Originally posted by PurpleDog UK
ps - if anyone can embed or load the video on here I would be grateful as I lack the knowledge currently to do that

Thanks
PDUK

World population reached 6.2 billion in 2004. When compared to a population level of 2.5 billion in 1950, this indeed looks sinister. A little linear math shows that at this rate of growth, world population would be 15 billion by 2050 and nearly 40 billion by 2100.
Yet the United Nations projects a global population of only 8.91 billion in 2050, peaking at around 9 billion in 2075 and then declining.

Why is the expected future population so low? It stems from declining global fertility rates.
The world's fertility rate - which is the number of children per fertile woman - has dropped from 5.01 in 1950, to 2.83 children per woman in 2000.
The U.N. projects it to drop to 2.02 by 2050, the accepted replacement level in which there is neither growth nor loss.3
However, these numbers by themselves are deceiving.
In the more developed nations the fertility rate plunged to 1.50 and is only projected to struggle back to 1.92 by 2050, which is still below replacement levels.
On the other hand, the fertility rate of the least developed nations will drop from 6.64 to an expected 2.47, which is only slightly above the replacement rate.
By 2050 the U.N.'s "2002 Revision projects that 3 out of every 4 countries in the less developed regions will be experiencing below-replacement fertility."4

Thus, not only have population growth rates been falling in virtually all middle-income and advanced countries, but, paradoxically, in many poor countries as well - especially those that have higher economic growth.