The world's population could swell to 12 billion by the end of the century, revealed a new paper published in the journal, Science, on Thursday.

The study is the first to use modern probabilistic methods. It was led by researchers from the United Nations Population Division and several other universities.

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It concluded that instead of the population leveling off by 2050 as early UN studies suggested, the world's population would continue to grow well beyond the end of century.

The study's conservative estimates peg the world's population at 9.6 billion by the first half of the century and 10.9 billion by 2100.

There is, however, an 80 percent chance the actual global population will swell from 9.6 billion to 12.3 billion.

According to The Guardian, these new estimates overturn the consensus held for the last two decades that the world's population will peak by 2050 and level off or begin a steady decline towards 2100.

Previous projections have indicated the population problem is likely to go away, thus taking away the focus on the population issue, said Dr. Adrian Raftery of the University of Washington and the leading member of the UN research team.

He added that the population should again become a major international concern.

Africa is set to become the world's most populous region with a projected growth of up to four billion by 2100 from today's one billion.

There are strong indications this number could balloon to about 5.3 billion, the study claimed. The main reason being that birth rates in Sub-Saharan Africa have not dropped as previous estimates predicted.

Other regions like Asia will not see much change. By 2050, Asian populations will peak at 4.4 billion and start to decline.

In North America, Latin America and Europe, the population is projected to peak at less than a billion by the end of the century.

Tagsworld population, global population, UN report