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Document Type

Forum Theme 1

Abstract

The early years of the 21st Century have seen major changes in the world’s demographic profile. The world’s total population is currently just over seven billion. Middle-range projections by the United Nations Population Fund suggest the world’s population will grow to ten billion by about 2050 and about eleven billion at the end of the century. Higher and lower projections for the end of the 21st century are 16.5 billion and 7 billion respectively depending on trends in fertility rates, which in general are projected to decline. Global average fertility rates have also dropped from 4.5 children in 1970 to about 2.5 children in 2014. However, although fertility rates are falling, the world’s total population will continue to grow due to the fact that people are living longer. The average global life span in the early 1990s was 64.8 years, but today the average lifespan is 70.0 years. Expectations are for this upward trend to continue.[1] The total size of the world’s human population will therefore present challenges, but perhaps even more difficult to address will be the size and dynamic nature of global human migration and the four major trends occurring related to population shifts.

Publication Date

2016-2017

Journal Title

UNIversitas

Volume

12

Issue

1

First Page

1

Last Page

10

Copyright

©2017 Catherine Zeman, Mark Grey, and Michele Devlin

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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