World Population reached eight billion

In news– According to the United Nations Population Fund(UNPF) the world’s population has reached 8 billion on 15 November 2022.

Key updates-

As per UNPF, while India’s population growth is stablising, it is “still growing at 0.7% per year” and is set to surpass China in 2023 as the world’s most populous country.
It stated that China’s population is no longer growing and “may start declining as early as 2023”..
It also noted that India’s fertility rate has hit 2.1 births per woman — replacement-level fertility — and is falling.
This(growth of world population) unprecedented growth is due to the gradual increase in human lifespan owing to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine.
It is also the result of high and persistent levels of fertility in some countries.
The UN said while it took the global population 12 years to grow from 7 billion to 8 billion, it will take approximately 15 years — until 2037 — for it to reach 9 billion “a sign that overall growth rate of global population is slowing
Countries with the highest fertility levels tend to be those with the lowest income per capita.
As of 2022, more than half the world’s population lives in Asia, China and India being the two most populous countries with more than 1.4 billion people each.
The World Population Prospects 2022, released in July, put India’s population estimate at 1.412 billion in 2022, compared with China’s 1.426 billion.

According to the UN, falling mortality rate first led to a “spectacular population growth”, peaking at 2.1% per year between 1962 and 1965.
Between 1950 and 1987, world population doubled from 2.5 billion to 5 billion. But as fewer children were born generation to generation, growth started to slow.
The UNFPA projects world population to peak at 10.4 billion in the 2080s and stay there until the end of the century.
According to the UN, 60% of the global population lives in a region where the fertility rate is below replacement level, up from 40% in 1990 and international migration is now the driver of growth in many countries, with 281 million people living outside their country of birth in 2020.
All South Asian nations including India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have seen high levels of emigration in recent years.