U.N. Reports 7 Billion Humans, but Others Don’t Count on It - The New York Times The New York Times World |U.N. Says 7 Billion Now Share the World Search Continue reading the main story Photo Was this baby born Monday in New Delhi the seven billionth human? Statistically possible, say United Nations demographers. India has over one billion of the world's roughly seven billion people. Credit Lynsey Addario for The New York Times Feeling claustrophobic? You’re not alone. According to United Nations demographers, 6,999,999,999 other Earthlings potentially felt the same way on Monday when the world’s population topped seven billion. But if you’d rather go by the United States Census Bureau’s projections , you’ve got some breathing room. The bureau estimates that even with the world’s population increasing by 215,120 a day, it won’t reach seven billion for about four months. How do the dueling demographic experts reconcile a difference, as of Monday, of 28 million, which is more than all the people in Saudi Arabia? They don’t.

“No one can know the exact number of people on the globe,” Gerhard Heilig, chief of the population estimates and projections section of the United Nations Population Division, acknowledges. Even the best individual government censuses have a margin of error of at least 1 percent, he said, which would translate in the global aggregation to “a window of uncertainty of six months before or six months after Oct. 31.” An error margin of even as little as 2 percent would mean that Monday’s estimate of seven billion actually was 56 million off (which is more people than were counted in South Africa). The Census Bureau’s global population clock gives the pretense of greater precision. It projects that about 255 people are born every minute (about 367,000 a day) while about 106 die (roughly 153,000 a day). At that rate, the world’s natural increase would be about 78.5 million a year, or well more than the entire population of France, Britain or Thailand. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “We don’t use a population clock,” said Mr. Heilig.

“It’s a bit silly.” The two agencies begin with censuses and other vital statistics from more than 228 countries and other political entities, then project births and deaths, estimate the migration of refugees and project mortality rates from AIDS and other epidemics. Differences in interpreting the individual figures and how they fit together account for the overall disparities. Generally, the bureau’s projections lag behind those of the United Nations by up to a year (the population will reach eight billion in either 2026 or 2025, they figure, respectively). Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy “Realistically, the uncertainty is at least 2 percent and that’s for the 75 percent of the world for which we have recent official counts or estimates,” Joel E. Cohen, head of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University and Columbia University, said Monday. “Now, world population is estimated to be growing by about 1.1 percent per year. Hence each percent uncertainty in total count translates into almost one year uncertainty in the date by which the population grows past a given threshold.

Bottom line: world population passes seven billion sometime in the last year or two or the next year or two, most likely.” Professor Cohen added, though, “Today’s as good a day as any to be aware of the problems of the world’s population and to begin to take action to solve them.” Daniel Goodkind, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, said the different estimates were still “remarkably close.” “Although birthrates and death rates have both declined sharply since the 1960s,” he said, “death rates have declined more rapidly than birthrates. The cumulative effect of the excess of births over deaths in recent decades has led to a successive attainment of billion-person milestones every 12 or 13 years.” Dr. Goodkind said the bureau revised its projections on a continuing basis, while the United Nations made revisions every two years. Even so, the Census Bureau projects that the world population will hit seven billion next March 12 — well within the United Nations’ six-month, 1 percent window of uncertainty. So who’s right? “We’re not exactly in sync, but we’re pretty close,” Dr. Goodkind said.

“I’m not a betting man.” A version of this article appears in print on November 1, 2011, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: U.N. Says 7 Billion Now Share The World. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe World Population: 7 Billion - Photos - The Big Picture - Boston.com World Population: 7 Billion On October 31, 2011, the United Nations is expected to announce a projected world population figure of 7 billion. This global milestone presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the planet. While more people are living longer and healthier lives, says the U.N., gaps between rich and poor are widening and more people than ever are vulnerable to food insecurity and water shortages. Because censuses are infrequent and incomplete, no one knows the precise date that we will hit the 7 billion mark - the Census Bureau puts it somewhere next March. In the last 50 years, humanity has more than doubled. What could the next decade mean for our numbers and the planet? In this post, we focus on births, but we'll be back with population-related content including it's affect on the environment and our food supply.

-- Paula Nelson ( 47 photos total ) A baby, minutes after he was born inside the pediatric unit at hospital Escuela in Tegucigalpa, Oct. 21, 2011. According to Honduras' health authorities, about 220,000 babies are born in Honduras each year. The cost of having a baby delivered at the public hospital is $10. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters) World population hits 7 billion on Oct. 31, or thereabouts - latimes YOU ARE HERE: LAT Home → Collections → 72h World population hits 7 billion on Oct. 31, or thereabouts Though it's impossible to say exactly when it will happen, demographers have chosen the date to mark the milestone. Humanity remains on a steep growth curve. October 31, 2011 |By Kenneth R. Weiss, Los Angeles Times Commuters exit suburban trains in Mumbai, India, where the rail network… (Rafiq Maqbool, Associated…) It took only a dozen years for humanity to add another billion people to the planet, reaching the milestone of 7 billion Monday — give or take a few months.

