Population set for first fall since the Black Death

THE world population is expected to fall for the first time since the Black Death because of plummeting birth rates, a Lancet study has found.

The decline in the number of children women are having has started to slow the growth of the global population, which stands at just over eight billion, and could mean it starts to fall within decades.

It would be the first time that the number of people on the planet has decreased since the bubonic plague killed as many as 50 million people in the mid-1300s, including up to a third of the population in Europe.

That is the only time to date that the number of humans on the Earth has fallen, with historians estimating that the global population fell from around 400 million to 350 million.

Women are required to have 2.1 children each on average to maintain population growth, known as the “total fertility rate”, and as of 2021 it stood at 2.23 worldwide.

But experts say it is on a persistently downward trend, having fallen from 4.84 in 1950, and predict it will decrease to 1.83 in 2050 and 1.59 by 2100.

It means, in 2050, 155 of 204 countries will have birth rates lower than required to sustain the population size.

By 2100, it will be 198 countries, or 97 per cent of the world by population, and countries in sub-saharan Africa will account for more than one in every two babies born. In 13 countries, including South Korea, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bhutan, women will have less than one child each on average.

The UK, like other high-income countries, has a fertility rate lower than the average, at 1.49 in 2021.

It has fallen from 2.19 in 1950 and will continue to decrease to 1.38 and 1.30 in the next 25 and 75 years, the researchers said.

It will mean the current population of around 67 million becomes increasingly unbalanced towards older generations before falling as the eldest people die, unless there is migration.

Britain’s falling birth rates are already playing out in real time, with recent data showing primary and secondary schools seeing fewer pupils apply for spaces.