World population still growing rapidly, 7 bn by 2011, says PRB

15 August 2009

Source: Population Research Bureau

Washington, DC, August 13 - The world's population is set to reach 7 billion in 2011, a year earlier than expected, and most of the growth is occurring in the developing world, the Population Research Bureau said in a report released yesterday.

Unprecedented population growth

"Even with declining fertility rates in many countries, world population is still growing at a rapid rate," said Bill Butz, Population Reference Bureau 's president. "The increase from 6 billion [reached in 1999] to 7 billion is likely to take 12 years, as did the increase from 5 billion to 6 billion. Both events are unprecedented in world history." PRB's 2009 World Population Data Sheet further projects that world population will reach 8.1 billion by 2025.

The report provides up-to-date demographic, health, and environment data for all the countries and major regions of the world.

Highilghts

Highlights from the data report:

• Some 48 percent of world population lives in poverty, on less than the equivalent of US$2 per day. Hundreds of millions of people live barely above that level.
• At least 97 percent of all population growth in the next 40 years will be in developing countries. By 2050, nine in ten young people under 25 will live in developing countries, most in Africa and Asia.
• Africa's population has just passed 1 billion. The continent's population is growing by about 24 million per year, and will double by 2050.
• At the moment, 55 percent of married women 15-49 are using modern forms of contraception. However, this varies by region - in Western Africa, only 9 percent are, compared to 69 percent in North America or 75 percent in Northern Europe.
• The birth rate among U.S. teenagers 15-19 is twice as high as the average for all developed countries. The U.S. rate is 42 births per 1,000 teenage girls; the rate for all developed countries is 21 per 1,000.

The full report is available on the PRB website.