Charted: When Every Continent’s Population Will Peak This Century

Pallavi Rao
2025-02-20 08:12:00
www.visualcapitalist.com

When Every Continent’s Population Will Peak This Century

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After 350 straight years of global population growth—including a 4x surge from 2 billion in the year 1920—this trend is finally set to reverse.

Earth’s population is expected to peak in 2084 at 10.3 billion after which it will begin tapering off.

This graphic explores every continent’s population from 1975 to 2100, with estimates used from 2025 onward.

Data comes from the UN’s World Population Prospects (2024).

Peak Population Year For Every Continent and Region

While global peak population is still around 60 years away, some regions will hit their peak a lot sooner.

Europe, for example, already peaked in 2020 at 750 million people.

Note: All figures are estimates.

Meanwhile, Asia and Latin America will hit their peaks in the 2050s, at 5.3 billion and 731 million respectively.

However Africa, Northern America, and Oceania will keep growing slowly past 2100. Under current projections, they will not hit their peaks this century.

Explaining Population Projections

How and why are some regions peaking earlier, later, or not at all?

The answer lies in fertility rates and migration patterns.

First, the fertility rate is measured as the average number of births a woman will have over her lifetime. Since the 1970s, the global fertility rate has been declining steadily.

However, many African nations still have relatively high fertility rates, leading to more births, which leads to a growing population.

Note: All figures are estimates.

In contrast, European countries have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world. When the fertility rate drops below the replacement rate (the number of births required per woman, for a generation to replace itself), and migration into the region isn’t enough to offset it, a region’s population begins to decline.

However for Northern America and Oceania, international migration into the region (most likely from Africa and Asia) will bolster declining birth rates, at least until 2100.

Finally, these UN estimates take current fertility, mortality, and migration assumptions into account. They can change, and therefore future projections can also change drastically.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

Low fertility rates have an immediate impact on births. Check out Declining Birth Rates in the Most Populous Countries (1950-2024) to see their dramatic fall.

The post Charted: When Every Continent’s Population Will Peak This Century appeared first on Visual Capitalist.

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