The world population is expected to fall for the first time since the Black Death because of plummeting birth rates, a Lancet study has found.
The decline in the number of children women are having has started to slow the growth of the global population, which stands at just over eight billion, and could mean it starts to fall within decades.
It would be the first time that the number of people on the planet has decreased since the Black Death bubonic plague pandemic killed as many as 50 million people in the mid-1300s, including up to a third of the population in Europe.
That is the only time to date that the number of humans on the Earth has fallen, with historians estimating that the global population fell from around 400 million to 350 million.
Women are required to have 2.1 children each on average to maintain population growth, known as the total fertility rate, and as of 2021 it stood at 2.23 worldwide.
But experts say it is on a persistently downward trend, having fallen from 4.84 in 1950, and researchers predict it will decrease to 1.83 in 2050 and 1.59 by 2100.
