the world has reached 8 billion and I'd love to tell you what this means for us the world reaching 8 billion is not a catastrophe in fact it's a grand success globally more people are surviving life expectancy has increased across the world Health Care has improved and more people are thriving it would be a catastrophe if governments can't prepare for what's coming in the next few decades thank you the population of mankind is not likely to keep Rising Forever at least as current predictions show what we see is a peak predicted in about 2080s thereafter
a plateau and after 2100 we'll have to wait and see a feature of today's population is how diverse it is in different countries of the World Imagine for example that there are eight countries that are going to be responsible for half of all global population growth between now and 2050. at the Other Extreme we have more than 60 percent of the global population today already living in a country that is below replacement fertility and more than 50 countries are already in population decline another example of population diversity around the world is age the median age
in Europe right now is 41.7 years in sub-Saharan Africa the median age is about 17 years that difference is greater than it's ever been in human history that we have record long ago everyone was young so to speak life expectancy was low across the world so most countries were similar to one another in Being Young eventually with time we probably expect with more life expectancy and declining fertility than most countries will be older we're in a fascinating window right now in human history where we have this Grand diversity between old countries and young countries simultaneously
we don't see a baby boom in fact the pace at which the global population was growing peaked back in 1964 when it was growing at more than 2.2 percent per year now right now it's less than one percent it took 12 years for us to grow from seven to eight billion it will take us 14 and a half years to reach 9 billion and then it will take us more than 20 years to get to 10 billion foreign birth rates go down for many reasons and what we've observed for years since approximately the 70s is
that where we see an increase for example in women's education children are more likely to be healthy children are more likely to survive and women are more interested in regulating their fertility adopting contraception and having fewer children so while we think about Reproductive Rights historically it's very much about enabling women in couples to avoid pregnancies that were unwanted today we have to recognize that Reproductive Rights Embraces also enabling people to have wanted children where development has been successful and progresses we see that these are countries in large measure where women have Reproductive Rights and choices
that women's agency their bodily autonomy are essential to development they are in fact Hallmarks and indicators of development in the achievement of the sustainable development goals so it's imperative for us to fulfill the sustainable development goals and to make education universally accessible and affordable for all children in many countries of the world today what we see also is that people aspire to more children than they're actually having foreign across Europe we saw a diversity of responses in terms of birth rates and the pandemic in the majority countries actually had a decline in birth rates nine
months after the onset of the pandemic when lockdowns were happening [Music] and that seems to have been relatively temporary those numbers have rebounded in the majority of countries This Is Not Unusual this is similar to what was observed in the Great Depression it was observed in the flu epidemic of the early part of the 20th century in periods of economic uncertainty history shows us that people postpone getting pregnant that births decline and those recover in almost all cases within a relatively short period of time and that seems to be the impact of covid one of
the great successes of 8 billion is it means that increasing life expectancy is no longer something which is only visible among the wealthier populations of this world but it's growing and increasing child mortality is down infant mortality is down maternal mortality is down these are huge successes for all of us and 8 billion 8 billion is 8 billion people who will develop unique original creative ideas to make the world a better place
