How many people are there in the world?
There is no completely accurate way of knowing how many people there are on planet Earth.However, it is possible to make estimates based on census figures and rates of growth in various countries. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the total population at 6,451,058,790 in 2005. Increasing at a rate of 74,629,207 people per year, world population is projected to hit 7 billion in July 2012.
World population
The world population is the number of humans on the planet, currently estimated to be 6.91658 billion by the United States Census Bureau.
Births and deaths
Annual births are estimated at 140 million while deaths number 57 million per year with the population expected to reach as much as 10.5 billion in the year 2050. It is estimated that the population of the world reached one billion in 1804, two billion in 1927, three billion in 1960, four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987, and six billion in 1999.
Future projections
It is projected to reach seven billion in 2012, and eight billion by 2030. By 2050, the world's population is currently projected to reach around nine billion.
Population distribution
Asia
The population of Asia accounts for over 60% of the World's population, with China and India together containing 37% of the world’s population.
Other countries/continents
Africa contains 15% of the world's people, Europe 11%, and South America 9%. While Northern America is home to 5%, Oceania, however, is less than 1%.
Ratings
The People’s Republic of China is the most populated country with 1.3 billion people. This represents 19.4% of the total World population, followed by India with 1.2 billion or 17% of the total, and then USA with 311,296,000 or 4.5% . The most populated city is Tokyo with 37.7 million inhabitants, then Mexico City with 21.1 million and then Sao Paulo's 19.6 million residents.
Estimations in 1995
In 1995, the Population Reference Bureau estimated that the number of people who have ever lived was approximately 106 billion. Although these evaluations are based on best guesses of the early population, the margin of error for the total number of humans who have ever lived is in the tens of billions of people.
The future
Future predictions of population growth are difficult to predict accurately, due to varying birth and death rates and wars, natural disasters, disease and advances in medicine. The current expansion of the population and the increase in usage of the earth's resources is linked to many environmental problems such as destruction of the forests, global warming and pollution as well as the rapid decline of the water supplies, agricultural land and natural resources.
