The UN predicts that we will reach peak humanity by 2083. But now, more and more economists like University of Pennsylvania professor Jesús Fernández-Villaverde are saying that this UN prediction is ,actually, far too optimistic. Instead, he argues that

2055 will be the year of peak humanity in size, and we will start going down

If this is true, economies around the world will have to deal with pension crises, reduced economic growth, and potential government debt crises far faster than we thought.

So, why are the UN predictions that everyone, including me, has been using so far so wrong? And what exactly does that mean for the global economy?

As always on Money & Macro, we have done a deep dive into the relevant economic research, taken the best arguments PLUS supporting evidence, and summarized them for you, starting with

Argument 1: Far fewer people are born today than the UN thinks

Have a look at this graph from Colombia, a country for which professor Vilaverde recently made the case the UN is getting current births terribly wrong. This line shows historical UN estimates for how many new Colombians are born in each year. Meanwhile, this line shows the actual births reported by Colombia’s government. As you can see the UN has roughly overestimated the total number of Colombians born by 30% for years.

That’s a big number— and we see similar gaps for other large developing countries like Turkey, Egypt, and, more recently, Mexico. In Mexico’s case, the trend even flipped: for years the UN underestimated births, but in the last couple of years, it’s started to overestimate them too.

So, why is the UN getting the total number of births for these major countries so wrong?

The problem is NOT that UN researchers are using a bad methodology. You see, in many poor nations, governments genuinely don’t have a good idea how many people are actually born. For example, in ultra poor, unstable countries, like South Sudan, Yemen, and Madagascar, of course the government does not have the capacity to count all births. So, it makes sense that the UN makes an estimate of how good the government is at counting babies, and then adds a number of babies to official government statistics to account for that.

The REAL problem, according to Villaverde, is that the UN itself classifies both Colombia and Turkey as countries with complete vital registration systems, at least according to this index of the UN’S World Health Organization.

That’s really strange. The UN says the data is accurate, and yet, it makes a massive correction by adding way more births than the government says, meaning its population predictions for these countries will be way too high.

And if this problem exists for medium-sized countries like Colombia or Turkey, imagine what it means for China, which alone accounts for nearly one-sixth of the world’s population. Even tiny errors in Chinese birth statistics can shift global forecasts by tens of millions of people. The trouble is, China’s official data are among the most uncertain of all — and some demographers believe the distortions there could dwarf everything else, which brings us to our second reason of why humanity will shrink faster than we thought.

2. China’s births can’t be trusted

Yi Fuxian, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, argues that China’s population figures are probably significantly inflated. Here’s why. In China population counts are done by local governments. However, they have very strong incentives to inflate their birth statistics before sending them to the central government. More babies means more money from Beijing — for schools, pensions, and poverty relief.

As evidence, Fuxian give the example that, the regular numbers sent in by local governments in 2000 added up to 17.7 million births. However, the national census done that year… surprisingly only counted 13.8 million infants under one, leaving a 12% gap.

This problem will likely only get worse now that the Chinese government explicitly wants more kids, and has pledged to reward local governments that can deliver. As evidence for this claim, Fuxian gave the example that when China introduced the two-child policy in 2016, the National Health and Family Planning Commission announced 18.85 million births, a 27% jump from the previous year. Some provinces, like Shandong and Zhejiang, reported increases of 56% and 75%.

However, crucially, vaccine and school enrollment data showed no corresponding rise, giving us some pretty strong evidence that this “baby boom” was largely fabricated to make the policy appear successful.

Yet, despite the evidence China inflates it’s births, the UN doesn’t take this into account, adding to the problem that the UN probably believes far more people are being born today… than are actually born today…

And yet, it gets way worse, when we talk about the third, most important factor makes the accuracy of UN predictions so uncertain.

3 The UN is hopelessly optimistic about fertility bouncing back

Have a look at this chart for fertility in South Korea. In the last decade, the number of babies per woman has relentesly fallen from 1.2 to a staggering 0.7. Luckily… the UN thinks it will start bouncing back next year. And hey, that’s actually the same year when both Europe’s and China’s fertility will turn around as well. Similarly, after a relentless fall, the US’s fertility will completely stabilize… starting next year…

That seems absurd … doesn’t it?

