Are there 8 billion people in the world

Additionally, multiple nations within Africa are expected to double their populations before fertility rates begin to slow entirely. Global life expectancy has also improved in recent years, increasing the overall population life expectancy at birth to just over 70 years of age. The projected global life expectancy is only expected to continue to improve - reaching nearly 77 years of age by the year Population aging has a massive impact on the ability of the population to maintain what is called a support ratio.

One key finding from is that the majority of the world is going to face considerable growth in the 60 plus age bracket. This will put enormous strain on the younger age groups as the elderly population is becoming so vast without the number of births to maintain a healthy support ratio. Although the number given above seems very precise, it is important to remember that it is just an estimate.

It simply isn't possible to be sure exactly how many people there are on the earth at any one time, and there are conflicting estimates of the global population in Some, including the UN , believe that a population of 7 billion was reached in October Others, including the US Census Bureau and World Bank , believe that the total population of the world reached 7 billion in , around March or April.

Population estimates based on interpolation of data from World Population Prospects. Estimate as of October 23, is:. What will the world look like in ?

According to World Population Prospects, the global population in will be around 9. The United States currently is the third most populated country in the world, but is expected to drop to fourth most populated by Instead, fast-growing Nigeria will become the third most populated country by with its current growth rate of 2.

Vatican City is predicted to continue being the least populated country in the world in It currently has a negative growth rate and is predicted to have people by Trends are pointing towards the most populated countries reaching their capacities and slowing down their population growths.

Meanwhile, less populated countries with developing industries and technologies will see a boom in population growth, which are similar factors that allowed the recent growth of India and China in the last century. The diffusion of health developments and technology will increase the global population overall. Even in industrialized countries, water sources can be contaminated with pathogens, fertilizer and insecticide runoff, heavy metals and fracking effluent.

Though the detailed future of the human species is impossible to predict, basic facts are certain. Water and food are immediate human necessities. Doubling food production would defer the problems of present-day birth rates by at most a few decades.

The drive to reproduce is among the strongest desires, both for couples and for societies. What will happen if present-day birth rates continue? Population stays constant when couples have about two children who survive to reproductive age. In some parts of the developing world today, couples average three to six children. We cannot wish natural resources into existence.

Couples, however, have the freedom to choose how many children to have. As a mathematician, I believe reducing birth rates substantially is our best prospect for raising global standards of living. The cartogram shows where in the world the global population was at home in The Small countries with a high population density increase in size in this cartogram relative to the world maps we are used to — look at Bangladesh, Taiwan, or the Netherlands.

Large countries with a small population shrink in size look for Canada, Mongolia, Australia, or Russia. Our understanding of the world is often shaped by geographical maps. But this tells us nothing about where in the world people live. To understand this, we need to look at population density. Globally the average population density is 25 people per km 2 , but there are very large differences across countries.

If we want to understand how people are distributed across the world, another useful tool is the population cartogram : a geographical presentation of the world where the size of the countries are not drawn according to the distribution of land, but according to the distribution of people.

Here we show how the world looks in this way. When we see a standard map we tend to focus on the largest countries by area. But these are not always where the greatest number of people live. The chart shows the increasing number of people living on our planet over the last 12, years. A mind-boggling change: The world population today that is 1,times the size of what it was 12 millennia ago when the world population was around 4 million — half of the current population of London.

What is striking about this chart is of course that almost all of this growth happened just very recently. Historical demographers estimate that around the year the world population was only around 1 billion people.

This implies that on average the population grew very slowly over this long time from 10, BCE to by 0. After this changed fundamentally: The world population was around 1 billion in the year and increased 7-fold since then. Around billion people have ever lived on our planet. For the long period from the appearance of modern Homo sapiens up to the starting point of this chart in 10, BCE it is estimated that the total world population was often well under one million.

In this period our species was often seriously threatened by extinction. The interactive visualization is here. And you can also download the annual world population data produced by Our World in Data. A number of researchers have published estimates for the total world population over the long run, we have brought these estimates together and you can explore these various sources here. In terms of recent developments, the data from the UN Population Division provides consistent and comparable estimates and projections within and across countries and time, over the last century.

