[anton_tarasenko]

A polite reminder: some people predict population dynamics for living.

For example, the World Bank: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/population-projection...

If you look for dinosaurs, the WB also have a 1984 report on topic: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/496471468156899142... (see p. 186, "Population data supplement")

The UN, IMF, and most national agencies also release their numbers.

In general, world GDP growth — and its correlates, like HDI — is stable enough to predict population growth. As a country gets richer, fertility falls: women get careers, jobs require more education for children, people start to rely on savings, instead of family. The aggregate numbers are smooth and predictable. At least, for a reasonable time horizon.

But you need to fine-tune the model at the right aggregation level. For example, the US, EU, Japan have similar GDP levels, but fertility in the US remains high. Census data helps settle down these issues.

[Balgair]

Ok, so for everyone that can barely use that terrible website, the number that they have in 2050 is 9.71 billion. Someone else can try to figure out how to download that data and then give an actual estimate as to when the population will flat-line. Maybe find a way to get it into excel and then apply a log fit to it, or soemthing. Hell, I ain't gonna mess with that terrible site again.

Edit: Forgot to thank my parent comment for finding the data in the first place!

[pierrec]

It seems their data is based on UN research, who publishes regular population projections. The latest revision, published in 2015, apparently only goes up to 2100, at which point they still predict growth. However, if you look at projected growth as it's presented in this article:

http://blogs.worldbank.org/futuredevelopment/rapid-slowdown-...

You can see that the growth is rushing towards zero and almost crosses it in 2100, giving a maximum sometime around 2115. But I wouldn't really count on any projection's accuracy that far into the future: what really sticks out is how the historical growth is extremely jagged, driven by crises and revolutions, then becomes ridiculously smooth as soon as it turns into a projection. It just screams out "this is a very rough approximation and probably wrong".

[Balgair]

Ok, I get what the article you linked to is saying, but I think it's really uninformative. Those graphs are the derivative of the population. What I would most like to see is the absolute number of people on earth over time and then into the future. The derivative, though important, is not as useful (to me) as the absolute number. Hans Rosling has some good TED talks on it, but I think they are probably out of date by now.

[pierrec]

The graph for the actual population projection was basically linked in the article:

https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/

(you have to select "WORLD" in the drop-down)

[naasking]

> You can see that the growth is rushing towards zero and almost crosses it in 2100, giving a maximum sometime around 2115.

You're not reading that data correctly, or perhaps, you're simply not accounting for the death rate. The death rate will surpass the growth rate in those projections somewhere between 2050-2080, which means population peak will be in that time frame, not a century from now.

[pierrec]

Hmm, I think you're the one that's not reading it correctly. The growth rate takes into account both death and birth rates. As Balgair points out, it's simply the derivative of the total population. And the UN's projections do not show population peaking between 2050-2080.