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Rapidly declining birth rates have forced UN statisticians to reduce their
estimates of the world’s future population. New projections, published last week
by the UN’s population division in New York, predict that there will be 10.4
billion people in the world by 2100. This is some 800 million fewer than the
last prediction made six years ago. They also estimate that the population will
reach a new plateau of 11 billion by 2200—down from 11.6 billion.