DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS AND PATTERNS 

The global population, which stood at just over 2 billion in 1950, is 6.5 billion today. The world is currently gaining new inhabitants at a rate of 76 million people a year (representing the difference, in 2005, between 134 million births and 58 million deaths). Although this growth is slowing, middle-ground projections suggest the world will have 9.1 billion inhabitants by 2050, when growth will be approximately 34 million a year.

These are the number of births and deaths per 1,000 people. On a worldwide basis, the difference between these rates is the rate of population growth. Within regions or countries, population growth is also affected by emigration and immigration. This shows that in both developed and developing regions the crude birth rate has decreased by about half over the past 50 years. This implies a much greater absolute reduction in developing regions.

The reduction in mortality in developing countries since 1950 has been very rapid – so rapid that the crude death rate in developing countries is now lower than in developed countries. The gradual rise in the crude death rate in developed countries results from the combination of relatively steady infant and child mortality rates and rising death rates due to an ageing population.

In both developed and developing countries, there has been a huge movement from rural to urban areas since 1950 (see Figure 14). Less-developed regions, in aggregate, have seen their population shift from 18 per cent urban in 1950 to 44 per cent in 2006, while the corresponding figures for developed countries are 52 per cent to 75 per cent. This move toward urban areas – and the concomitant urbanization of areas that were formerly peri-urban or rural – is consistent with the shift that nearly all countries have experienced in moving from agricultural economies to industrial and service-based economies.