It is important to note that 90% of this growth is in developing countries. The growth rate of population in the more developed regions has been very slow since the end of the 1960s.
But the current growth rate of the developing countries is more three times as high. Today more than 75 per cent of the world population lives in developing countries.
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About 65 per cent of the annual addition to world population lives in the poorer developing countries. This will increase to 72 per cent in 2050.
Population in the developing countries is rising fast because there has been decline in the mortality (death) rate but the fertility (growth) rate continues to be almost the same.
Image Source: geography.hunter.cuny.edu
Moreover, life expectancy and infant mortality in the developing regions has greatly improved.
The fastest growing country in the world today is Kenya, whose 20 million population at the current rate of growth (4 per cent a year) would double by 2005. Likewise, Africa is currently growing at rate never experienced by the other continents.
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The growth rate of sub-Saharan Africa continues to increase. Its current growth rate would double the population in 22 years, and the rate will not begin to decline until early in the next century, says UNFPA report.
Population growth has been taking place almost all over the world. In 1950 only four countries-China, India, the United States and the Soviet Union had populations exceeding 100 million. In 1975 this number had grown to seven including Indonesia Japan and Brazil.
By the year 2000, the indications are that two countries China and India, will have populations exceeding 1,000 million, 11 countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Mexico will exceed 100 million and 27 countries will have population exceeding 50 million.
According to latest statistics provided by UN, the world population increased by 78 million in 1982. Asia alone added 52 million more people.
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Of the 4,586 million people in the world in 1982, more than half of them were in Asia, which had a total population of 2,672 million.
Africa’s population rose by 15 million to 499 million and Latin America’s by seven million to 383 million.
Europe registered the smallest increase – up only two million to 487 million last year. North American’s population went up from 376 million to 383 million and the Soviet Union’s from 268 million to 271 million.
This rate of population growth is putting strain on the world’s food supplies, UN population experts believed that if there were even 6.5 billion people in the world in the year, 2,000 some 65 countries would be totally incapable of feeding their populations from their own agricultural resources.