According to forecasts that were only recently made public by the United Nations, the population of the globe reached 8 billion in the month of November 2022. In addition, there are just seven nations that are home to more than half of the world's population.
It is estimated that India, with its population of 1.417 billion, would overtake China as the country with the highest population in the world in the next year. Together, the populations of the world's next five most populous countries, which are the United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Brazil, are lower than those of either India or China. In point of fact, China's population is bigger than that of the all of Europe (744 million) or the Americas (1.04 billion), and it is nearly similar to that of all the countries in Africa combined (1.427 billion).
As recently as 2015, the majority of the world's population was concentrated in just six countries. These six countries are the same as the ones listed above, with the exception of Nigeria. Nigeria was the seventh most populous country back in 2015, but it has since passed Brazil to move into sixth place. However, recent population growth has been higher in the rest of the globe than in these countries; as a result, the top six nations currently house slightly less than half of the world's population, which is 49%. When Brazil's population of 215 million people is included in, the seven most populated nations in the world account for 51.7% of the total global population.
According to the United Nations' (UN) "medium" scenario for future population increase, often known as its "middle-of-the-road estimate," the total number of people living on our planet is forecast to reach 9.7 billion in the year 2050 and 10.4 billion in the year 2100. It is anticipated that most of the world's new births will take place in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounted for an estimated 29% of all births worldwide in 2017. The total fertility rate in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to be 4.6 births per woman in 2021, which is more than twice as high as the global average of 2.3 births per woman and more than three times as high as the average fertility rate in Europe, North America, and Eastern and Southern Asia, which is 1.5 births per woman (also 1.5).
Source: Pew Research Center