Demographers at the United Nations Population Division set Oct. 31, 2011, as the "symbolic" date for hitting 7 billion, while acknowledging that it's impossible to know for sure the specific time or day. Using slightly different calculations, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates the 7-billion threshold will not be reached until March. Under any methodology, demographers agree that humanity remains on a steep growth curve, which is likely to keep climbing through the rest of this century. The U.N.'s best estimate is that population will march past 9.3 billion by 2050 and exceed 10.1 billion by the end of the century. It could be far more, if birthrates do not continue to drop as they have in the last half-century. Nearly all the projected growth this century is expected to occur in developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, while the combined populations in Europe, North America and other wealthy industrialized nations will remain relatively flat. Some countries, such as Germany, Russia and Japan, are poised to edge downward, their loss made up mostly by ongoing growth in the United States, which is bolstered by waves of immigrants.

The buildup to Monday's milestone has briefly turned up the flame on long-simmering debates about growth on a finite planet: Whether a growing population or growing consumption remains the biggest environmental challenge, how best to help lift a billion people out of poverty and misery, whether governments should provide contraception for those who cannot afford it. The new leader of the United Nations Population Fund, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, a Nigerian obstetrician-gynecologist, stepped gingerly into the fray. His agency remains a favorite punching bag of antiabortion activists in the United States for its role in supporting family planning clinics in developing countries. "Instead of asking questions like, 'Are we too many?' we should instead be asking, 'What can I do to make our world better?' " wrote Osotimehin in the annual State of the World Population report. The report chronicles disparities between rich nations and poor ones. Poor countries continue to have low education levels and startlingly high rates of teenage pregnancy and maternal and child deaths due to complications from childbirth. "In many parts of the developing world, where population growth is outpacing economic growth, the need for reproductive health services, especially family planning, remains great," Osotimehin concluded.

Some have used the occasion to celebrate the unrivaled success of the human species. Population grows when births exceed deaths. The 7-billion mark was reached because people are living longer and the number of infant deaths has dropped, because of a more secure food supply and because of advances in sanitation and medicine. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will hold a news conference Monday to mark the date and talk about challenges ahead, particularly how to reduce poverty, invest in the world's 1.8 billion youth and help countries develop in a sustainable way. In 1999, his predecessor, Kofi Annan, designated a boy born to refugee parents in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, as Baby 6 Billion. He had been plucked from the hundreds of thousands of babies born that day to put a face on global population growth. Adnan Mevic, now 12, has become something of a celebrity. None of the estimated 382,000 babies born Monday will have such an honor. There is no word yet on how the United Nations will handle the next milestone, when the globe's population hits 8 billion — about 14 years from now.

World population projected to hit 7 billion on Oct. 31 | Grist World population projected to hit 7 billion on Oct. 31 Tweet Image: National Geographic Today, the United Nations announced that the world’s population will reach an historic 7 billion people on Oct. 31, 2011. World population hit 1 billion people in 1804. It took 123 years to add the next billion, but less than a century to cruise past the next four billion — from 2 billion people in 1927 to 6 billion people in 1999. The U.N.’s Population Division also projected that the world will reach just over 10 billion by 2100, a number based on many uncertain assumptions about the future. Demographic projections are often mistaken for predictions, but they only show us what would happen if today’s demographic trends follow specific paths. And we all know that change is inevitable. We also know that if millions of women continue to have problems accessing contraception, and lack economic and educational opportunities, these numbers could go up even more.

The U.N.’s projections — presented in the 2010 revision of World Population Prospects — offer only a few scenarios and are based on potential changes in policies, services, and behaviors. They do not account for all the realities we see on the ground, where in some countries, women are not getting the family-planning services they want. The decisions and policies we make today will ultimately determine whether our numbers climb to anywhere from 8 billion to 11 billion by mid-century. The U.N. projections show some striking changes in countries’ projected populations for 2050. Forty countries’ populations are projected to at least double in the next 40 years, including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen. Nigeria’s population for 2050 is projected to jump by 150 percent, from 158 million to 390 million. Many of these increases in projected population, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, are due to persistently high fertility rates. The projections assume that the average number of children per woman will begin falling in such countries, but this is often a rosy assumption.

