World Population Will Reach 8 Billion By November, U.N. Says

Topline

The world population will surpass eight billion people on November 15, according to projections from a United Nations report released Monday – though population growth is at its lowest level in decades.

Pictured is the skyline of Mumbai, India’s most populous city.

Tim Graham/Getty Images

Key Facts

The U.N. estimates the global population is now 7.942 billion, and the world population surpassed seven billion in 2011.

In 2020, the annual global population growth rate fell below 1% for the first time since 1950, the U.N. said, largely due to declining fertility rates.

Even still, the U.N. projects the population to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.4 billion by the 2080s.

India will surpass China in total population by next year, the report found, dethroning China as the world’s most populous country for the first time since the U.N. began tracking the metric in 1950.

The population growth will largely occur in less developed countries: the 46 least developed countries will grow in population from 1.11 billion to 1.91 billion between 2022 to 2050, according to U.N. estimates, while Europe and Northern America’s population will inch forward from 1.12 billion to 1.13 billion in the same timeframe.

Surprising Fact

Global life expectancy in 2021 was 71 years, down from 72.8 years in 2019. The U.N. attributed much of the fall to the Covid-19 pandemic. More than six million people have died due to Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Tangent

The U.N. population report comes amid a spike in interest in population issues spurred by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. Musk tweeted last week that the “collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” and said the buzzworthy birth of his eighth and ninth living children was his way to address the “underpopulation crisis.”

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