Eight billion.
That’s how many people live on this finite planet as of 2022, according to new data from the United Nations Population Division.
It’s only been 11 years since we soared past the 7 billion population milestone, which is the fewest years it’s ever taken to add a billion people to the planet (it took all of human history to reach our first billion, around 1800). People’s fertility desires — and their ability to realize them — will determine how soon our world population peaks and whether it tops out at 10 billion, 11 billion or 12 billion. And because our rising numbers, along with unsustainably high consumption, destroy vast swaths of the natural world each year, we must invest now in progressive solutions to population growth — namely, universal access to the full spectrum of family planning options.
Growth enthusiasts often point out — correctly — that the global fertility rate and population growth rate are declining. But so is the number of years it takes us to add each billion new people, due to a tricky phenomenon called population momentum. As huge generations of young people reach and live out their reproductive years (considered 15 to 44 by most demographers), their children are added to an already-large base of people. It’s the reason there was a mini population boom when Baby Boomers had their own kids. And why a larger principal investment can yield higher gains than a smaller investment, even if the smaller investment has a higher interest rate (not to compare humans to IRAs).
But the inevitable growth that’s built into our future demographic outlook via population momentum doesn’t mean there’s no reason to aim for slower growth starting now. Doing so is a favor to the future — lower fertility and slower growth today would set the second half of this century up to see an earlier population peak, at a lower number, than if fertility rates remain high for decades to come.
Some people on the other side of this issue have accused population activists of hating people and being NIMBYs (those who proclaim “not in my backyard”). I’d like people who believe that to explain, then, why we’re advocating for a more equitable, less crowded future that will only be seen and felt after many of us are long gone.
In fact, I would argue that those of us who dedicate our time and money to population stabilization do so because of a deep concern over the wellbeing of future generations and of those most vulnerable and marginalized around the world today.
After all, the continent with the fastest population growth is an ocean away from the United States. Africa’s population of 1 billion is projected to double by 2050, making improvements in health, education, employment and poverty alleviation for the people who live there an even more distant development dream. And what reason do we in North America have to fret over this threat other than being worried for the welfare of the world’s most at-risk people? People in countries with the highest infant and child mortality rates, lowest educational attainment rates and least ability to adapt to the climate changes that are occurring where they live at the most disastrous levels.
There are 8 billion reasons to advocate for progressive policies and sufficient funding to ensure that everyone around the world who wants to use modern contraception can do so — it’s the best and only morally acceptable way to voluntarily reduce global population growth. We’ve seen it in every country on earth that has reasonably good access to contraceptive education and services — when people can plan their pregnancies, they have fewer of them, starting later in life.
This won’t be the last population milestone we reach, but if we work together for the health and rights of women, we can delay the 9-billion milestone by a few years, which could set us up to peak before we ever hit 10 billion.
Marian Starkey is the vice president for communications at Population Connection, a national non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C.