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I'm going to talk about religion.

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But it's a broad and very delicate subject,

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so I have to limit myself.

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And therefore I will limit myself

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to only talk about the links between religion and sexuality.

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(Laughter)

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This is a very serious talk.

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So I will talk of what I remember as the most wonderful.

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It's when the young couple whisper,

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"Tonight we are going to make a baby."

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My talk will be about the impact of religions

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on the number of babies per woman.

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This is indeed important,

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because everyone understands

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that there is some sort of limit

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on how many people we can be on this planet.

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And there are some people

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who say that the world population is growing like this --

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three billion in 1960,

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seven billion just last year --

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and it will continue to grow

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because there are religions that stop women from having few babies,

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and it may continue like this.

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To what extent are these people right?

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When I was born there was less than one billion children in the world,

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and today, 2000, there's almost two billion.

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What has happened since,

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and what do the experts predict will happen

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with the number of children during this century?

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This is a quiz. What do you think?

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Do you think it will decrease to one billion?

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Will it remain the same and be two billion by the end of the century?

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Will the number of children increase each year up to 15 years,

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or will it continue in the same fast rate

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and be four billion children up there?

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I will tell you by the end of my speech.

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But now, what does religion have to do with it?

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When you want to classify religion,

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it's more difficult than you think.

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You go to Wikipedia and the first map you find is this.

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It divides the world into Abrahamic religions and Eastern religion,

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but that's not detailed enough.

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So we went on and we looked in Wikipedia, we found this map.

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But that subdivides Christianity, Islam and Buddhism

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into many subgroups,

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which was too detailed.

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Therefore at Gapminder we made our own map,

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and it looks like this.

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Each country's a bubble.

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The size is the population -- big China, big India here.

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And the color now is the majority religion.

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It's the religion where more than 50 percent of the people

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say that they belong.

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It's Eastern religion in India and China and neighboring Asian countries.

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Islam is the majority religion

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all the way from the Atlantic Ocean across the Middle East,

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Southern Europe and through Asia

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all the way to Indonesia.

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That's where we find Islamic majority.

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And Christian majority religions, we see in these countries. They are blue.

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And that is most countries in America and Europe,

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many countries in Africa and a few in Asia.

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The white here are countries which cannot be classified,

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because one religion does not reach 50 percent

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or there is doubt about the data or there's some other reason.

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So we were careful with that.

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So bear with our simplicity now when I take you over to this shot.

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This is in 1960.

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And now I show the number of babies per woman here:

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two, four or six --

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many babies, few babies.

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And here the income per person in comparable dollars.

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The reason for that is that many people say you have to get rich first

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before you get few babies.

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So low income here, high income there.

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And indeed in 1960,

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you had to be a rich Christian to have few babies.

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The exception was Japan.

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Japan here was regarded as an exception.

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Otherwise it was only Christian countries.

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But there was also many Christian countries

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that had six to seven babies per woman.

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But they were in Latin America or they were in Africa.

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And countries with Islam as the majority religion,

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all of them almost had six to seven children per woman,

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irregardless of the income level.

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And all the Eastern religions except Japan had the same level.

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Now let's see what has happened in the world.

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I start the world, and here we go.

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Now 1962 -- can you see they're getting a little richer,

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but the number of babies per woman is falling?

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Look at China. They're falling fairly fast.

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And all of the Muslim majority countries across the income are coming down,

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as do the Christian majority countries in the middle income range.

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And when we enter into this century,

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you'll find more than half of mankind down here.

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And by 2010, we are actually 80 percent of humans

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who live in countries with about two children per woman.

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(Applause)

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It's a quite amazing development which has happened.

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(Applause)

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And these are countries from United States here,

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with $40,000 per capita,

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France, Russia, Iran,

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Mexico, Turkey, Algeria,

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Indonesia, India

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and all the way to Bangladesh and Vietnam,

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which has less than five percent of the income per person of the United States

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and the same amount of babies per woman.

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I can tell you that the data on the number of children per woman

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is surprisingly good in all countries.

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We get that from the census data.

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It's not one of these statistics which is very doubtful.

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So what we can conclude

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is you don't have to get rich to have few children.

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It has happened across the world.

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And then when we look at religions,

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we can see that the Eastern religions,

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indeed there's not one single country with a majority of that religion

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that has more than three children.

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Whereas with Islam as a majority religion and Christianity,

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you see countries all the way.

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But there's no major difference.

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There's no major difference between these religions.

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There is a difference with income.

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The countries which have many babies per woman here,

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they have quite low income.

