UN forecasts predict that the global population will top 9 billion by 2050
The report, An Aging World: 2008, shows that within 10 years older people will outnumber children for the first time. It forecasts that over the next 30 years the number of over-65s is expected to almost double, from 506 million in 2008 to 1.3 billion a leap from 7% of the world's population to 14%. Already, the number of people in the world 65 and over is increasing at an average of 870,000 each month. The rate of growth will shoot up in the next couple of years, with both overall numbers and proportions of older people rising rapidly. The shift is due to a combination of the time-delayed impact of high fertility levels after the second world war and more recent improvements in health that are bringing down death rates at older ages. Separate UN forecasts predict that the global population will top 9 billion by 2050. ~Full article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/20/census-population-ageing-global
