Report says world population will reach 7 billion next year
Baku, December 29 (AZERTAC). With 267 people being born every minute and 108 dying, the world`s population will top 7 billion next year, a research group projects, while the ratio of working-age adults to support the elderly in developed countries declines precipitously because of lower birth rates and longer life spans.
Projections, especially over decades, are vulnerable to changes in immigration, retirement ages, birth rates, health care and other variables, but in releasing the nonpartisan Population Reference Bureau`s 2010 population data sheet, Carl Haub, its senior demographer, estimated this week that by 2050 the planet will be home to more than 9 billion people.
Even with a decline in birth rates in less-developed countries from six children per woman in 1950 to 2.5 today , the population of Africa is projected to at least double by midcentury to 2.1 billion. Asia will add 1.3 billion.
While the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand will continue to grow because of higher birth rates and immigration, Europe, Japan and South Korea will shrink (although the recession reduced birth rates in the United States and Spain and slowed rising birth rates in Russia and Norway).
Worldwide, the ratio of working-age people for every person in the older age group is expected to decline to 4 to 1, from 9 to 1 now.
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