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Most of them are in sub-Saharan Africa.

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But there are also countries here

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like Guatemala, like Papua New Guinea,

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like Yemen and Afghanistan.

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Many think that Afghanistan here and Congo,

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which have suffered severe conflicts,

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that they don't have fast population growth.

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It's the other way around.

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In the world today, it's the countries that have the highest mortality rates

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that have the fastest population growth.

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Because the death of a child is compensated by one more child.

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These countries have six children per woman.

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They have a sad death rate of one to two children per woman.

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But 30 years from now, Afghanistan will go from 30 million to 60 million.

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Congo will go from 60 to 120.

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That's where we have the fast population growth.

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And many think that these countries are stagnant, but they are not.

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Let me compare Senegal, a Muslim dominated country,

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with a Christian dominated country, Ghana.

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I take them backwards here to their independence,

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when they were up here in the beginning of the 1960s.

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Just look what they have done.

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It's an amazing improvement,

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from seven children per woman,

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they've gone all the way down to between four and five.

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It's a tremendous improvement.

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So what does it take?

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Well we know quite well what is needed in these countries.

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You need to have children to survive.

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You need to get out of the deepest poverty

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so children are not of importance for work in the family.

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You need to have access to some family planning.

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And you need the fourth factor, which perhaps is the most important factor.

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But let me illustrate that fourth factor

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by looking at Qatar.

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Here we have Qatar today, and there we have Bangladesh today.

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If I take these countries back to the years of their independence,

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which is almost the same year -- '71, '72 --

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it's a quite amazing development which had happened.

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Look at Bangladesh and Qatar.

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With so different incomes, it's almost the same drop

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in number of babies per woman.

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And what is the reason in Qatar?

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Well I do as I always do.

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I went to the statistical authority of Qatar, to their webpage --

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It's a very good webpage. I recommend it --

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and I looked up -- oh yeah, you can have lots of fun here --

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and provided free of charge, I found Qatar's social trends.

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Very interesting. Lots to read.

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I found fertility at birth, and I looked at total fertility rate per woman.

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These are the scholars and experts in the government agency in Qatar,

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and they say the most important factors are:

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"Increased age at first marriage,

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increased educational level of Qatari woman

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and more women integrated in the labor force."

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I couldn't agree more. Science couldn't agree more.

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This is a country that indeed has gone through

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a very, very interesting modernization.

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So what it is, is these four:

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Children should survive, children shouldn't be needed for work,

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women should get education and join the labor force

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and family planning should be accessible.

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Now look again at this.

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The average number of children in the world

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is like in Colombia -- it's 2.4 today.

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There are countries up here which are very poor.

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And that's where family planning, better child survival is needed.

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I strongly recommend Melinda Gates' last TEDTalk.

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And here, down, there are many countries which are less than two children per woman.

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So when I go back now to give you the answer of the quiz,

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it's two.

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We have reached peak child.

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The number of children is not growing any longer in the world.

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We are still debating peak oil,

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but we have definitely reached peak child.

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And the world population will stop growing.

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The United Nations Population Division has said

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it will stop growing at 10 billion.

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But why do they grow if the number of children doesn't grow?

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Well I will show you here.

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I will use these card boxes in which your notebooks came.

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They are quite useful for educational purposes.

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Each card box is one billion people.

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And there are two billion children in the world.

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There are two billion young people between 15 and 30.

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These are rounded numbers.

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Then there is one billion between 30 and 45,

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almost one between 45 and 60.

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And then it's my box.

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This is me: 60-plus.

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We are here on top.

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So what will happen now is what we call "the big fill-up."

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You can see that it's like three billion missing here.

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They are not missing because they've died; they were never born.

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Because before 1980, there were much fewer people born

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than there were during the last 30 years.

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So what will happen now is quite straightforward.

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The old, sadly, we will die.

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The rest of you, you will grow older and you will get two billion children.

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Then the old will die.

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The rest will grow older and get two billion children.

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And then again the old will die and you will get two billion children.

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(Applause)

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This is the great fill-up.

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It's inevitable.

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And can you see that this increase took place

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without life getting longer and without adding children?

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Religion has very little to do with the number of babies per woman.

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All the religions in the world are fully capable

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to maintain their values and adapt to this new world.

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And we will be just 10 billion in this world,

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if the poorest people get out of poverty,

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their children survive, they get access to family planning.

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That is needed.

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But it's inevitable that we will be two to three billion more.

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So when you discuss and when you plan

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for the resources and the energy needed for the future,

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for human beings on this planet,

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you have to plan for 10 billion.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)