World Population Prospects 2024

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Context:  Recently, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) released the World Population Prospects 2024 report.

Details

The report

• The 2024 Revisionof World Population Prospects is the twenty-eighth edition
• Prepared by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. 

Key findings

World Population

• The world’s population is expected to continue growingover the coming 50-60 years, reaching a peak of around 3 billion people in the mid-2080s, up from 8.2 billion in 2024.
• After peaking, the global population is projected to start declining gradually, falling to 10.2 billion people by the end of the century.
• By 2080, persons aged 65 or older will outnumber children under 18.

Early childbearing

• In 2024, 4.7 million babies, or about 3.5 per cent of the total worldwide, were born to mothers under age 18 – and some 340,000, to girls under age 15.
• Early childbearing has harmful effects on young mothers and their children

Fertility Rate 

• Currently, the global fertility rate stands at 25 live birthsper woman,1 down from 3.31 births in 1990.
• More than half of all countries and areas globally have fertility below the replacement level of 2.1 live births per woman.

Life expectancy

• Life expectancy: Globally, life expectancy at birth reached 3 years in 2024, an increase of 8.4 years since 1995.
• Further reductions in mortality are projected to result in an average longevity of around 77.4 years globally in 2054.
• Following the COVID-19 pandemic, global life expectancy is rising once again.

India’s Scenario

• India'spopulation in 2024 is projected at 1.45 billion and this will peak to 1.69 billion in 2054. 
• The 80-plus population is set to grow nearly three-fold faster than that of babies by 2100.
• The dependency ratio, which is the number of children and older people as a proportion of working age population (15-64 year old), is expected to rise to 77.5 percent by 2100.
• If the fertility rate were to increase faster (0.5 births above normal) than anticipated, India is likely to become the first country to cross 2 billion population mark by 2070 to 2.2 billion by 2100.

Main drivers of population increase

• Growth in number of women of reproductive age even when the number of births per woman falls to/ below the replacement level (2.1).
• Higher fertility rates in some countries/ regions; increase in life-expectancy, etc.

Sources:

TheHindu, United Nations,reliefweb.