For example, Nigeria’s fertility rate for 2010-2015 was previously projected to be 4.8 children per woman, but has now been revised to 5.4. This difference contributes to a much larger total population by 2050. Still, the assumptions built into the projections for many high-fertility countries would require major increases in the use of family planning. Nigeria’s fertility rate, measured [PDF] at almost six children per woman in 2008, is projected to fall to slightly over three children by 2050. This is highly unlikely if current trends continue, because only 10 percent of married women in Nigeria use effective contraception, while 20 percent want to avoid pregnancy but aren’t using family-planning services. Until their health-care needs and rights are fulfilled, the demographic future the U.N. has projected for Africa’s largest nation seems too optimistic. U.N. population projections — will we follow the high, medium, or low path?The projections may also be optimistic for countries at the opposite extreme, with very low fertility rates. Fertility rates in Japan, Korea, and Russia have declined significantly since the late 1980s.

Their rates are now 1.4 children or less, which would lead to significant population decline. The U.N. projects that their rates will rise by at least 30 percent by 2050, but that may be based on faulty assumptions. Some researchers believe these very low fertility rates are linked to gender inequities and difficulty balancing work and family. If societies don’t become more woman-friendly and family-friendly, these fertility rates may not rise. As it turns out, a lack of opportunities for women may be the driving force behind both very high and very low fertility rates. The surprising assumptions underlying some countries’ fertility rates reflect one of the key features of the population projections. In the past, the projections were constructed using a technique that, in the U.N. medium fertility projection, assumed all countries would move toward a universal fertility rate of 1.85 children per woman. High and low fertility projections only varied from the medium by 0.5 children per woman in either direction. This universal rate was highly improbable among countries at the demographic extremes, and the U.N. has now recognized that its past projections did not allow for unpredictable demographic transitions within individual countries. Uganda is a dramatic example of this.

The previous revision of the U.N.’s World Population Prospects showed that the country’s fertility rate had fallen by about half a child per woman — less than 8 percent-between 1950 and 2010. Yet that report projected that the country’s fertility rate would decline by 60 percent, to less than three children per woman, by 2050. Starting with today’s new set of projections, the U.N. has shifted to a “probabilistic” model for its medium-fertility scenario. This allows the pace of each country’s fertility decline to be calculated individually, based on new estimates of historic fertility rates, allowing for much more variance across countries. The new method also assumes that fertility rates will eventually balance out around 2.1 children per woman, a level where couples would “replace” themselves in the population, rather than 1.85. And the projections now extend out to 2100, and incorporate life expectancies ranging as high as 90+ years. These U.N. changes add greater nuance to population projections, but they are still far from a crystal ball.

Policymakers must take the next step and invest in family planning and education for the projections to ever meet reality. —– World Population - 2016 News and Scientific Articles on Live Science News Tech Health Planet Earth Space Strange News Animals History Human Nature World Population As of Oct. 31, 2011, there were 7 billion people on Earth, according to the United Nations. This latest milestone was part of the rapid rise in Earth's population over the course of the 20th century — there were just 2.6 billion people in 1950 and 5 billion people in 1987. The population explosion has its roots in the decrease in mortality (because of a better understanding of disease and new treatments) that began in the 19th century and continued through the 20th, moving from the developed world into the developing world, to some extent. In June 2013, the United Nations released a new report on estimates of population rise through the 21st century.

It found through a new statistical analysis that the world's population could hit 11 billion by 2100, faster than it had previously predicted, in part because birthrates in Africa were not declining as quickly as predicted. The rapid rise in the human population presents a set of challenges in terms of straining Earth's resources, from putting pressure on other species, to providing enough water, food and basic sanitation to all populations. Filter by Type Pope's Climate Call Misses Population Problem, Scientists Say September 24, 2015 | Article Pope Francis did the world a service with his encyclical addressing climate change, but he failed to address population growth, scientists say. Are You the 5 Percent? Small Minority Have No Health Problems June 08, 2015 | Article If you're in perfect health, you're in the minority: Less than 5 percent of people worldwide had no health problems in 2013, a new study finds. US Birth Rate Hits All-Time Low December 04, 2014 | Article The U.S.

birth rate reached an all-time low in 2013, as the number of babies born in the country declined for the sixth straight year since the peak in 2007, a new report finds. Why Iran May Ban Vasectomies August 15, 2014 | Article Iran's parliament has recently voted to ban permanent forms of birth control, such as vasectomy, in a bid to improve country's declining birth rate. Experts find the move a bad policy, and borderline unethical. New Baby Boom? How Global Birthrates Could Bounce Back January 28, 2014 | Article Globally, the number of births per woman is dropping. But the decline in fertility rates may not persist in the long run, new research suggests. It's possible that birth rates could come bouncing back. Chicken Labor Camps In Danger? Plant-Based Egg Substitute In The Wings | Video December 23, 2013 | Video Startup Hampton Creek Foods has been developing plant-based substitutes for eggs. The company's founder Joshua Tetric talks about how egg production is unsustainable with Earth's growing population and how his company is attacking the problem.

