly a year earlier.
The world population is aging
People aged 65 and older are expected to outnumber children aged 18 and under by the year 2080, according to the UN report. The cohort of senior citizens is expected to reach 2.2 billion in size.
By the mid-2030s, the number of people aged 80 and over will be 265 million, greater than the number of children — those aged 1 or younger.
Most populous places in the USA
The current population of the United States is 341.8 million. While the UN report did not specify how much the U.S. population would grow, it is among 126 countries expected to grow in population by the 2050s.
California is the nation’s most populous state, with nearly 39.1 million people, followed by Texas, with about 30.5 million, according to the bureau. New York City is the most populous city, with more than 8.3 million residents.
Last year’s population growth was largely driven by the South, the Census Bureau said. The South is the most populous region and the only one to maintain population growth during the pandemic.
Texas gained more residents than any other state, welcoming more than 473,000 people, followed by Florida’s 365,000 new residents between 2022 and 2023.
Contributed by Minnah Arshad, USA TODAY
