Population matters

Even as July 11 was World Population Day, it got very little attention despite the fact that population itself is the most important input for development. It was the humdrum of Covid-19 pandemic that had pushed this year's World Population Day back, with only a couple of routine advertisements issued by the government reminding the people that this day has some important significance. It is unbelievable to even think that while it took hundreds of thousands of years for the world population to grow to one billion, it then just required another 200 years or so to grow sevenfold. It was in 2011 – just nine years ago – that the global population had reached the 7 billion mark, and as of now it stands roughly at about 7.7 billion. It is expected to grow rapidly in the next ten years to around 8.5 billion in 2030, and then jump to 9.7 billion in 2050, and by the turn of this century to 10.9 billion. This dramatic growth of population has happened largely due to a few reasons, the most important being the increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age. Simultaneously, three other factors are – major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanization, and accelerating migration. As has been assessed by the UN, these trends will continue to have far-reaching implications for generations to come. There have been some very significant changes in fertility rates and life expectancy across the globe. According to UN figures, till the early 1970s, a woman on an average had 4.5 children; by 2015, it fell to below 2.5 children. The current fertility rate for India in 2020 is 2.200 births per woman, a 0.9 per cent decline from 2019. The fertility rate for India in 2019 was 2.220 births per woman, a 0.89 per cent decline from 2018. But correspondingly, the average life expectancy across the globe has risen very fast; it was 64.6 years in the early 1990s, and has gone up to 72.6 years by 2019. Yet another important aspect of population is the combination of urbanization and migration; globally 2007 was the first year in which more people lived in urban areas than in rural areas. According to latest estimates, about 66 per cent of the world population will be living in cities by 2050.