The Earth, on November 15th, 2022, hit the 8 billion population milestone. Looking at how our population is spread around the world can give us a good idea of what’s growing and what the road to 9 billion people will have in store. While the world as a whole is growing at 0.83% per year, many countries around the world are growing at different rates – with some even not growing at all. With most of the population being in Asia, with over 4.5 billion people, you’d think that this region would have the highest growth rates of anywhere in the world. 

In reality, countries in sub-Saharan Africa such as Ethiopia and Nigeria have the highest growth rates of anywhere in the world. Countries in Europe have very low growth rates and some are even losing population. This is because of how developed and how healthy these countries are. An older population has less children but is more healthy, but a younger population has more children but is less healthy. The good news for this massively growing region is that more money is being devoted to help these countries increase their standard of living.
Learn more about what the future holds for countries around the world as we step closer and closer to 9 billion here: