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The more that the global population increases, the better off that the people of the planet will be

Up, up, up! The world’s population, a mere 2.5 billion in 1950, almost doubled by 1980 and today, at 7.3 billion, has almost tripled.

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The good news doesn’t end there, though. Until recently, the population experts at the United Nations projected that the world’s population could peak at 8 billion as soon as 2040 or 2050, and then begin a long decline. Those projections, it now believes, were erroneous, based on the assumption that having babies was fast going out of style. Instead we are still making babies at a good clip, so much so that the global population looks like it might reach 10 billion by 2050, a quadrupling in a mere century, and then keep right on climbing. By 2100, Planet Earth could approach 17 billion.

Lower fertility decreases per capita income in the long run

Even that 17 billion could prove low. If we humans maintain today’s rate of baby-making over the balance of the century, we’d get to 29 billion. Maybe more if the culture in the western world changed and having babies once again became fashionable here.