Of course, the UN isn’t stupid. There is a reason for them to assume fertility will bounce back at some point. You see, in many of the most advanced Western countries, like Germany, the US, and France fertility DID actually bounce back when these societies adapted to provide better childcare services and a better work-life balance for working men and women.

This led the UN to rely on the idea that fertility follows a three-phase pattern.

In Phase 1, countries start with high fertility. Then, in phase 2, as they develop and grow richer, fertility plummets. In this phase, fertility levels off as it dips below replacement. And finally — in Phase III — fertility recovers slightly..

According to the UN, China, the US and much of Europe should now be in phase III. So, they expect fertility to rebound at some point. But, because no one knows WHEN that will actually happen, the UN just assumes the rebound starts right away — and that’s why their projections often look so unrealistic.

Although, to be fair, the UN’s past forecasts have been quite accurate on a global level. In 1968, for instance, the UN projected that the world’s population in 1990 would be 5.44 billion — remarkably close to the actual 5.34 billion. Similarly, in 2010, the real global population was 7 billion, compared with earlier UN projections ranging from 6.8 to 7.2 billion. Not bad at all.

Yet, when it comes to recent birth forecasts in specific countries — especially rich or aging ones — the record is far less impressive.

Take South Korea again: for years, the UN has predicted that fertility would stabilize or start rising. It never did. The same pattern appears in Chile, and in Colombia the UN has consistently overestimated birth rates and underestimated the speed of decline.

So, in THIS light, these UN predictions seem incredibly naive.

And it’s not just skeptics like Professor Villaverde who think so. Other major forecasting groups — like the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) — expect global population to peak around 2080. The Vienna-based IIASA puts the peak even earlier, around 2064 . Finally, according to [The Economist](https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2025/09/11/humanity-will-shrink-far-sooner-than-you-think) , if current fertility trends continue for just another 25 years, humanity could already peak by 2065 — nearly two decades earlier than what the UN expects.

This means all the alarming analyses that you have seen about a global economic slowdown and potential pension crisis could come far quicker than we thought… So,

4 What does this mean for the global economy

Luckily, as mentioned in my previous analysis… the answer is not all bad. Some regions like, for example, India, and later Africa may actually be heading for a potentially great economy, given that they will experience what economists call a ‘demographic dividend.’ Thanks to a currently relatively young population, and fewer and fewer births, these countries will enter an era where they have a large population of people who works, compared to both the number of OLD people and the NUMBER of CHILDREN, who cannot work.

For example, this is the demographic pyramid of India, where you can clearly see a large bulge of young people has recently entered the workforce.

Africa, on the other hand, is still decades away from that turning point. Right now, high fertility means lots of children and a heavy dependency burden, which keeps growth potential limited. But by around 2050 , as fertility rates fall and the working-age share of the population expands, Africa could become the world’s next major growth engine.

But, as you can see here, in Europe, China, and Japan, the population pyramid looks drastically different. This bulge of workers will soon leave the workforce, meaning fewer and fewer workers will actually be economically productive.

As mentioned in my previous video, this will likely lead to ‘Japanification’ of all major economies in East Asia and Europe, which means slower economic growth and higher government debt. As the population crisis intensifies, we will see more and more countries hit a government debt limit, that either will result in a debt crisis or a cut to pension benefits. This will have major implications for the global balance of power as Japan and Europe decline first, while China and the US will follow suit a bit later. As a consequence of the same trend, India will see its power increase first, and then decline as Africa gets the demographic advantage.

These conclusions still stand. However, thanks to the new data presented in this video, many dates in my previous analysis will change. Specifically, in that video, I mentioned how China’s demographic backlash will come later, but will be severe. The fact that China has for a long time misrepresented birth statistics, may mean it will follow the path of Europe and Japan sooner. But, more importantly, as we have seen here, given the relentless fall of fertility in recent years, the global population crisis will come sooner everywhere, and will likely be more severe than we previously thought.

But, yeah, that is my take, what do you think? Have I been too harsh on the UN. Or do you agree that there is really strong evidence that the world’s population will start falling far faster than we thought. Let me know in the comments below, and … remember, if you are travelling abroad soon, download Saily and use our discount cost to keep your phone charges low… this also helps out the channel as increases the chance sponsors will keep sponsor our videos.