Knowledge production and world population dynamics

Three laws of knowledge production explaining the empirically observed hyperbolic growth of world population are formulated. Knowledge and demographic dynamics are developed on the basis of the least action principle to describe deviations from the hyperbolic growth. The efficiency of knowledge production defined as the share of technological knowledge in total knowledge production is introduced. It is proven that a monotonic population growth with reaching a plateau is possible only when efficiency is 1. At a lower efficiency, population reaches a maximum and then declines. The estimated efficiency is currently not more than 0.1. The calculations show that if efficiency remains constant, population will peak at 9 billion in the mid-21st century and then decline to 5 billion or lower over several centuries. To keep population at a level of not less than 90% of maximum, it is necessary to raise efficiency of up to 0.31. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.