Today marks the day the world’s population will tick over to 8 BILLION people, yes that’s billion with a B.
This is the shortest time ever the human race has added a billion people. Growing from 7 billion to 8 billion in just 12 years.
Scientists have put this exponential growth to us living longer, improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine. In other words, it’s probably a good thing we don’t have to throw our sewage out the window anymore. Throwback to medieval times.
It’s predicted that our population growth will slow down however, reaching 9 billion is expected to take us 15 years.
In the meantime, we’re getting older. The median age of 27.3 in 2010 has shot to 30.2 in 2022, Australian social research and demographic firm McCrindle Research says.
More than 5.1 billion people will live in Asia, followed by 2 billion in Africa. In Europe, where the population is set to decline by 2 percent, there will be 720 million residents.
“Africa currently comprises 22 percent of the global population, is contributing 38 percent of current global births, and will contribute 53 percent of the next billion, to 2037.
“Currently, Africa’s population is growing by the equivalent of one new Australia (26 million) every eight months.”
