Nigeria, others lead growth projection as global population hit 8billion
By Zion Rufus
With India projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country, the global population has hit 8 billion according to World Population Prospects 2022 released today.
The share of the global population at ages 65 and above is projected to rise from 10 per cent in 2022 to 16 per cent in 2050, the report stated. It is expected that the number of persons aged 65 years or over worldwide will be more than twice the number of children under age 5 and about the same as the number under age 12.
According to the United Nations Population Fund, this dramatic growth has been driven largely by increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age, and has been accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanisation and large-scale migration. These trends will have far-reaching implications for generations to come.
As stated in the UNFPA report, the world is seeing high levels of urbanization and accelerating migration.
“The first year in which more people lived in urban than rural areas was 2007, and by 2050 about 68 per cent of the world population will be living in cities. These megatrends have far-reaching implications. They affect economic development, employment, income distribution, poverty and social protections. They also impact efforts to ensure universal access to health care, education, housing, sanitation, water, food and energy. To more sustainably address the needs of individuals, policymakers must understand how many people are living on the planet, where they are, how old they are, and how many people will come after them.”
The World Population Prospects 2022 report further revealed that more than half of the projected increase in the global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania. Countries of sub-Saharan Africa are expected to contribute more than half of the increase anticipated through 2050.
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