The world population will grow to more than eight billion people before the end of the year. The United Nations (UN) predicts this in a report published Monday.
According to the UN, the limit of eight billion people will be reached by mid-November. The researchers state that the population is growing at the slowest rate since 1950.
It is expected that there will be 8.5 billion people on Earth by 2030 and 9.7 billion twenty years later. The peak is reached sometime in the 1980s, with about 10.4 billion people. That number will remain more or less the same until the end of the century.
More than half of the population growth in the coming decades will be accounted for by eight countries, the researchers write: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.
The report also states that India will overtake China as the country with the largest population by 2023. Currently, India has about 1.41 billion inhabitants, compared to 1.45 billion for China.
The report was prepared by VILLAGEthe United Nations Organization for Economic and Social Affairs, in the context of the annual World Population Day on 11 July.
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