This data starts from estimates for , and is updated periodically to reflect changes in fertility, mortality and international migration. In the section above we looked at the absolute change in the global population over time.

But what about the rate of population growth? The global population growth rate peaked long ago. The chart shows that global population growth reached a peak in and with an annual growth rate of 2. For the last half-century we have lived in a world in which the population growth rate has been declining.

The UN projects that this decline will continue in the coming decades. The answer is no. For population growth to be exponential, the growth rate would have be the same over time e.

In absolute terms, this would result in an exponential increase in the number of people. But, as we see in this chart, since the s the growth rate has been falling. This means the world population is not growing exponentially — for decades now, growth has been more similar to a linear trend. The previous section looked at the growth rate. This visualization here shows the annual global population increase from to today and the projection until the end of this century. The absolute increase of the population per year has peaked in the late s at over 90 million additional people each year.

But it stayed high until recently. From now on the UN expects the annual increase to decline by around 1 million every year. There are other ways of visually representing the change in rate of world population growth. Two examples of this are shown in the charts below. The visualization shows how strongly the growth rate of the world population changed over time. In the past the population grew slowly: it took nearly seven centuries for the population to double from 0.

As the growth rate slowly climbed, the population doubling time fell but remained in the order of centuries into the first half of the 20th century. Things sped up considerably in the middle of the 20th century. The fastest doubling of the world population happened between and a doubling from 2.

This period was marked by a peak population growth of 2. Since then, population growth has been slowing, and along with it the doubling time. In this visualisation we have used the UN projections to show how the doubling time is projected to change until the end of this century. By , it will once again have taken approximately years for the population to double to a predicted This visualization provides an additional perspective on population growth: the number of years it took to add one billion to the global population.

This visualisation shows again how the population growth rate has changed dramatically through time. By the third billion, this period had reduced to 33 years, reduced further to 15 years to reach four.

The period of fastest growth occurred through to , taking only 12 years to increase by one billion for the 5th, 6th and 7th. The world has now surpassed this peak rate of growth, and the period between each billion is expected to continue to rise. Two hundred years ago the world population was just over one billion.

Since then the number of people on the planet grew more than 7-fold to 7. How is the world population distributed across regions and how did it change over this period of rapid global growth? In this visualization we see historical population estimates by region from through to today.

If you want to see the relative distribution across the world regions in more detail you can switch to the relative view. The world region that saw the fastest population growth over last two centuries was North America. The population grew fold. Latin America saw the second largest increase fold. Over the same period the population Europe of increased 3-fold, in Africa fold, and in Asia 6-fold.

The distribution of the world population is expected to change significantly over the 21st century. We discuss projections of population by region here. Over the last century, the world has seen rapid population growth. But how are populations distributed across the world? Which countries have the most people? In the map, we see the estimated population of each country today. By clicking on any country, you can also see how its population has evolved over this period.

You can learn more about future population growth by country here. This series of maps shows the distribution of the world population over time. The first map — in the top-left corner — shows the world population in BC. Global population growth peaked in the early s.

But how has population growth varied across the world? Migration flows are not counted. Both of these measures of population growth across the world are shown in the two charts. You can use the slider underneath each map to look at this change since Clicking on any country will show a line chart of its change over time, with UN projections through to We see that there are some countries today where the natural population growth not including migration is slightly negative: the number of deaths exceed the number of births.

When we move the time slider underneath the map to past years, we see that this is a new phenomenon. Up until the s, there were no countries with a negative natural population growth. Worldwide, population growth is slowing—you can press the play arrow at the bottom of the chart to see the change over time.

Overall, growth rates in most countries have been going down since the s. United Kingdom. South Africa. South Korea. Saudi Arabia. North Korea. Sri Lanka. Burkina Faso. South Sudan. Dominican Republic. Czech Republic Czechia. United Arab Emirates. Papua New Guinea. Sierra Leone. Hong Kong. El Salvador. State of Palestine. Costa Rica. Central African Republic. New Zealand. Bosnia and Herzegovina. Puerto Rico. North Macedonia. Equatorial Guinea.