Economics and Technology Impact Future World Population

Earth4All, which claims to be a scientific group, has new global population projections. Their scenarios are there is global success in eliminating extreme poverty and global poverty. This would reduce family sizes in Africa and parts of Asia and result in the global population peaking around 2050 at about 8.5 billion people.

Earth4All clearly has an agenda that argues for lower human population and lower consumption. However, having population forecast scenarios that consider economic development impacts is a useful analysis.

Global population forecast scenarios should also consider technology development. The world is in a time where technology development and per capita economics could radically diverge. Aging reveral technology could also be developed and this could greatly reduce annual global deaths. Technology could also decouple wealth from environmental impact.

The UN’s latest global population forecast is for no peak to occur in the base case and reaching about 10.5 billion in 2100.

Read More