From LitHub, August 8:
Dean Spears and Michael Geruso on the New Normal For Global Population Growth and Decline
In 2012, 146 million children were born. That was more than in any prior year. It was also more than in any year since. Millions fewer will be born this year. The year 2012 may well turn out to be the year in which the most humans were ever born—ever as in ever for as long as humanity exists.
No demographic forecast expects anything else. Decades of research studying Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas tell a clear story of declining birth rates. The fall in global birth rates has lasted centuries. It began before modern contraception and endured through temporary blips like the post-World War II baby boom. For as far back as there are data to document it, the global birth rate has fallen downward—unsteadily, unevenly, but ever downward. So far, falling birth rates have merely slowed the growth in humanity’s numbers. So far.
The view from the top of a Spike
There are quite a lot of people in the world. But that hasn’t been true for long. Ten thousand years ago, there were only about 5 million of us. That’s as many people as today live in the Atlanta metro area, and only a fraction of the number who live in Bangkok, Beijing, or Bogotá. A thousand years ago, our numbers had grown to a quarter billion.
Two centuries ago, we passed 1 billion for the first time. One of every five people who have ever lived was born in the 225 years since 1800. A populous world, on the scale of humanity’s hundred-thousand-year history, is new.
Getting big happened fast. And as soon as it has happened, it’s about to be over. In the shorter run—soon enough to be seen by people alive today—humanity’s global count will peak. There’s a gap between the year of peak births and the year of peak population—a gap that we now live within—because the annual number of births, though falling, has not yet fallen far enough to reach the annual number of deaths. That will happen within decades.
....MUCH MORE
