The report was prepared by DESA, the United Nations Organization for Economic and Social Affairs. The researchers state that the population is growing at the lowest rate since 1950. By 2030 there are expected to be 8.5 billion people on earth and 9.7 billion twenty years later. The peak is reached sometime in the 1980s, with some 10.4 billion people. This 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.
