World Population Day

According to a forecast by Eurostat, the population decline of Hungary will be gradual, but after 2070, it will become slower and slower: starting from the current 9.8 million people, the population may decrease to 8.9 million by 2070, and to 8.7 million by 2100.

World Population Day, which seeks to focus attention on the urgency and importance of population issues, was established by the then Governing Council of the United Nations Development Program in 1989, an outgrowth of the interest generated by the Day of Five Billion, which was observed on 11 July 1987. The Day was first marked on July 11, 1990 in more than 90 countries.

In December 1990, the United Nations General Assembly decided to continue observing World Population Day to enhance awareness of population issues, including their relations to the environment and development.

Describing world population trends in connection with this day, a report by the United Nations says that it took hundreds of thousands of years for the world population to grow to 1 billion – then in just another 200 years or so, it grew sevenfold. In 2011, the global population reached the 7 billion mark, and today, it stands at about 7.7 billion, and it's expected to grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.9 billion in 2100.

This dramatic growth has been driven largely by increasing numbers of people surviving to reproductive age, and has been accompanied by major changes in fertility rates, increasing urbanization and accelerating migration. These trends will have far-reaching implications for generations to come.

Data for Hungary in estimations by the United Nations lag behind European averages for the period between 1970 and 2100. But even looking at the period between 1950 and 1970, we can only say about men that they could have hoped for a few months longer life in Hungary than the European average. In Hungary today, the life expectancy at birth for women is 80.1 years and that of men is 73 years.