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   Social Science / How Many People Are in the World

Nobody on the Earth can give the accurate answer to the question about how many people there are in the world, though a great number of specialists are constantly involved in population census¹.

First, it is impossible to count all people, because some of them do not want to register themselves, and others just cannot do it. Second, every day thousands of babies are born and thousands of people of different ages die. In fact, one birth happens every seven seconds, and one death occurs every eleven seconds. As you can see, the global population grows day by day.

In 1950’s there were approximately 2.5 billion people on the Earth. Many readers of this article must remember the time when the world’s population was about five billion people. In 1990’s it increased to six billion. Several months ago there were already seven billion people. Now, when these lines are being written, this number is close to 7,100,000,000.

So, if someone asks you about how many people are in the world, you can answer that there are more than seven billion of them. The current number can be found on specialized websites.

The United Nations predicts that by 2050 the population of our planet will be about nine billion, and the most part of the growth will occur in poverty-stricken countries of South Asia and Africa.

This table will give you information about the world population by continents (March of 2012).



Should we be afraid of so alarming growth rates? You can think that there is enough place on the Earth for many more people, but do not forget about food and water. The following two facts will certainly make you ponder over the issue:

• It takes about two hectares of land to feed the average human (or ten hectares, if we are talking about an average American). If all the people in the world lived by American standards, we would need three more Earths in order not to die of hunger.
• If there were no oil, the Earth would be able to support no more than one billion people. Scientists say that soon our planet will ran out of almost all oil. Guess, what is going to happen then.

Overpopulation can be a pressing problem for people, and we must start preparing for it right now.

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