A United Nations report has placed Pakistan in the group of countries whose population is expected to increase through 2054 and could potentially peak in the second half of the century or later.

According to the current projects in the UN’s World Population Prospects 2024 report, Pakistan will reach its peak population in 2092 of 404.68 million people.

It said that Pakistan, whose current population is over 245 million, population is expected to surpass that of Indonesia in 2048 when it will reach 331.29 million.

Between 1998 and 2017, Pakistan’s average population growth rate was 2.40%, the report said. For a population of over 220 million, this is a growth of about 5.28 million people per year.

Pakistan has one of the highest birth rates of 22 births per 1,000 people, it was pointed out. “Very few women use any type of birth control in Pakistan, and the surging population can put too much pressure on water and sanitation systems, result in millions of unemployed people, and overwhelm health and education systems.”

Since the year 1947, when the country became a sovereign state, the population of Pakistan has increased significantly, particularly because more and more people felt comfortable moving their families and businesses to the area, the report said.

Compared to the other countries in the region, the growth rate of Pakistan is about 2.1 per cent higher, it said.

The report predicted that in about 35 years if this growth continues, the population of Pakistan will eventually become double what it was back in 2001. Judging from how the population has grown significantly over just ten years, this “doubled population” figure does not seem to be far off, it said.

The current growth rate in Pakistan is close to 2%, but this is expected to halve to less than 1% by the year 2050 - at which point it is predicted to cross the 300 million threshold.

The report also said that the global population reached nearly 8.2 billion by mid-2024 and is expected to grow by another two billion over the next 60 years, peaking at around 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s.

It will then fall to around 10.2 billion, which is 700 million lower than expected a decade ago. That’s just one of the key findings revealed in the report published by the UN on Thursday.

However, changes in global population are uneven and the demographic landscape is evolving, with rapid population growth in some places and rapid ageing in others, making reliable population data “more important than ever”, said the UN Sexual and Reproductive Health Agency (UNFPA), heralding the report which is published to coincide with World Population Day.

The report “must be used to reach and respond to the needs of those who have been left behind,” the agency added.