Population regime· The columns of time

The acceleration

1950 → Today

Since 1950, world population has gone from 2.5 to 8.2 billion, and more than two thirds of today's humanity was added within a single lifetime.

Regime of rapid growth: world population moves from 2.5 billion inhabitants in 1950 to 8.2 billion in 2024, according to the United Nations World Population Prospects. More than two thirds of the present total was added within the span of a single human life.

What the evidence shows

The growth rate reached its maximum at the end of the 1960s and has decreased since; the total nonetheless continues to rise because the large generations born during that phase are still of childbearing age. This lag, called population momentum, explains why projections converge on a plateau during the present century rather than on continuous growth.

Bounds and conventions

Present counts still carry an uncertainty of a few per cent: censuses are periodic and not continuous, civil registration remains incomplete in several countries, and the most recent values are projections computed from the last count and not counts themselves.