World's future population: stabilized, older
Experts predict that in the next half century, Earth’s population overall will become more stable and older.
But first, world population is expected to grow from 6.5 billion people on Earth today to about 9.1 billion by 2050. That’s according to Joel Cohen, Professor of Populations at the Rockefeller University and Columbia University in New York City. Cohen told Earth & Sky that, over the last 45 years, fertility rates have been dropping worldwide.
On average, women in developing countries now bear about three children in a lifetime. That’s twice the number of children as in the developed countries.
Fertility rates are dropping as women gain access to education. Combined with a near-doubling of average life expectancy, these trends indicate that the population of tomorrow will be, in general, older.
Joel Cohen: And if that happens, we’ll sort of have an approaching stationary population size, possibly during the 21st century. So I think that we have finally outgrown our childhood and adolescence as a species. And we’re learning to be a mature adult, with an older population, not rapidly growing, as a species. And I think that’s a wonderful achievement.
Read Earth & Sky’s interview with Joel Cohen.
Our thanks to:
Joel E. Cohen
Laboratory of Populations
Rockefeller University & Columbia University
New York, NY
Ken Kostel
Senior Science Writer
The Earth Institute at Columbia University
New York, NY
Additional Teacher Resources
U.S. Census Bureau: International Data Base
This web page provided, by the U. S. Census Bureau, has data on world population statistics. It includes information on global population trends, links to historical population estimates, population clocks, and estimates of population, births, and deaths occurring each year, day, hour, or second.
NASA: Population Density of the World
This NASA web page provides an animation of the population density of the world in the years 1990, 1995, 2000, as well as a population density estimated for the year 2015.
