Welcome to the Decade of Augmented

When a new decade starts, I find people are generally more optimistic about the future and far less pessimistic about the past.  It’s about new beginnings, a fresh start, all in support of moving the ball forward for customers, partners and the broader analytics community.

So what does our future hold?  My colleague, Philippe Lions, analyzed World Population Projections through 2050. The data, by country, spans 100 years – from 1950 to 2050 – and simply visualizing the data shows how our population mix has changed dramatically in a very short period of time. 

Baby Boomers to Gen X to Millennials to Gen Z

To put it into perspective, I am a baby boomer (and proud of it), born in 1957. The world population at that time was roughly 3b people. In 2020, it’s anticipated to be approximately 7.8B, and by 2050, the number will exceed 9b. That’s three times the people in a (hopefully long) lifespan.  Look for your birth year to see dynamics about your generation.

While the bulk of absolute population growth has been in Asia, the relative growth leader is Africa. Just look at the percent of total population for Europe – 21.4% of world population in 1960 to 12% in 2000 to an estimated 7.7% in 2050 – and you easily see how population shift happen dramatically. We all know we live in a new and changing world, but this hits that point home better than most. 

These shifts can be attributed to a few things, but it’s largely a function of declining birth rates (live births per 1000 females) and an aging population with higher life expectancy. 

Looking at the population mix by age (0-20 year, 20-40 years, etc.), and you’ll see that population is skewing older. The largest growth rates? Those between 60-80 years old. That segment is expected to expand at a rapid clip through 2050. 

We look forward to combining this data with more health data to dig deeper – using AI and ML – to understand population and health dynamics worldwide.