When and why did the world population grow? And how does rapid population growth come to an end? These are the big questions that are central to this research article.
The world population increased from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.7 billion today.
The world population growth rate declined from 2.2% per year 50 years ago to 1.05% per year.
Other relevant research:
World population growth – This article is focusing on the history of population growth up to the present. We show how the world population grew over the last several thousand years and we explain what has been driving this change.
Life expectancy – Improving health leads to falling mortality and is therefore the factor that increases the size of the population. Life expectancy, which measures the age of death, has doubled in every region in the world as we show here.
Child & infant mortality – Mortality at a young age has a particularly big impact on demographic change.
Fertility rates – Rapid population growth has been a temporary phenomenon in many countries. It comes to an end when the average number of births per woman – the fertility rate – declines. In the article we show the data and explain why fertility rates declined.
Age Structure – What is the age profile of populations around the world? How did it change and what will the age structure of populations look like in the future?
All our charts on World Population Growth
Population of the world today
How is the global population distributed across the world?
One way to understand the distribution of people across the world is to reform the world map, not based on area but according to population.
This is shown here in a population cartogram: a geographical presentation of the world where the size of the countries are not drawn according to the distribution of land, but according to the distribution of people. The cartogram shows where in the world the global population was at home in 2018.
The cartogram is made up of squares, each of which represents half a million people of a country’s population. The 11.5 million Belgians are represented by 23 squares; the 49.5 million Colombians are represented by 99 squares; the 1.415 billion people in China are represented by 2830 squares; and the entire world population of 7.633 billion people in 2018 is represented by the total sum of 15,266 squares.
As the size of the population rather than the size of the territory is shown in this map you can see some big differences when you compare it to the standard geographical map we’re most familiar with. Small countries with a high population density increase in size in this cartogram relative to the world maps we are used to – look at Bangladesh, Taiwan, or the Netherlands. Large countries with a small population shrink in size (look for Canada, Mongolia, Australia, or Russia).
You can find more details on this cartogram in our explainer: ‘The map we need if we want to think about how global living conditions are changing‘.
[click on the cartogram to enlarge it. And here you can download the population cartogram in high resolution (6985×2650).]
Population cartogram world 2
Explanation:
