Population decline

Uncommon card · No. 118058

Population decline, also known as depopulation, is a reduction in a human population size. Earth's total human population continues to grow, as it has done throughout history, but projections suggest this long-term trend may be coming to an end. From antiquity (10th century BCE–500 CE) until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in early modern Europe (late 18th–early 19th centuries), the global population grew very slowly, at about 0.04% per year. After about 1800 the growth rate accelerated to a peak of 2.1% annually during the mid-20th-century baby boom (1945–1968 period), but since then, due to the worldwide collapse of the total fertility rate, it has slowed to 0.9% as of 2023. The global growth rate in absolute numbers accelerated to a peak of 92.8 million in 1990, but has since slowed to 70.4 million in 2023. Long-term projections indicate that the growth rate of the human population on the planet will continue to slow down, and that before the end of the 21st century it will...

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