Global Population Expected to Continue Exploding

Posted on May 3, 2011

Flickr / FlyingSinger

The U.N. forecasts the world will hold more than 10 billion people by the end of the century, including a tripling of Africa’s population. The planet will reach 7 billion humans at the end of October, then keep spiraling upward as fertility rates remain higher than expected. Estimates assume that major social, economic and environmental disasters will not be severe enough to curb the growth.—KDG

The New York Times:

The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above nine billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday morning.

Growth in Africa remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said — a sobering forecast for a continent already struggling to provide food and water for its people.

The new report comes just ahead of a demographic milestone, with the world population expected to pass 7 billion in late October, only a dozen years after it surpassed 6 billion.

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