World Population Growth Is Now Almost Entirely Concentrated in the World’s Poorer Countries.

In 2009, world population stood at 6.8 billion, up about 83 million from 2008. The world total is likely to reach 7 billion in the latter half of 2011, with the bulk of growth in the world’s poorest nations. The less developed countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean are projected to increase by just under 50 percent in the 41 years between now and 2050, and the poorest of these are projected to double in population size over that period. But this scenario assumes that fertility in less developed countries will decline smoothly to the low levels observed in today’s more developed countries: about 1.8 children per woman. For fertility to fall to those low levels, many factors are key, including significant increases in the use of family planning in many less developed countries.