Peak Population: The Global Reversal Unfolds

Is an African Century Coming?

A possible cover for my upcoming book describing an epochal reversal in humankind’s trajectory of expansion. I described the main elements of the trend in a previous post. Here, I show some data on how the trends are different in different regions of the world, with a rapid population decline in the Northern Industrialized states, whereas Southern countries are still growing. The future might be an African Century, but even African countries are showing signs of an impending decline. We are all living in the same world, and the same factors affect everyone, everywhere. Image courtesy of Pinuccia Montanari.

The thesis of my upcoming book, “The End of Overpopulation,” is that humankind is switching from a phase of population growth to one of decline — possibly a collapse. It will be an epochal and unexpected change, most likely unavoidable, as I described in a previous post. The data from various institutions and research centers all converge to show that there will be a global “peak population” during the current century.

In some cases, such as the statistical models of the UN or IIASA, the peak is prospected around 2080. Instead, dynamic models that describe population as one of the parameters of a complex system see the peak much earlier. The ancestor of them all, "The Limits to Growth” of 1972, generated a peak in 2050, assuming that the trends of the time were to be maintained. A recent (2023) recalibration of the model by Nebel et al. generated the peak before 2030.

Image from Nebel et al. Population is the orange curve. Note how it peaks between 2025 and 2030.

Most people seem to be still locked to the old “Malthusian” views, which see populations crashing against the physical limits of the environment and being forced to decline by famines and plagues. Instead, the current trend seems to be dominated by social and pollution factors, both of which are reducing fertility. The global population is coming down not with a bang but with a whimper.

To understand the situation, I prepared some data taken from my upcoming book, summarizing the status of all the countries that have a negative change in population. These countries are ordered starting with those with the largest population. China is at the top, very small countries are not included. The US is not in the table because it is still weakly growing. (data provided by Grok — note that the rates consider only births and deaths, emigration/immigration is not included).

These countries are in a sustained natural decline, driven by low fertility, aging, and, in some cases, high mortality. East Asia faces the steepest birthrate drops. Eastern Europe is more affected by the high death rates, while Western Europe shows a slower but steady decline.

These 32 countries represent a total of 2.22 billion people, 27.2% of the global population (8.2 billion). The largest declines are occurring for some Eastern European countries, Bulgaria, Latvia, Serbia, and Lithuania, with Ukraine having the steepest value (0.87% yearly, but larger if we include emigration). On the other side, East Asian countries have small decline rates (Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, and China), but they are declining nevertheless. All these countries have fertility below the replacement rate (2.1 children per woman), with South Korea having the lowest rate (0.8 children per woman).

In terms of GDP, the 32 Countries in the table generate ca. $47 trillion/year, nearly half of the world’s GDP (107 trillion/year), more precisely 40.7%. In terms of per capita comparison, these countries have an average of $21,042, to be compared with the world’s average of $14,042. These declining countries are substantially richer than those that show a population increase, even considering the disastrous performance of the bottom ones with Ukraine at $5,200/person.

How about the other side of the world, the growing countries? Many Northern countries, such as the US, are weakly growing: their population curves are rapidly flattening out, and decline is impending. Conversely, South-Saharan countries show sustained population growth, typically of the order of 2%-3%. If we extrapolate the trend, by the end of the century, they could represent 40% of the world’s population.

There is a reason why people speak of the coming “African Century.” But even these countries are showing a rapid slowdown in their growth rates, preliminary to peaking and declining. We are all living on the same planet, and the same factors affect everyone, everywhere.

These trends and what causes them are discussed in detail in my new book, “The End of Overpopulation.” The future, as usual, surprises us.

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My new book, “The End of Overpopulation,” is not available yet. But you can buy my other recent one that discusses how humankind tends to move into the future, one extermination after the other.