 |
Developing Nations Add 82 Million People to Global Population Annually: Report
A gigantic 82 million people are added to the world population annually by the less developed countries as against just 1 million people contributed by more developed countries every year.
Global population currently stands at 6.1 billion, according to this year's World Population Data Sheet released here on Sunday by the Population Reference Bureau, a non-governmental organization on global population issues.
The World Population Data Sheet noted that demographic growth has almost entirely shifted to the less developed countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, where women have an average of 3.6 children, excluding China, compared with 1.6 in the more developed countries.
"Annually, about 123 million babies are born to mothers in less developed countries, while there are about 13 million births in the more developed countries of Europe, North America, Australia, Japan and New Zealand," the document said.
Apart from offsetting the number of births in the less developed countries by 12 million deaths each year, one of the major population developments in recent years has been the spread of HIV/AIDS, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
As a result, the population of several African countries, including Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe, are expected to decline over the next 50 years, it said.
Despite HIV/AIDS, Africa will make a major contribution to global population growth by adding about 1 billion people from now to 2050, an addition greater than the total population of Europe, the document said.
"It is now clear that the 21st century will feature a major transformation in world population, as population growth in the industrialized countries has essentially stopped," the report said.
The data sheet also ranked world's top 50 populous countries. The top 10 are China (1.295 billion), India (1.03 billion), the United States (285 million), Indonesia (206 million), Brazil (172 million), Pakistan (145 million), Russia (144 million), Bangladesh (134 million), Japan (127 million) and Nigeria (127 million).
By the year 2050, India is expected to top the world population with 1.6 billion people, beating China to a second place with 1. 369 billion people, while the U.S. is still expected to place third with 413 million people, it added.
In This Section
|