What the future of the global population looks like

The world of eight billion will have nearly 10 billion people by 2050, and 11.2 billion by 2100, according to the United Nations. Although the overall fertility rate will drop, the upward trend in the population size will continue to grow since 83 million people continue to add to the world's population each year. 

The UN in 2017 projected that India would surpass the Chinese population by 2024, but that has already happened in 2023. These two countries hold over one-third of the global population. 

Amid the growing population of the world is Nigeria; the African nation is set to beat the US to emerge as the third-most populated country in the world by 2050. The population growth during this timeframe, besides Nigeria, will be concentrated in India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, the US, Uganda and Indonesia.

As you can see, half of these top concentrations are African. 2050 will see an overall youthful African continent when its population size doubles and hosts the most young, working-age people in the world. 

As the population concentration is comparatively in poorer countries (from one billion in 47 LDCs to nearly two billion by 2050), the nations will have their challenges in addressing pressing issues like poverty, hunger, access to health and education, gender equality and women empowerment among other factors. However, the declining fertility and population in the West and the developed world also have their share of challenges. 

Take Russia for example. The superpower has been in a dilemma with decreasing population ever since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. They had around 290 million people which inevitably dropped to 148 million in 1994 with the USSR's collapse. In 2021, they had 143 million people. It means they lost nearly five million people during this timeframe when the US added almost 70 million more people, largely thanks to immigration.

The worrying scenario of the decreasing population for policymakers in the Kremlin was further revealed ever since they had been at war against Ukraine. The initial blow and struggle to take in more soldiers for one of the world's largest militaries brought further light to the worrying picture. 

Europe, as a whole, also sees a major population decline too. According to Eurostat, the EU bloc could see its population shrink by 6% or 27.3 million people by 2100. Although after the pandemic decline, the EU's population seemed to have bounced back in 2022 and was estimated to have reached 451 million. This growth had a lot to do with the influx of Ukrainian refugees following the Russian invasion. 

The latest reports from the EU statistics office project (based on fertility, mortality and migration patterns) the bloc's population will peak at 453 million people in 2026 and then keep decreasing to 420 million by 2100. Besides, the ageing group (aged 65 and above) will account for around 32% of the population. It was 21% in 2022. 

China too recorded its first decline in population growth in six decades. According to the country's National Bureau of Statistics, deaths outnumbered births in China in 2022. While the birth rate is plunging, their population is ageing. According to experts, this could result in a "demographic cocktail" that could shrink its workforce and drain its pension system causing economic repercussions well beyond its border. 

The US could also have a somewhat similar scenario, but as a report of The Economist says, referencing the Census Bureau, "Without migration and births to foreign-born mothers, the American population as a whole would decline by about six million in the period between 2014 and 2060. Migrants are a particularly important factor in sustaining the size of America's workforce: in 2014, 80% of foreign-born inhabitants were aged 18 to 64 compared to 60% of those native-born."