For most of the 20th century, many were accustomed to thinking of people as an ever-expanding resource. As the population grew, so did the labor market, consumer market, scientific communities, production systems and armies. In 1950, the world population was about 2.5 billion. In 2026, it reaches 8.3 billion. In just 75 years, the population has increased more than 3.3 times.
In this sense, the current population may turn out to be not a permanent norm, but a historical error produced by the population growth of the last two centuries. Dean Spears and Michael Geruso have developed a similar logic in their book After the Spike: if low fertility takes root as a new trend, the world’s population may begin to naturally decline due to people’s everyday decisions.
People remain the main source of economic, technological and military development for almost any country. Population growth over the past two centuries has been accompanied by an unprecedented pace of science, technology and productivity. A simple logic of possibility emerged: more people means more possible ideas and a greater chance of generating human capital capable of creating successful solutions.
But numbers alone are not enough. What matters is the quality of human capital: the country’s ability to educate engineers, scientists, skilled workers and experts in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.
This is becoming a new trend in international competition. As long as countries still have large working-age generations, they can use this demographic window to make a technological leap.
In the middle of the 20th century, the total fertility rate was about five children per woman. Today, it’s around 2.2. But if the world’s fertility settles at 1.4-1.5, the world’s population will begin to decline slowly after reaching its peak. Some estimates suggest that the world’s population could drop to 1 billion in about 150-200 years. This is not the worst situation, but a continuation of trends that are already developing.
