Depopulation

Population decline, also known as depopulation, is a reduction in a human population size. Earth's total human population continues to grow, as it has done throughout history, but projections suggest this long-term trend may be coming to an end. From antiquity until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in early modern Europe, the global population grew very slowly, at about 0.04% per year. After about 1800 the growth rate accelerated to a peak of 2.1% annually during the mid-20th-century baby boom, but since then, due to the worldwide collapse of the total fertility rate, it has slowed to 0.9% as of 2023. The global growth rate in absolute numbers accelerated to a peak of 92.8 million in 1990, but has since slowed to 70.4 million in 2023.