Economy

World Population to Hit 7,621,018,958 as New Decade Starts

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: December 31, 2019 6:35 am

The world population will reach 7,621,018,958 as the clock ticks into the first moments of January 1, 2020. This means it will have risen 77,684,873 since the same time last year. The rate of increase will be 1.03%.

The new figures are from the Census Bureau Projects U.S. and World Populations on New Year’s Day report. According to the study, “During January 2020, 4.3 births and 1.9 deaths are expected worldwide every second.”

The 77 million increase is more than the entire population of the United Kingdom. Much of the global rise recently has been due to increases in Pakistan, India, China, Nigeria, Ethiopia and D.R. Congo. Drags on growth include Germany, Japan, Russia, Italy and France.

In the same study, the Census experts indicate that the population of the United States will reach 330,222,422. That number will be up by 21,476,884 from Census Day on April 1, 2010. The figure means the United States will remain the third-largest nation in the world by population, though it is among the slowest growing of the major countries.

Among other information, the report shows that next month, there will be a birth every eight seconds and a death every 11 seconds. “Net international migration” is expected to add a person to the population every 34 seconds in January. In other words, America will remain a nation of immigrants, although not on the scale of a century ago.

The combination of births, deaths and immigration means the U.S. population will grow by a person every 19 seconds in January.

A better look at how much population growth has slowed in the United States is the rate from January 2019. Since then, it has expanded by only 0.61%, which means the population over that period increased by only 1,991,085 people.

The United Nations expects the world’s population to continue to grow rapidly, to 8.6 billion a decade from now. The forecast for the more distant future is that the figure will reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100. Those predictions are nearly useless. Any major catastrophe, including sizable wars, disastrous climate change or widespread disease, could easily change the numbers. Climate change, in particular, continues to accelerate at a rate most scientists did not expect when they made projections just a few years ago.

What is almost certain is that the world’s population will reach 8 billion within a few short years. It will have doubled since 1975.

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