World population

In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living, and was estimated to have reached 7.7 billion people as of November 2018.

The spread of the large and increasing population of humans has had a profound impact on large areas of the environment and millions of native species worldwide.

India is the second most populated country in the world with nearly a fifth of the world's population.

World population has experienced continuous growth since the end of the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death in 1350, when it was near 370 million.

The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.616 billion in 2018.

World population has experienced continuous growth since the end of the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death in 1350, when it was near 370 million. The Black Death pandemic of the 14th century may have reduced the world's population from an estimated 450 million in 1340 to between 350 and 375 million in 1400; it took 200 years for population figures to recover.

In total, the plague may have reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century.

Africa is the second most populated continent, with around 1.28 billion people, or 16% of the world's population.

billion people as of, it accounts for about 16% of the world's human population.

Asia is the most populous continent, with its 4.54 billion inhabitants accounting for 60% of the world population.

The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population, was the site of many of the first civilizations.

Europe's 742 million people make up 10% of the world's population as of 2018, while the Latin American and Caribbean regions are home to around 651 million (9%).

Europe had a total population of about 741 million (about 11% of the world population).

Six of the Earth's seven continents are permanently inhabited on a large scale.

Over 7.6 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and natural resources for their survival.

According to the OECD/World Bank population statistics between 1990-2008 the world population growth was 27% and 1,423 million persons.

One in four Africans is a Nigerian as of 2006 Presently, Nigeria is the seventh most populous country in the world.

The Black Death pandemic of the 14th century may have reduced the world's population from an estimated 450 million in 1340 to between 350 and 375 million in 1400; it took 200 years for population figures to recover.

Plague of Justinian, from 541 to 750, was the first recorded outbreak of the bubonic plague. It started in Egypt, and reached Constantinople the following spring, killing (according to the Byzantine chronicler Procopius) 10,000 a day at its height, and perhaps 40% of the city's inhabitants. The plague went on to eliminate a quarter to a half of the human population that it struck throughout the known world. It caused Europe's population to drop by around 50% between 550 and 700.

The Han Chinese are the world's largest single ethnic group, constituting over 19% of the global population in 2011.

They constitute the world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the global population.

The Population Division of the United Nations declared the "Day of 7 Billion" to be October 31, 2011.

7 Billion Actions is a worldwide campaign established by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in 2011 to commemorate the world population milestone of 7 billion people.

The population of the Indian subcontinent, which was about 125 million in 1750, increased to 389 million in 1941; today, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are collectively home to about 0 billion people.

which is equivalent to 2.6% of the world population.

is approximately 1.01 males to 1 female. The greater number of men is possibly due to the significant sex imbalances evident in the Indian and Chinese populations. Approximately 26.3% of the global population is aged under 15, while 65.9% is aged 15–64 and 7.9% is aged 65 or over. The median age of the world's population was estimated to be 29.7 years in 2014, and is expected to rise to 37.9 years by 2050.

The sex ratio for the entire world population is 102 males to 100 females (2017 est.).

The highest population growth rates – global population increases above 1.8% per year – occurred between 1955 and 1975, peaking to 2.06% between 1965 and 1970.

World population

According to linear interpolation and extrapolation of UNDESA population estimates, the world population has doubled, or will double, in the years listed in the tables below (with two different starting points).

This article lists estimates of world population, as well as projections of future developments.

During the 2nd millennium, each doubling took roughly half as long as the previous doubling, fitting the hyperbolic growth model mentioned above.

World population has grown without precedent over the millennium, from 310 million in AD 1000 to about 6,000 million in AD 2000.

This feedback can be described as follows: technological advance → increase in the carrying capacity of land for people → demographic growth → more people → more potential inventors → acceleration of technological advance → accelerating growth of the carrying capacity → faster population growth → accelerating growth of the number of potential inventors → faster technological advance → hence, the faster growth of the Earth's carrying capacity for people, and so on. The transition from hyperbolic growth to slower rates of growth is related to the demographic transition.

For the human population, more complex variables such as sanitation and medical care are sometimes considered as part of the necessary establishment.

Some analysts have questioned the sustainability of further world population growth, highlighting the growing pressures on the environment, global food supplies, and energy resources.

There is a growing gap between how many fish are available to be caught and humanity’s desire to catch them, a problem that gets worse as the world population grows.

Food riots subsequently occurred in some countries.

Although some commentators have argued that this food crisis stems from unprecedented global population growth, others point out that world population growth rates have dropped dramatically since the 1980s, and grain availability has continued to outpace population.

In his 1798 work An Essay on the Principle of Population, the British scholar Thomas Malthus incorrectly predicted that continued population growth would exhaust the global food supply by the mid-19th century.

Essentially, for the first time, Malthus examined his own Principle of Population on a region-by-region basis of world population.

A number of factors contributed to this increase, including the lessening of the mortality rate in many countries by improved sanitation and medical advances, and a massive increase in agricultural productivity attributed to the Green Revolution.

The world population has grown by about five billion since the beginning of the Green Revolution and many believe that, without the Revolution, there would have been greater famine and malnutrition.

In 1975, Sebastian von Hoerner proposed a formula for population growth which represented hyperbolic growth with an infinite population in 2025.

Certain mathematical models suggest that until the early 1970s the world population underwent hyperbolic growth (see, e.g., Introduction to Social Macrodynamics by Andrey Korotayev et al.). It was also shown that until the 1970s the hyperbolic growth of the world population was accompanied by quadratic-hyperbolic growth of the world GDP, and developed a number of mathematical models describing both this phenomenon, and the World System withdrawal from the blow-up regime observed in the recent decades.

The world's largest religion is Christianity, whose adherents account for 31% of the global population; Islam is the second-largest religion, accounting for 24.1%, and Hinduism the third, accounting for 13.78%.

With more than 1.1 billion baptized members, the Catholic Church is the largest Christian church and represents over half of all Christians as well as one sixth of the world's population.