What 11 Billion People Mean for Space Travel November 27, 2013 | Article The soaring global population could accelerate the pace of climate change, strain resources and threaten biodiversity around the globe. But it may also help humanity get off the planet and establish its first footholds in the final frontier. What 11 Billion People Mean for Sanitation November 26, 2013 | Article As the global population creeps upward, the world faces the major challenge of dealing with all the human and material waste that this population will produce. But there's a window of opportunity to avert a crisis, if the world acts now. What 11 Billion People Mean for Disease Outbreaks November 25, 2013 | Article With 11 billion people expected to live on Earth by 2100, the spread of infectious disease is a major concern, and scientists are working to spot the next pandemic before it starts. What 11 Billion People Mean for Climate Change November 21, 2013 | Article A recent report from the United Nations projects global population could hit 11 billion people by the year 2100. How might this rapid growth affect climate change?

As World’s Population Booms, Will Its Resources Be Enough for Us? As World’s Population Booms, Will Its Resources Be Enough for Us? New projections of escalating growth increase the tension between humanity’s expanding needs and what the planet can provide. View Images A crowded street in Calcutta, India, reflects the looming threat of overpopulation, which will further strain resources already in limited supply. Photograph by Randy Olson, National Geographic Creative There are more than 7 billion people on Earth now, and roughly one in eight of us doesn't have enough to eat. The question of how many people the Earth can support is a long-standing one that becomes more intense as the world's population—and our use of natural resources—keeps booming. Related Content Will America's Turtles Be Eaten Into Extinction? This week, two conflicting projections of the world's future population were released. As National Geographic's Rob Kunzig writes here , a new United Nations and University of Washington study in the journal Science says it's highly likely we'll see 9.6 billion Earthlings by 2050, and up to 11 billion or more by 2100.

These researchers used a new "probabalistic" statistical method that establishes a specific range of uncertainty around their results. Another study in the journal Global Environmental Change projects that the global population will peak at 9.4 billion later this century and fall below 9 billion by 2100, based on a survey of population experts. Who is right? We'll know in a hundred years. Population debates like this are why, in 2011, National Geographic published a series called "7 Billion" on world population , its trends, implications, and future. After years of examining global environmental issues such as climate change , energy , food supply , and freshwater , we thought the time was ripe for a deep discussion of people and how we are connected to all these other issues—issues that are getting increased attention today, amid the new population projections. After all, how many of us there are, how many children we have, how long we live, and where and how we live affect virtually every aspect of the planet upon which we rely to survive: the land, oceans, fisheries, forests, wildlife, grasslands, rivers and lakes, groundwater, air quality, atmosphere, weather, and climate.

World population passed 7 billion on October 31, 2011, according to the United Nations . Just who the 7 billionth person was and where he or she was born remain a mystery ; there is no actual cadre of census takers who go house to house in every country, counting people.Instead, population estimates are made by most national governments and international organizations such as the UN. These estimates are based on assumptions about existing population size and expectations of fertility, mortality, and migration in a geographic area. We've been on a big growth spurt during the past century or so. In 1900, demographers had the world's population at 1.6 billion, in 1950 it was about 2.5 billion, by 2000 it was more than 6 billion. Now, there are about 7.2 billion of us. In recent years we've been adding about a billion people every 12 or 13 years or so. Precisely how many of us are here right now is also a matter of debate, depending on whom you consult: The United Nations offers a range of current population figures and trends, the U.S.

Census Bureau has its own estimate, and the Population Reference Bureau also tracks us. The new UN study out this week projects that the world's population growth may not stop any time soon. That is a reversal from estimates done five years ago, when demographers—people who study population trends—were projecting that by 2045, world population likely would reach about 9 billion and begin to level off soon after. But now, the UN researchers who published these new projections in the journal Science say that a flattening of population growth is not going to happen soon without rapid fertility declines—or a reduction in the number of children per mother—in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa that are still experiencing rapid population growth. As Rob Kunzig wrote for National Geographic, the new study estimates that "there's an 80 percent chance . . . that the actual number of people in 2100 will be somewhere between 9.6 and 12.3 billion." A History of Debates Over Population In a famous 1798 essay, the Reverend Thomas Malthus proposed that human population would grow more rapidly than our ability to grow food, and that eventually we would starve.

