this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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Degrowth

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Our World in data has already updated their charts using the current UN world population prospect:

Fertility rate:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-per-woman-un

Population projections:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-with-un-projections?tab=map&country=~CHN

Some of the highlights are. Nearly all countries in the Americas, all countries in Europe and most countries in Asia have below replacement fertility rates. The only continent with a fertiltiy rate above replacement is Africa with 4.07 in 2023. Besides Afghanistan all countries with fertility rates above 4 are in Africa. Even above 3 is rarer outside of Africa and Central Asia. China is at a total fertility rate of 1. That means every new generation is half the size of the previous one and the population has a fairly high chancing halving over within this century.

According to the data the number of births globally has peaked in 2012. Since then it is down a bit.

We will likely see large regions have structural population declines in the coming years. Especially rural areas in middle income countries will loose a lot of people. Due to the young ones moving to cities, with a stable to falling population. At the same time migration will always be a big topic. Especially since racism is much stronger for black people then for brown ones. So with Sub Sahrah Africa being the region with the most births, this is really the only region able to provide enough migrants to prevent population decline for other regions.

Anyway good news in general. It really shows we only have to create a sustainable economy once and then it becomes easier to keep it running, thanks to lower population.

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[–] ODGreen 4 points 4 months ago

Thank you for this.

Note that the population peak happens earlier in this UN model revision.

However there is a plausible case for population to peak much earlier (2040):

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/06/peak-population-projections/