Key changes in population growth
In order to study how the world population changes over time it is useful to focus on the rate of change (rather than just levels). The following visualization presents the annual population growth rate, superimposed on the total world population, for the period 1750-2010 (plus projections up to 2100). This is the period in history when population growth changed most drastically. Before 1800 the world population growth rate never exceeded 0.5%, while in the course of the first fifty years of the 20th century it went from 0.8% to 2.1% – the highest annual growth rate in history, recorded in 1962. After this point, it has been systematically going down with projections estimating an annual rate of growth of 0.06% for 2100. Since the rate of growth corresponds to the slope of the line tracing the total world population over time, this means that under these projections we should expect an inflection in growth around the year 2100. In other words, under the assumption that the population growth rate will continue falling more or less at the current pace, population will stop growing before the end of this century.