However, the United Nation says global growth is slowing down

Durrant Pate/Contributor

The United Nations (UN) is reporting that humanity is poised to pass the eight billion milestone mid-November, but says the global population growth is actually slowing down.

Data from the UN attributes this to fertility rates, which have been dropping since the 1960s, down from five births per woman to just under 2.5 today. China and India, both 1.4 billion now, could shrink to 500 million and one billion, respectively, based on the data assessed.

Population growth has quadrupled in less than a century. It took humanity up to 1804 to reach its first billion-population and just 123 years to get to the second.

The speed of population growth has already plateaued, particularly since 1960 when humanity reached its third billion. The global community has been adding a billion to the population at a stable interval of about one every 12 to 14 years.

Growth intervals to get longer

The UN Population Division projects that those intervals will get longer again after billion number eight, and humanity will hit its peak numerically at least by the end of the century, at just under 11 billion. The UN reports says the population of India and China, now roughly equivalent at about 1.4 billion each will shrink but at a very different rate.

By 2100, the UN projects that there could be as few as 500 million Chinese, while there still would be about one billion Indians. Africa is the continent predicted to have the lion’s share of future population growth this century.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (96 million) is the most likely first candidate. On its own, Asia (4.7 billion) represents 58 per cent of humanity. Second placed Africa (1.4 billion) constitutes 17.5 per cent, followed by Europe (750 million, 9%), North America (602 million, 7.5%) and South America (439 million, 5.5%).

Disaggregating global population

Oceania, at 44 million, is barely 0.5 per cent. Representing well over half the continent’s population, the US (335 million) dominates North America (507 million in total) just as it does on a “normal” (geographical) map. For once, however, Mexico (132 million) is much larger than Canada (37 million).

Guatemala (19 million) has the largest population in Central America (52 million in total), and Haiti (12 million) is the population superpower of the Caribbean (44 million in total), edging out Cuba and the Dominican Republic (both 11 million). Russia (146 million) is Europe’s most populous nation, but not by as big a margin as China in Asia (or the US in North America).

Combined, Germany (84 million) and France (66 million) have more people. Those two countries represent most of Western Europe (198 million in total), as Italy (60 million) and Spain (47 million) dominate Southern Europe (152 million in total), and the United Kingdom (69 million) Northern Europe (107 million in total).

Oceania is the least populous continent (44 million, which is about as much as Tokyo. Australia is the biggest fish (26 million, or close to 60 per cent of the total). New Zealand has five million, but Papua New Guinea has four million more at nine million.

No other Oceanian country or territory has more than a million inhabitants, but Fiji comes the closest with 911,000.