He asserted that the population would grow geometrically—1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32—and that food production would increase only arithmetically—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. So food production would not keep up with our expanding appetites. You might imagine Malthus' scenario on geometric population growth as being like compound interest : A couple have two children and those children each produce two children. Those four children produce two children each tomake eight, and those eight children each have their own two kids, leaving 16 kids in that generation. But worldwide, the current median fertility rate is about 2.5, (or five children between two couples) so, like compound interest, the population numbers can rise even faster. Even though more than 800 million people worldwide don’t have enough to eat now , the mass starvation Mathus envisioned hasn't happened. This is primarily because advances in agriculture—including improved plant breeding and the use of chemical fertilizers —have kept global harvests increasing fast enough to mostly keep up with demand. Still, researchers such as Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Ehrlich continue to worry that Malthus eventually might be right.

Ehrlich, a Stanford University population biologist, wrote a 1968 bestseller called The Population Bomb, which warned of mass starvation in the 1970s and 1980s because of overpopulation. Even though he drastically missing that forecast, he continues to argue that humanity is heading for calamity . Ehrlich says the key issue now is not just the number of people on Earth, but a dramatic rise in our recent consumption of natural resources, which Elizabeth Kolbert explored in 2011 in an article called "The Anthropocene — The Age of Man." As part of this human-dominated era, the past half century also has been referred to as a period of "Great Acceleration" by Will Steffen at International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. Besides a nearly tripling of human population since the end of World War II, our presence has been marked by a dramatic increase in human activity—the damming of rivers, soaring water use, expansion of cropland, increased use of irrigation and fertilizers, a loss of forests, and more motor vehicles.

There also has been a sharp rise in the use of coal, oil, and gas, and a rapid increase in the atmosphere of methane and carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases that result from changes in land use and the burning of such fuels. View Images *GDP figures are given in constant 1990 international dollars. JOHN TOMANIO, NGM Staff. ART: BRYAN CHRISTIE. Sources: UNITED NATIONS; Angus Maddison, “Statistics on World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1-2008 AD,” University of Groningen; World Bank; World Intellectual Property Organization Measuring Our Rising Impact As a result of this massive expansion of our presence on Earth, scientists Ehrlich, John Holdren, and Barry Commoner in the early 1970s devised a formula to measure our rising impact, called IPAT, in which (I)mpact equals (P)opulation multiplied by (A)ffluence multiplied by (T)echnology. The IPAT formula, they said, can help us realize that our cumulative impact on the planet is not just in population numbers, but also in the increasing amount of natural resources each person uses.

The graphic above, which visualizes IPAT, shows that the rise in our cumulative impact since 1950—rising population combined with our expanding demand for resources—has been profound. IPAT is a useful reminder that population, consumption, and technology all help shape our environmental impact, but it shouldn’t be taken too literally. University of California ecologist John Harte has said that IPAT ". . . conveys the notion that population is a linear multiplier. . . . In reality, population plays a much more dynamic and complex role in shaping environmental quality." One of our biggest impacts is agriculture. Whether we can grow enough food sustainably for an expanding world population also presents an urgent challenge, and this becomes only more so in light of these new population projections. Where will food for an additional 2 to 3 billion people come from when we are already barely keeping up with 7 billion? Such questions underpin a 2014 National Geographic series on the future of food .

As climate change damages crop yields and extreme weather disrupts harvests , growing enough food for our expanding population has become what The 2014 World Food Prize Symposium calls " the greatest challenge in human history ." Population's Structure: Fertility, Mortality and Migration View Images Immigrant women at a Sikh festival in Spain. Research suggests that the more education a woman receives, the fewer children she is likely to have. Photograph by Randy Olson, National Geographic Creative Population is not just about numbers of people. Demographers typically focus on three dimensions— fertility, mortality, and migration —when examining population trends. Fertility examines how many children a woman bears in her lifetime, mortality looks at how long we live, and migration focuses on where we live and move. Each of these population qualities influences the nature of our presence and impact across the planet. The newly reported higher world population projections result from continuing high fertility in sub-Saharan Africa . The median number of children per woman in the region remains at 4.6, well above both the global mean of 2.5 and the replacement level of 2.1.

Since 1970, a global decline in fertility— from about 5 children per woman to about 2.5 —has occurred across most of the world: Fewer babies have been born, family size has shrunk, and population growth has slowed. In the United States, fertility is now slightly below replacement level . Reducing fertility is essential if future population growth is to be reined in. Cynthia Gorney wrote about the dramatic story of declining Brazilian fertility as part of National Geographic's 7 Billion series. Average family size dropped from 6.3 children to 1.9 children per woman over two generations in Brazil, the result of improving education for girls, more career opportunities, and the increased availability of contraception. Mortality —or birth rates versus death rates—and migration (where we live and move) also affect the structure of population. Living longer can cause a region’s population to increase even if birth rates remain constant. Youthful nations in the Middle East and Africa, where there are more young people than old, struggle to provide sufficient land, food, water, housing, education, and employment for young people.

