A Regionally-Based Probabilistic Forecast of Human Extinction

Abstract

Studies that predict species extinction have focused on a range of flora and fauna but in regard to Homo sapiens there are, with one notable exception, no predictive studies, only considerations of possible ways this may occur. The exception believes extinction of Homo sapiens will happen in 10,000 years. We agree that extinction will happen, but we disagree on the timing. Given continuation of the trend in the decline in fertility between 2020 and 2025 observed for all five of the world regions recognized by the United Nations (Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania) and employing a "bottom-up" probabilistic projection method in conjunction with 66% confidence intervals, we find the world population will be between 2.59 and 2.82 billion by 2130; between 51.53 and 72.11 million by 2230; between 3.0 and 4.1 million by 2280; between 767.4 and 997.4 thousand by 2300; between 33,040 and 40,189 by 2360; and between 1,058 and 1,281 by 2415, whereupon the human species becomes extinct. Asia will be the first region to experience extinction (2280), Europe, the second (2295), followed closely by the Americas (2300), then Africa (2360) and finally Oceania (2415). Although there is regional variation in the reasons (the desire for fewer children, advancements in contraceptive technology, the worldwide rise in male and female infertility, the cost of having and raising children in modern and modernizing economies and the fact that populations worldwide are aging beyond the age group in which reproduction is both possible and feasible), these factors have come together such that they have resulted in the force driving extinction - declining fertility, which if not already at or near to a level too low to sustain a given regional human population, is heading there. Notably, while we likely bear more than a small level of responsibility for the possibility of a "sixth mass extinction event," we also appear to be the only species facing extinction due to internal circumstances.