World Wide Population
The year 2011 through 2022

U.S. population will more than double in the next 100 years, Census Bureau says
The year 2011.


• 3/25/2011 Hispanics reach 50 million in new census milestone by Hope Yen, AP.
      Washington - Hispanics accounted for more than half of the U.S. population increase over the past decade, exceeding estimates in most states as they crossed a new census milestone: 50 million, or 1 in 6 Americans.    More than 9 million Americans checked two or more categories a sign of multiracial growth, or 2.9 percent of the population.    At this rate by 2050 we may have an entirely new system of defining ourselves.
  
  

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      As of May 6, 2011, I have stopped typing from news articles and began using the Electronic Edition of the Courier-Journal newspaper so from this point on the articles are from those pages and may be shortened in some cases for highlights and space considerations.
  

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• 10/16/2011
  
  Key tests loom for world’s 7 billion - Resources, growth rates vital concerns by David Crary, Associated Press
      She’s a 40-year-old mother of eight, with a ninth child due soon.    The family homestead in a Burundi village is too small to provide enough food, and three of the children have quit school for lack of money to pay required fees.
      “I regret to have made all those children,” says Godelive Ndageramiwe.    “If I were to start over, I would only make two or three.”
      At Ahmed Kasadha’s prosperous farm in eastern Uganda, it’s a different story.    “My father had 25 children; I have only14 so far, and expect to produce more in the future,” says Kasadha, who has two wives.    He considers a large family a sign of success and a guarantee of support in his old age.
      By the time Ndageramiwe’s ninth child arrives, and any further members of the Kasadha clan, the world’s population will have passed a momentous milestone.    As of Oct. 31, according to the U.N. Population Fund, there will be 7 billion people sharing Earth’s land and resources.
      In Western Europe, Japan and Russia, it will be an ironic milestone amid worries about low birthrates and aging populations.    In China and India, the two most populous nations, it’s an occasion to reassess policies that have already slowed once-rapid growth.    But in Burundi, Uganda and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, the demographic news is mostly sobering as the region staggers under the double burden of the world’s highest birthrates and deepest poverty.    The regional population of nearly 900 million could reach 2 billion in 40 years at current rates, accounting for about half of the projected global population growth over that span.    “Most of that growth will be in Africa’s cities, and in those cities it will almost all be in slums where living conditions are horrible,” said John Bongaarts of the Population Council, a New Yorkbased research organization.
      Is catastrophe inevitable?    Not necessarily. But experts say most of Africa — and high-growth developing nations such as Afghanistan and Pakistan — will be hardpressed to offer enough food, water and jobs for their people, especially without major family planning initiatives.
      “Extreme poverty and large families tend to reinforce each other,” said environmental analyst Lester Brown, who heads the Earth Policy Institute in Washington.    “The challenge is to intervene in that cycle and accelerate the shift to smaller families.”
      Without such intervention, he said, food and water shortages may fuel political destabilization in developing regions: “There’s quite a bit of land that could produce food if we had the water to go with it.    It’s water that’s becoming the real constraint.”
      The International Water Management Institute shares these concerns, predicting that by 2025 about 1.8 billion people will live in places suffering from severe water scarcity.
      According to demographers, the world’s population didn’t reach 1 billion until 1804, and it took 123 years to hit the 2 billion mark in 1927.    Then the pace accelerated — 3 billion in 1959, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1998.
      Looking ahead, the U.N. projects that the world population will reach 8 billion by 2025, 10 billion by 2083.    But the numbers could be much higher or lower, depending on such factors as access to birth control, infant mortality rates and average life expectancy — which has risen from 48 years in 1950 to 69 years today.    “Overall, this is not a cause for alarm — the world has absorbed big gains since 1950,” said Bongaarts, a vice president of the Population Council.    But he cautioned that strains are intensify-ing: rising energy and food prices, environmental stresses, more than 900 million people undernourished.
      “For the rich, it’s totally manageable,” Bongaarts said.    “It’s the poor, everywhere, who will be hurt the most.”
      The executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, former Nigerian health minister Babatunde Osotimehin, describes the 7 billion milestone as a call to action — especially in the realm of enabling adolescent girls to stay in school and empowering women to control the number of children they have.
      “It’s an opportunity to bring the issues of population, women’s rights and family planning back to center stage,” he said in an interview.    “There are 215 million women worldwide who need family planning and don’t get it.    If we can change that, and these women can take charge of their lives, we’ll have a better world.”
      But as Osotimehin noted, population- related challenges vary dramatically around the world.
      Some of most distinctive examples include:
  
  India and China
      Across India, the teeming slums, congested streets, and crowded trains and trams are testimony to the country’s burgeoning population.    Already the second most populous country, with 1.2 billion people, India is expected to overtake China around 2030 when its population soars to an estimated 1.6 billion.
      But even as the numbers increase, the pace of the growth has slowed.    Demographers say India’s fertility rate — now 2.6 children per woman — should fall to 2.1 by 2025 and to 1.8 by 2035.
      For now, China is still the most populous nation, with 1.34 billion people. In the past decade it added 73.9 million, more than the population of France or Thailand.    Nonetheless, its growth has slowed dramatically and the population is projected to start shrinking in 2027.    By 2050, according to some demographers, it will be smaller than it is today.
      Today China has a fertility rate — the number of children the average woman is expected to have in her lifetime — of around 1.5, well below the 2.1 replacement rate that demographers say is needed to keep populations stable in developed countries.
  
  The West
      Many European nations have grappled for years over how to cope with shrinking birth rates and aging populations — and are now faced with a financial crisis that’s forced some to cut back on family-friendly government in-centives.
      Unlike others, France’s population grows slightly but steadily every year.    It has one of the highest birth rates in the E.U. with about 2 children per woman.    One reason is immigration to France by Africans with large-family traditions, but it’s also because of family-friendly legislation.
      Like France, the U.S. has one of the highest population growth rates among industrialized nations.    Its fertility rate is just below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman, but its population has been increasing by almost 1 percent annually because of immigration.
      With 312 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country after China and India.
  
  
• 11/18/2011
  
  Dip in births tied to economy - They drop for 3rd year in row by Associated Press
      ATLANTA — The economy may be acting as a form of birth control. U.S. births dropped for the third straight year — especially for young mothers — and experts think money worries are the reason.    A federal report released Thursday showed declines in the birth rate for all races and most age groups.    Teens and women in their early 20s had the most dramatic dip, to the lowest rates since recordkeeping began in the 1940s.    Also, the rate of cesarean sections stopped going up for the first time since 1996.    Experts suspected the economy drove down birth rates in 2008 and 2009 as women put off having children.    With the 2010 figures, suspicion has turned into certainty.    “I don’t think there’s any doubt now that it was the recession.    It could not be anything else,” said Carl Haub, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a research organization in Washington, D.C.    He was not involved in the new report.
      U.S. births hit an all-time high in 2007, at more than 4.3 million.    Over the next two years, the number dropped to about 4.2 million and then about 4.1 million.
      Last year, it was down to just over 4 million, according to the new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
      For teens, birth rates dropped 9 percent from 2009.    For women in their early 20s, they fell 6 percent.    For unmarried mothers, the drop was 4 percent.    Experts believe the downward trend is tied to the economy, which officially was in a recession from December 2007 until June 2009 and remains weak.    The theory is that women with money worries — especially younger women — feel they can’t afford to start a family or add to it.
  
  Stay tuned for what will happen beyond 2011.    Return each year for updates.
  
  Select one of the following to go to that year to view a Word Document of news article:
  
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This file created on October 12, 2011, and updated on December 24, 2011.