At Long Bets, a project of The Long Now Foun­da­tion where he is a board mem­ber, Kevin Kelly has pre­dicted that “by 2060 the total pop­u­la­tion of humans on earth will be less than it is today”.

The biggest dri­ver of the shift from large fam­i­lies to small fam­i­lies is com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­ogy and edu­ca­tion. As these tech­niques come into place the switch to lower birth rates is faster than what demog­ra­phers have expected. And they are more permament.

Cur­rent esti­mates of the world’s peak pop­u­la­tion are made with assump­tions that don’t take into account the major role that glob­al­iza­tion is having.

This means the earth’s pop­u­la­tion will reach its peak sooner than offi­cial fore­casts pre­dict and because there is no vis­i­ble coun­ter­force com­pelling the major­ity of cou­ples to have more than 3 kids each, world pop­u­la­tion will rapidly fall after reach­ing its peak.

It will dimin­ish to our level by 2060 and keep falling.