Besides the search for a life with more opportunity elsewhere, migration also is driven by the need to escape political disruption or declining environmental conditions such as chronic drought and food shortages. A paradox of lower fertility and reduced population growth rates is that as education and affluence improves, consumption of natural resources increases per person . In other words, (as illustrated in the IPAT graphic here) as we get richer, each of us consumes more natural resources and energy, typically carbon-based fuels such as coal, oil, and gas. This can be seen in consumption patterns that include higher protein foods such as meat and dairy, more consumer goods, bigger houses, more vehicles, and more air travel. When it comes to natural resources, studies indicate we are living beyond our means. An ongoing Global Footprint Network study says we now use the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use, and to absorb our waste. A study by the Stockholm Resilience Institute has identified a set of "nine planetary boundaries" for conditions in which we could live and thrive for generations, but it shows that we already have exceeded the institute's boundaries for biodiversity loss, nitrogen pollution, and climate change . Those of us reading this article are among an elite crowd of Earthlings.

We have reliable electricity, access to Internet-connected computers and phones, and time available to contemplate these issues. About one-fifth of those on Earth still don't have have access to reliable electricity . So as we debate population, things we take for granted—reliable lighting and cooking facilities, for example—remain beyond the reach of about 1.3 billion or more people. Lifting people from the darkness of energy poverty could help improve lives. View Images Children read the Koran using flashlights in Wantugu, Ghana. Eliminating energy poverty could help education rates, which by extension could help rein in overpopulation. Photograph by Peter DiCampo As World Bank Vice President Rachel Kyte told Marianne Lavelle of National Geographic last year, "It is energy that lights the lamp that lets you do your homework, that keeps the heat on in a hospital, that lights the small businesses where most people work. Without energy, there is no economic growth, there is no dynamism, and there is no opportunity." Improved education, especially for girls , is cited as a key driver of declining family size. Having light at night can become a gateway to better education for millions of young people and the realization that opportunities and choices besides bearing many children can await.

So when we debate population, it's important to also discuss the impact—the how we live—of the population equation. While new projections of even higher world population in the decades ahead are cause for concern, we should be equally concerned about—and be willing to address—the increasing effects of resource consumption and its waste. Dennis Dimick led creation of the 2011 National Geographic series "7 Billion," and is National Geographic's executive editor for the Environment. You can follow him on Twitter, Instagram , and flickr. Related Reading and Resources Human Population Reaches 7 Billion--How Did This Happen and Can It Go On? - Scientific American Sustainability Human Population Reaches 7 Billion--How Did This Happen and Can It Go On? A mere 12 years after surmounting six billion, the world's population will reach seven billion, according to the U.N. But that rate seems to be slowing By David Biello on October 28, 2011 Advertisement | Report Ad On October 31, 2011, a particularly special person will be born—the seven billionth human alive, according to United Nations demographers.

He or she could be delivered by a starving mother in the growing wastelands of Somalia, a failed-state gripped by famine and war. The best odds are that the child will be born in India, which has the highest rate of births per minute in the world. She may even be an American girl, heiress to a complex legacy that is in no small part responsible for the fact that, for better or worse, people are shaping the destiny of the planet that engendered humanity. Regardless, the seven billionth person raises the question: How much is too much ? "Can Earth support seven billion or nine billion or 10 billion people in a good life for a long time?" asked demographer Joel Cohen of Columbia University's Earth Institute at its human population event on October 17. "The addition of four billion people in five decades has no precedent. That is an exceptional event and will probably never be repeated within human history." There were only one billion people on the planet as recently as the turn of the 19th century and only a few hundred thousand just 10,000 years ago.

In fact, there may have been as few as 15,000 of us, roughly 70,000 years ago. With both more people and longer lifetimes, humanity's absolute numbers continue to rise, even though the number of children per women has halved since 1950. In fact, the absolute growth rate in human population peaked at 2.1 percent between 1965 and 1970, according to Cohen. "We're now down to 1.1 percent per year," he said, although that still means roughly 150 babies born every minute. Consumers The world's richest 500 million people produce half the world's carbon dioxide emissions—the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change—whereas the poorest three billion emit just seven percent. The average American—one of 312.5 million—uses up some 88 kilograms of stuff daily: food, water, plastics, metals and other material goods.

Americans consume a full 25 percent of the world's energy despite representing just 5 percent of global population, and the band of industrialized nations combine to waste 222 million metric tons of food per year , according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. "Population doubled while the economy grew by 15 times, cars by 16 times and fertilizer-use by sixfold," said geographer Ruth DeFries of Columbia at the same event. "There is no end in sight for that increase in consumption ," particularly as it is emulated by people around the globe. All this consumption requires a host of natural resources, from vast copper mines scarring the landscape to ever more land for food. More acreage was converted to growing crops between 1950 and 1980, than from 1700 to 1850, and arable land is one of nine " planetary boundaries " that scientists have identified—limits past which humanity should fear to tread. The others include: climate change, biodiversity loss, nutrient cycles, ocean acidification and freshwater use, among others. "Slowing population growth does not solve all the problems but it makes it easier by slowing demands," Cohen said.

