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variant would result in a global population in 2050 of around 1.3 billion more or less compared to the medium variant of 9.6 billion.”
    UN estimates are not universally accepted. Many other demographers believe that the new UN projections are too high. For example, in a 2013 study, F é lix-Fernando Mu ñ oz and Julio A. Gonzalo, researchers associated with the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, find that past population growth has generally followed the UN’s low-variant trend. Using sophisticated statistical techniques, the two calculate that future population growth will most likely continue to track the UN’s low-variant trends. “Overpopulation was a spectre in the 1960s and 70s but historically the UN’s low fertility variant forecasts have been fulfilled,” noted Mu ñ oz. If the Spanish researchers are right, world population will top out at between 8 and 9 billion by mid-century and thereafter begin declining.
    In 2001, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) demographer Wolfgang Lutz and his colleagues published “The End of World Population Growth” in the journal Nature . Lutz and his fellow researchers calculated that “there is around an 85 per cent chance that the world’s population will stop growing before the end of the century. There is a 60 per cent probability that the world’s population will not exceed 10 billion people before 2100, and around a 15 per cent probability that the world’s population at the end of the century will be lower than it is today.” In a 2013 study in Demographic Research, the IIASA researchers noted that “most existing world population projections agree that we are likely to see the end of world population growth (with a peak population of between eight and ten billion) during the second half of this century.” In another 2013 study for the United Nations, the IIASA demographers project that world population will most likely peak around 2070 at 9.4 billion and fall back below 9 billion by 2100.
    In a September 2013 Deutsche Bank report, demographer Sanjeev Sanyal argued that the latest UN population projections are way too high and that world population will likely peak at 8.7 billion around 2050 and then begin falling. Sanyal noted that in recent decades total fertility rates have fallen much more sharply than predicted in countries like China, India, Iran, and Bangladesh. He makes the case that rates are at the brink of similarly steep declines in current high-fertility countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan. As a consequence, Sanyal argues that “the world’s overall fertility rate will fall to replacement rate by 2025. In other words, reproductively speaking, our species will no longer be expanding—a major turning point in history.” Thus, Sanyal and his colleagues predict, “World population will peak around 2055 at 8.7 billion and will then decline to 8 billion by 2100. In other words, our forecasts suggest that world population will peak at least half a century sooner than the U.N. expects.” Basically, Sanyal’s analysis agrees with the researchers from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology that the trajectory of world population will most likely track the UN’s low-variant trend and peak by the middle of this century.
    In September 2014, demographers working with the United Nations Population Division published an article in Science arguing that world population stabilization is unlikely in this century. Instead, world population is projected to grow to around 11 billion by 2100. Nearly all of the projected increase—4 billion people—will happen in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the forecast basically assumes that Africa will remain an economic and political hellhole for the remainder of the century. In their November 2014 study, World Population and Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Wolfgang Lutz and his fellow