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Will the world’s population ever exceed 11 billion?
Joel
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The number of people living in the world is a topical and important issue with the world’s population at the highest it has ever been and still growing. This has led many to suggest that the world’s population may be growing exponentially. If the population of the world does continue to increase in this way then that increases the strain on the Earth’s resources. This is called overpopulation.
Many geographers have given their opinion on the impacts and severity of overpopulation with some, such as Paul R Ehrlich and Thomas Malthus, fearing the worst for humanity and the environment and others, like Ester Boserup, saying that the advances of technology will increase the amount of people that can live on earth.
However, there is another viewpoint that can be taken, and that is the view that the population of the earth is not a problem and will naturally start to decrease without the doomsday situation that some people fear. One of the people to have this viewpoint is Hans Rosling.
Rosling thinks that the population of the world will never exceed 11 billion due to one thing: age structure. Rosling breaks down the structure of the world’s population into age groups and rounds the number of each group into billions, with each block representing one billion people in that age group.
He describes what will happen in the next 15 years. The old die, the rest grow 15 years older and two billion new children will be born because the birth rate is likely to stay roughly at replacement level. This happens again after another 15 years. This will fill-up the population structure with an extra three billion adults and leave the earth’s population at 10 billion people. Rosling describes this increase as “inevitable”.
This is where Rosling’s point that the population will never exceed 11 billion is shown. He says that from 2045 for 15 years the top two billion will die and everyone will age by 15 years, with another two billion children being born. The final step is that by this time (around 2100) the average life expectancy of the world will increase and so this adds an extra one billion people on the top, in the oldest age group. This is the end of population growth and the population will not exceed 11 billion.
This view is backed up by statistics that show that, despite the population of the world increasing, the rate of this increase is falling and has been since 1962 when it was 2.2%. The rate is now just 1.05% which shows the rapid decline in rate of growth.
Figure 3: population will peak at 11 billion people as life expectancy increases
In fact, the number of births per year worldwide actually peaked in 2014 and is now decreasing. The explanation for why the population of the earth is increasing and will continue to increase until around 2100 is because of differing birth rates across the world.
Despite a decrease in Asia, the number of children born per year in Africa is increasing. This cancels out the decrease elsewhere. After 15 years that means that for every four children in Asia that pass their 15th birthday, three are replaced by an Asian baby and one is replaced by an African baby so the amount of people in the world will continue to increase. This will repeat after another 15 years cycle and again for 15 more years. The increase in life expectancy will allow people to live longer so there will be about an extra billion people in the world. This makes up the 11 billion.
Why does the population continue to increase in Africa? And why does the population not continue to grow once it has reached 11 billion? The answer to both of these questions is because of the level of development.
Most countries follow the Demographic Transition Model (DTM) when they develop. This model suggests that the economic, social and political development of a country is linked to its population growth.
Figure 4: each person represents 100million people and it shows how population will not exceed 11 billion
Figure 4: each person represents 100million people and it shows how population will not exceed 11 billion
https://populationeducation.org/ what-demographic-transitionmodel/
Initially in Stage 1 the birth and death rates are very high and fluctuating because the country is very underdeveloped so there is a high infant mortality rate and low life expectancy so people have more children because fewer survive. The majority of jobs are agricultural and labour based and families are generally poor so children have to go to work at a very young age to earn money for their families. This means parents are more likely to have more children to make enough money to survive. An example of a country currently in this stage is Ethiopia.
Once the country has developed into Stage 2 the country has advanced its economy and so improves its healthcare and the death rate rapidly drops. This means that there are more people being born than there are dying so the population of the country increases. An example of a country currently in this stage is Bolivia.
Eventually by Stage 3 the work force is based around offering services in cities. This means that a lot of women have jobs and so have to plan when they have children and prioritise their careers so have less children. Another really important point is that in this more developed situation there is a lot more education and access to contraception so there are a lot less births. This all means that the birth rate drops to a similar level to the death rate. An example of a country currently in this stage is China.
The fall of the birth rate stabilises and population growth is stationary in Stage 4 before the birth rate starts to fall again in Stage 5 which can cause the population to decline. An example of a country currently in this stage is USA.
The DTM helps to answer the question of why the population continues to increase in Africa because a large amount of countries, especially in subSaharan Africa, are now starting to develop and are only in Stage 2 of the Model. This means that the birth rates are very high and the death rates are starting to fall so the population is very rapidly increasing.
This is in contrast to most Asian countries, such as Singapore, Japan and South Korea, that are in Stage 4 or 5 and so their populations are stagnating or starting to decrease.
These statistics support the opinion of Hans Rosling as they show that the population will continue to rise until around 2100 when there are about 11 billion people.
Once this has happened then most of the countries in Africa, such as Ethiopia and Botswana, and in the world will be much further along the Demographic Transition Model and so have a far lower birth rate and the population of the world will stop growing at 11 billion.
These statistics do not mean that the threat of overpopulation and the dangers that it causes, such as insufficient resources and a poor quality of life and standard of living, are not serious and not real, instead it means that we should focus economic help and support for those poorer countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, to help improve the standard of living for those people who are living in overpopulated areas to reach a greater level of economic development.
THINK Global School (2015) Why the world population won’t exceed 11 billion Available at https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI [Accessed Nov 12 2020]
Rosling, Hans. 2018. Factfulness.
