10.1a Population

The world population is estimated to be 8 billion people (U.S. Census Bureau, 2025). The United Nations (2025c) projects that the global population will grow through the 2080s but expects it to decline thereafter. While the number of people in the world continues to increase, the rate at which the population is growing has decreased (see Figure 10.1). The rate of growth peaked in the 1960s. During that decade, the global population grew over 2% annually, and now it grows less than 1% annually (Ritchie et al., 2023). The population of the United States is about 341 million people, making it the third most populous country after India (first) and China (second) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2025).