Ultimately, the limiting factor may come down to what the late economist Julian Simon called the "master resource": energy . Simply put, is there enough energy that can be harnessed to provide a rewarding lifestyle to however many billion of us inhabit the planet? Those limits are already being pushed, as can be seen in the large increases in the price of everything from oil to food over the last decade. "The state of New Jersey's per capita energy consumption exceeds the photosynthetic productivity of the area even if it were pristine," noted physicist Klaus Lackner, director of the Earth Institute's Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at the Columbia event. Simply put, without fossil fuels, the New Jerseyans alive today could not survive on the bounty of the Garden State alone. That problem may spread as the 21st century moves forward, thanks to human population growth. Energy is the key to modern economies, but it may be participation in modern economies that proves key to limiting human population. "If girls and women have the opportunity to generate income and jobs, you see a rapid decline in fertility," DeFries noted.

Already, increased opportunity has driven fertility declines in many countries of the world or, as journalist Fred Pearce puts it in his book The Coming Population Crash (2010, Beacon Press): "The population bomb is being diffused. By women. Because they want to." But it is not just economic opportunity; education also is key to restraining future birth rates. "Almost universally, women with higher levels of education have fewer children," wrote demographers in a paper in Science on July 29 . According to Cohen, it would cost at most $70 billion to provide universal education to everyone young person on Earth right now. Fertility rates are not declining everywhere: Indonesia's birth rate has stopped declining and started climbing. A subset of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Niger with the current top fertility rate of more than seven children per woman, still have rates above four children per woman. Even the U.S. has seen its fertility rate increase above two children per woman in recent years. The biggest impact a U.S. citizen can have on global environment problems, such as climate change, is having fewer children .

Every American child born will add almost 10,000 metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere over his or her lifetime under current conditions. For comparison, that's five times more than a Chinese child and 160 times more than a Bangladeshi baby. According to researchers at Oregon State University, having one fewer child reduces a U.S. family's greenhouse gas impact 20 times more than driving a Toyota Prius, using Energy Star appliances and other lifestyle choices combined. Demographic dividend For the next few decades at least, the world as a whole will have more working age people than dependents (children and the old)—a global " demographic dividend " of the kind that has allowed rapid economic growth in the past. The ultimate question of the 21st century may be, as Cohen put it: "Is economic development the best contraceptive or is voluntary contraception the best [economic] development?" As for how many people the planet can sustain, the first such estimate came from microbiologist Anton van Leeuwenhoek who calculated roughly 13.4 billion people back in 1679, based on the population density of his native Holland and its size relative to the rest of the globe.

More modern guesses are hardly more scientific, ranging from one billion to one trillion. "These estimates are political numbers, intended to persuade people, one way or another: either that too many humans are already on Earth or that there is no problem with continuing rapid population growth," Cohen wrote in his book How Many People Can the Earth Support? (W. W. Norton, 1996) As it is, the world produces enough food to feed everyone alive today—and more. Globally, farms produce enough calories to support a population of roughly 11 billion people fed 2,000 calories per day. That's because human ingenuity—such as the modern breeding of staple crops, such as wheat, for higher yields, known as the Green Revolution—has outpaced, so far, environmental limits. Yet, there are still more than a billion hungry people on the planet today. "The number of people living on $2 per day doubled in the 20th century," Cohen noted at the Columbia event.

"Hunger is a choice." 7 billion and counting… On October 12, 1999, Adnan Mevic was born in Sarajevo—the anointed six billionth person on the planet and one of 80 million children born that year. Twelve years later one of the 78 million children born this year is the seven billionth person. It may take 14 years to reach eight billion and it may take even longer to reach nine billion. But we're still not past "peak people," which could top out at 10.1 billion, according to U.N. demographers. After all, in the 1990s, U.N. demographers forecast a peak at 7.8 billion, a milestone we'll blow past before 2030 most likely. "A difference of one child per woman per lifetime between now and 2050 means a difference of 2.5 billion people," Cohen noted.

As it stands, the people of the planet seem to be leaning toward a peak in population followed by a gradual decline—a 21st-century world of the aged, which can be seen today in Japan or parts of Europe—but there is still a good chance of continued growth in our numbers. The U.N. had more recently predicted a leveling off at nine billion but now says we will reach the 10.1 billion figure in 2100—and potentially keep climbing as birth rates have not fallen as far or as fast as previously anticipated. If the choices we make are a little different, there could be as many as 16 billion of us by the end of this century—and that number may prove more than the planet can bear if our lifestyles don't keep pace with our numbers. "It's both the most intimate of problems—what people do in their beds—and the most public problem," Cohen said. "What people do in their beds has externalities that affect people who aren't in bed with them." World Population Clock: 7.5 Billion People (2017) - Worldometers back to top ↑ The chart above illustrates how world population has changed throughout history. View the full tabulated data.

