Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat,
The World at Six Billion. (ESA/P/WP.154), 12 October 1999.
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The rapid growth of the world population is a recent phenomenon in the history
of the world. It is estimated that 2000 years ago the population of the world
was about 300 million. For a very long time the world population did not grow
significantly, with periods of growth followed by periods of decline. It took
more than 1600 years for the world population to double to 600 million.
The world population was estimated at 791 million in 1750, with 64 per cent in
Asia, 21 per cent in Europe and 13 per cent in Africa. By 1900, 150 years later,
the world population had only slightly more than doubled, to 1.7 billion. The
major growth had been in Europe, whose share had increased to 25 per cent, and
in Northern America and in Latin America, whose share had increased to 5 per
cent each. Meanwhile the share of Asia had decreased to 57 per cent and that of
Africa to 8 per cent. The growth of the world population accelerated after 1900,
with 2.5 billion in 1950, a 53 per cent increase in 50 years.
The rapid growth of the world population started in 1950, with reductions in
mortality in the less developed regions, resulting in an estimated population of
6.1 billion in the year 2000, nearly two-and-a-half times the population in
1950.With the declines in fertility in most of the world, the global growth rate
of population has been decreasing since its peak of 2.0 per cent in 1965-1970.In
1999, the world's population stands at 6 billion and is growing at 1.3 per cent
per year, or an annual net addition of 78 million people.
According to the medium variant of the 1998 Revision of the official United
Nations estimates and projections, by 2050 the world is expected to have 8.9
billion people, an increase of nearly half over the 2000 population. By 2050,
the share of Asia will be at nearly 60 per cent, that of Africa will have more
than doubled, to 20 per cent, and that of Latin America nearly doubled, to 9 per
cent. Meanwhile the share of Europe will decline to 7 per cent, less than one
third its peak level achieved at the beginning of the twentieth century. While
in 1900 the population of Europe was three times that of Africa, in 2050 the
population of Africa will be nearly three times that of Europe.
The world population will continue to grow after 2050. The medium-fertility
scenario from the United Nations latest long-range population projections
indicates that the world would reach 9.7 billion by 2150 and nearly stabilise at
just above 10 billion after 2200.
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Published in: Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, The World at Six Billion. (ESA/P/WP.154), 12 October 1999. |