page_title: World population
section_title: Global demographics
hierarchical_section_title: World population / Global demographics
context_page_description: In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living, and was estimated to have reached 7,800,000,000 people as of March 2020. It took over 200,000 years of human history for the world's population to reach 1 billion, and only 200 years more to reach 7 billion.
  The world population has experienced continuous growth following the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the end of the Black Death in 1350, when it was near 370 million.
  The highest global population growth rates, with increases of over 1.8% per year, occurred between 1955 and 1975 – peaking to 2.1% between 1965 and 1970. The growth rate declined to 1.2% between 2010 and 2015 and is projected to decline further in the course of the 21st century. However, the global population is still increasing and is projected to reach about 10 billion in 2050 and more than 11 billion in 2100.
  Total annual births were highest in the late 1980s at about 139 million, and as of 2011 were expected to remain essentially constant at a level of 135 million, while deaths numbered 56 million per year and were expected to increase to 80 million per year by 2040.
context_section_description: As of 2012, the global sex ratio 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.
  According to the World Health Organization, the global average life expectancy is 71.4 years as of 2015, with women living an average of 74 years and men approximately 69 years. In 2010, the global fertility rate was estimated at 2.52 children per woman. In June 2012, British researchers calculated the total weight of Earth's human population as approximately 287 million tonnes, with the average person weighing around 62 kilograms (137 lb).
  The CIA estimated nominal 2013 gross world product at US$74.31 trillion, giving an annual global per capita figure of around US$10,500. Around 1.29 billion people (18.4% of the world population) live in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than US$1.25 per day; approximately 870 million people (12.3%) are undernourished. 83% of the world's over-15s are considered literate. In June 2014, there were around 3.03 billion global Internet users, constituting 42.3% of the world population.
  The Han Chinese are the world's largest single ethnic group, constituting over 19% of the global population in 2011. The world's most-spoken first languages are Mandarin Chinese (spoken by 12.4% of the world's population), Spanish (4.9%), English (4.8%), Arabic (3.3%) and Hindi (2.7%). The world's largest religion is Christianity, whose adherents account for 31.4% of the global population; Islam is the second-largest religion, accounting for 24.1%, and Hinduism the third, accounting for 13.8%. In 2005, around 16% of the global population were reported to be non-religious.
caption:   >80   77.5–80   75–77.5   72.5–75   70–72.5    67.5–70   65–67.5   60–65   55–60   50–55   2015 map showing average life expectancy by country in years. In 2015, the World Health Organization estimated the average global life expectancy as 71.4 years.[76]