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Population growth, population ageing, urbanization and international migration are four major demographic trends shaping our world. Changes in the size, age structure and spatial distribution of populations bring both challenges and opportunities. By managing the challenges and taking advantage of the opportunities, we can accelerate efforts to achieve inclusive and sustainable development, create opportunities to eradicate poverty, enhance access to social protection, health care and education, promote gender equality,  advance more sustainable patterns of production and consumption, and safeguard the environment.

Conversely, achieving the Goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development can help avoid the most extreme demographic outcomes, facilitating a shift towards smaller families in populations that are growing rapidly and where individuals and couples often have more children than they desire, and enabling parents to have larger families in populations that are declining and where people often fail to achieve their desired family size. Understanding how population trends are likely to unfold in the short, medium and long term is critical for achieving a more inclusive, prosperous and sustainable future.

This report comes at a time when the demographic landscape of many countries is changing rapidly, often creating anxiety and confusion. Due to faster-than-anticipated declines in fertility for some of the world鈥檚 most populous countries, the size of the global population now appears likely to peak within the current century (probability of 80 per cent). This represents a major shift in perspective compared to the outlook one decade earlier, when the estimated probability that global population growth would end during the 21st century was around 30 per cent.  

World Population Prospects 2024 is the twenty-eighth edition of the official estimates and projections of the global population that have been published by the United Nations since 1951. World Population Prospects is one of the most authoritative and comprehensive sets of demographic data to assess population trends at the global, regional and national levels. The United Nations population estimates and projections are used in the calculation of many development indicators used by the United Nations system, including about one-quarter of the indicators used to monitor global progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

For the first time, World Population Prospects presents probabilistic projections of net international migration. In addition, it includes all demographic indicators and population estimates and projections by single age and sex for one-year intervals as in the 2022 revision.