Celebrating World Population day July 11, the United Nations released a report stating the current world population stands at 7.2 billion and is projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050.
The United Nations released a report on World Population Day, July 11, stating that the current world population is 7.2 billion. The report also predicts that by 2050, the world population will reach 9.6 billion. However, the organization is not the only one to make predictions about the future world population. The United States Census Bureau projects a population of 9.4 billion by 2050. The Population Reference Bureau, a nongovernmental group that tracks U.S. demographics, has increased its projection by two million since its last estimates were published in 2010; the Bureau's number now matches the UN estimate.
However, these predictions are not certain and keep changing constantly. In 2000, the United Nations predicted the world population to be 8.9 billion by 2050 - 700 million lesser than its new prediction. To make such predictions, demographers assume a no-surprise future and focus on three main drivers of population-births, deaths, and migration. Life expectancy is kept on a consistent upward trend, and unpredictable events like epidemics and wars are ruled out.
"The HIV/AIDS epidemic-it was not predicted, and it substantially changed the demographics of some countries in the 1970s," Francois Pelletier, chief of the population estimates and projections section of the United Nations, told National Geographic News.
The UN announced that this year's focus should be on adolescence pregnancy with more than 16 million girls under age 18 giving births each year. An additional 3.2 million such girls have unsafe abortions. Though most of these girls are married in developing countries, getting pregnant at such a young age is not a choice they make on their own. It is the result of "discrimination, rights violations (including child marriage), inadequate education or sexual coercion.
