The World Population Count is Increasing.

November 15, 2022, officially marks the day the world population reached 8 billion. Finally, it came, and this, thanks to a baby born somewhere in the world becoming the eighth billion resident of planet earth.

The earth’s population is growing, and this rapid population growth is due to many factors, including improved medical care and advances in technology. According to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA),

This is a milestone moment for human longevity, signaling major improvements in public health.

Improvements in public health means that people are living much longer compared to years back. In fact, the United Nations projects that world population will hit the 9 billion mark by 2037, and 10 billion by 2058.

Considering the fact that world population has just hit the 8 billion mark, this means that it will take another 15 years to get to the United Nations projected 9 billion in 2037. This is surprising because it took just 12 years for world population to move from 7 billion in 2010 to the current 2022 figure.

The 8 billion figure is an indication that the increase in population is not slowing down. And even though world birthrate for 2022 has declined by about 1.15% than it was in 2021, the current life expectancy for world in 2022 has increased by 0.24%.

People are living longer

Today, with all the surrounding chaos, it might surprise you to know that people are living much longer than their parents. This can be seen with the increasing size of the older population as opposed to the younger population, which seems to be diminishing in size.

For example, consider the population of centenarians or those who have reached the age of 100 or more. According to a UN estimate, in 2015 there were half a million centenarians worldwide. But projections indicate that by 2050 this number will be around 3.7 million. This is not surprising, seeing the advances in medicine, communications, and healthy living choices made individually by each person.

Today, with the availability of the internet, people are more conscious of what they eat, what they drink and how they spend their time. With more information available, they are able to make lifestyle changes that they thought wasn’t possible.

The future of population growth

Even though as projected by the United Nations that world population will reach 9 billion in the next 15 years, what this tells us about population growth is that in the coming years it might explode to unprecedented levels.

Currently, the country with the highest population is China, coming close to 1.4billion. This is followed closely by India, which has a population of about 1.36 billion. These two countries alone have a combined population that is close to 3 billion.

With life expectancy increasing, much of this population will age longer and this, according to one article, is something we should pause to think about. According to the author of the article,

Governments and health authorities routinely bombard us with advice on healthy living — don’t smoke, regulate your drinking, take exercise, be careful of fatty foods, eat lots of fruit and vegetables, cut down on your caffeine, etc, etc.

Over the past thirty years, the medical profession has done a brilliant psychological operation in persuading the general public that if they get ill with anything, it’s their own fault for their choice of lifestyle.

The author goes on to say,

this advice is intended to get more of us into old age whilst being a lesser burden on the health services…Arguably, as governments and health authorities have done so much to encourage us to become old, it is their responsibility to look after us when we get there. But we all know that is not going to happen.

Even something as relatively simple as mandatory pension provision seems beyond most governments. So instead, we need to prepare ourselves practically and mentally for later life far more than we do. Source

The author here points to the fact that the growing population is being comprised more of older people rather than the younger, diminishing population.

Should this trend continues then perhaps, the future will see growth in population as growth between the older and the younger population tipping more in favor of the elderly. Could this be the case?