At the dawn of agriculture, about 8000 B.C., the population of the world was approximately 5 million. Over the 8,000-year period up to 1 A.D. it grew to 200 million (some estimate 300 million or even 600, suggesting how imprecise population estimates of early historical periods can be), with a growth rate of under 0.05% per year. A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for world population to reach one billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years (1930), the third billion in less than 30 years (1959), the fourth billion in 15 years (1974), and the fifth billion in only 13 years (1987). During the 20th century alone, the population in the world has grown from 1.65 billion to 6 billion. In 1970, there were roughly half as many people in the world as there are now.

Because of declining growth rates , it will now take over 200 years to double again. Wonder how big was the world's population when you were born? Check out this simple wizard or this more elaborated one to find out. Sources: back to top ↑ Yearly Population Growth Rate (%) Population in the world is currently (2017) growing at a rate of around 1.11% per year (down from 1.13% in 2016). The current average population change is estimated at around 80 million per year. Annual growth rate reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it was at 2% and above. The rate of increase has therefore almost halved since its peak of 2.19 percent, which was reached in 1963. The annual growth rate is currently declining and is projected to continue to decline in the coming years. Currently, it is estimated that it will become less than 1% by 2020 and less than 0.5% by 2050. This means that world population will continue to grow in the 21st century, but at a slower rate compared to the recent past.

World population has doubled (100% increase) in 40 years from 1959 (3 billion) to 1999 (6 billion). It is now estimated that it will take a further 39 years to increase by another 50%, to become 9 billion by 2038. The latest United Nations projections indicate that world population will reach 10 billion persons in the year 2056 ( six years earlier than previously estimated ). World Population (2017 and historical) back to top ↑ According to a recent study (based on the 2010 world population of 6.9 billion) by The Pew Forum , there are: 2,173,180,000 Christians (31% of world population), of which 50% are Catholic, 37% Protestant, 12% Orthodox, and 1% other. 1,598,510,000 Muslims (23%), of which 87-90% are Sunnis, 10-13% Shia.

1,126,500,000 No Religion affiliation (16%): atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion. One-in-five people (20%) in the United States are religiously unaffiliated. 1,033,080,000 Hindus (15%), the overwhelming majority (94%) of which live in India. 487,540,000 Buddhists (7%), of which half live in China. 405,120,000 Folk Religionists (6%): faiths that are closely associated with a particular group of people, ethnicity or tribe. 58,110,000 Other Religions (1%): Baha’i faith, Taoism, Jainism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Tenrikyo, Wicca, Zoroastrianism and many others. 13,850,000 Jews (0.2%), four-fifths of which live in two countries: United States (41%) and Israel (41%).

World Population by Country back to top ↑ The world population counter displayed on Worldometers takes into consideration data from two major sources: the United Nations and the U.S. Census Bureau. The United Nations Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs every two years calculates, updates, and publishes estimates of total population in its World Population Prospects series. These population estimates and projections provide the standard and consistent set of population figures that are used throughout the United Nations system. The World Population Prospect: the 2015 Revision provides the most recent data available (released on July 29, 2015). Estimates and projected world population and country specific populations are given from 1950 through 2100 and are released every two years. The latest revision has revised upwards the world population projections . Worldometers, as it is common practice, utilizes the medium fertility estimates. Data underlying the population estimates are national and sub national census data and data on births, deaths, and migrants available from national sources and publications, as well as from questionnaires.

For all countries, census and registration data are evaluated and, if necessary, adjusted for incompleteness by the Population Division as part of its preparations of the official United Nations population estimates and projections. The International Programs Center at the U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division also develops estimates and projections based on analysis of available data (based on census, survey, and administrative information) on population, fertility, mortality, and migration for each country or area of the world. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, world population reached 7 billion on March 12, 2012. For most countries adjustment of the data is necessary to correct for errors, omissions, and inconsistencies in the data. Finally, since most recent data for a single country is often at least two years old, the current world population figure is necessarily a projection of past data based on assumed trends. As new data become available, assumptions and data are reevaluated and past conclusions and current figures may be modified. For information about how these estimates and projections are made by the U.S. Census Bureau, see the Population Estimates and Projections Methodology . Why Worldometers clocks are the most accurate

Question: What was the population of the world at 31 Oct 2011 according to the United Nations?
Answer: 7 billion