The increase in the world’s population is not exponential. The global population is growing, but the growth rate has declined since its peak six decades ago.

The chart shows the annual rate of global population growth according to historical estimates and projections from the UN World Population Prospects.

The growth rate peaked in 1963 at over 2% per year, and since then, it has more than halved, falling to less than 1% by 2020.

The UN demographers expect rates to continue falling until the end of the century, eventually leading to negative growth rates and a shrinking global population.

Explore how these projections change with different assumptions in our new population simulation tool