Until the 1800s, population growth was incredibly slow on a global level. The global population was estimated to have been around 188 million people in the year 1CE, and did not reach one billion until around 1803. However, since the 1800s, a phenomenon known as the demographic transition has seen population growth skyrocket, reaching eight billion people in 2023, and this is expected to peak at over 10 billion in the 2080s.
The world's population first reached one billion people in 1803, and reach eight billion in 2023, and will peak at almost 11 billion by the end of the century. Although it took thousands of years to reach one billion people, it did so at the beginning of a phenomenon known as the demographic transition; from this point onwards, population growth has skyrocketed, and since the 1960s the population has increased by one billion people every 12 to 15 years. The demographic transition sees a sharp drop in mortality due to factors such as vaccination, sanitation, and improved food supply; the population boom that follows is due to increased survival rates among children and higher life expectancy among the general population; and fertility then drops in response to this population growth. Regional differences The demographic transition is a global phenomenon, but it has taken place at different times across the world. The industrialized countries of Europe and North America were the first to go through this process, followed by some states in the Western Pacific. Latin America's population then began growing at the turn of the 20th century, but the most significant period of global population growth occurred as Asia progressed in the late-1900s. As of the early 21st century, almost two thirds of the world's population live in Asia, although this is set to change significantly in the coming decades. Future growth The growth of Africa's population, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, will have the largest impact on global demographics in this century. From 2000 to 2100, it is expected that Africa's population will have increased by a factor of almost five. It overtook Europe in size in the late 1990s, and overtook the Americas a decade later. In contrast to Africa, Europe's population is now in decline, as birth rates are consistently below death rates in many countries, especially in the south and east, resulting in natural population decline. Similarly, the population of the Americas and Asia are expected to go into decline in the second half of this century, and only Oceania's population will still be growing alongside Africa. By 2100, the world's population will have over three billion more than today, with the vast majority of this concentrated in Africa. Demographers predict that climate change is exacerbating many of the challenges that currently hinder progress in Africa, such as political and food instability; if Africa's transition is prolonged, then it may result in further population growth that would place a strain on the region's resources, however, curbing this growth earlier would alleviate some of the pressure created by climate change.
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Historical chart and dataset showing World population growth rate by year from 1961 to 2023.
The statistic shows the development of the world population from 1950 to 2050. The world population was around 7.38 billion people in 2015.
The global population
As shown above, the total number of people living on Earth has more than doubled since the 1950s, and continues to increase. A look at the development of the world population since the beginning of the Common Era shows that such a surge in numbers is unprecedented. The first significant rise in population occurred during the 14th century, after the Black Death had killed approximately 25 million people worldwide. Subsequently, the global population increased slowly but steadily until it reached record numbers between 1950 and 2000.
The majority of the global population lives on the Asian continent, as a statistic of the world population by continent shows. In around 100 years, it is estimated that population levels on the African continent will have reached similar levels to those we see in Asia today. As for a forecast of the development of the world population, the figures are estimated to have reached more than 10 billion by the 22nd century.
Growing population numbers pose an increasing risk to the planet, since rocketing numbers equal increased consumption of food and resources. Scientists worry that natural resources, such as oil, and food resources will become scarce, endangering the human race and, even more so, the world’s ecosystem. Nowadays, the number of undernourished / starving people worldwide has decreased slightly, but forecasts paint a darker picture.
In the past four centuries, the population of the United States has grown from a recorded 350 people around the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1610, to an estimated 331 million people in 2020. The pre-colonization populations of the indigenous peoples of the Americas have proven difficult for historians to estimate, as their numbers decreased rapidly following the introduction of European diseases (namely smallpox, plague and influenza). Native Americans were also omitted from most censuses conducted before the twentieth century, therefore the actual population of what we now know as the United States would have been much higher than the official census data from before 1800, but it is unclear by how much. Population growth in the colonies throughout the eighteenth century has primarily been attributed to migration from the British Isles and the Transatlantic slave trade; however it is also difficult to assert the ethnic-makeup of the population in these years as accurate migration records were not kept until after the 1820s, at which point the importation of slaves had also been illegalized. Nineteenth century In the year 1800, it is estimated that the population across the present-day United States was around six million people, with the population in the 16 admitted states numbering at 5.3 million. Migration to the United States began to happen on a large scale in the mid-nineteenth century, with the first major waves coming from Ireland, Britain and Germany. In some aspects, this wave of mass migration balanced out the demographic impacts of the American Civil War, which was the deadliest war in U.S. history with approximately 620 thousand fatalities between 1861 and 1865. The civil war also resulted in the emancipation of around four million slaves across the south; many of whose ancestors would take part in the Great Northern Migration in the early 1900s, which saw around six million black Americans migrate away from the south in one of the largest demographic shifts in U.S. history. By the end of the nineteenth century, improvements in transport technology and increasing economic opportunities saw migration to the United States increase further, particularly from southern and Eastern Europe, and in the first decade of the 1900s the number of migrants to the U.S. exceeded one million people in some years. Twentieth and twenty-first century The U.S. population has grown steadily throughout the past 120 years, reaching one hundred million in the 1910s, two hundred million in the 1960s, and three hundred million in 2007. In the past century, the U.S. established itself as a global superpower, with the world's largest economy (by nominal GDP) and most powerful military. Involvement in foreign wars has resulted in over 620,000 further U.S. fatalities since the Civil War, and migration fell drastically during the World Wars and Great Depression; however the population continuously grew in these years as the total fertility rate remained above two births per woman, and life expectancy increased (except during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918).
Since the Second World War, Latin America has replaced Europe as the most common point of origin for migrants, with Hispanic populations growing rapidly across the south and border states. Because of this, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, which has been the most dominant ethnicity in the U.S. since records began, has dropped more rapidly in recent decades. Ethnic minorities also have a much higher birth rate than non-Hispanic whites, further contributing to this decline, and the share of non-Hispanic whites is expected to fall below fifty percent of the U.S. population by the mid-2000s. In 2020, the United States has the third-largest population in the world (after China and India), and the population is expected to reach four hundred million in the 2050s.
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Graph and download economic data for Population, Total for United States (POPTOTUSA647NWDB) from 1960 to 2024 about population and USA.
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<li>Total population for China in 2024 was <strong>1,425,178,782</strong>, a <strong>1.03% increase</strong> from 2023.</li>
<li>Total population for China in 2023 was <strong>1,410,710,000</strong>, a <strong>0.1% decline</strong> from 2022.</li>
<li>Total population for China in 2022 was <strong>1,412,175,000</strong>, a <strong>0.01% decline</strong> from 2021.</li>
</ul>Total population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship. The values shown are midyear estimates.
Globally, about 25 percent of the population is under 15 years of age and 10 percent is over 65 years of age. Africa has the youngest population worldwide. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than 40 percent of the population is below 15 years, and only three percent are above 65, indicating the low life expectancy in several of the countries. In Europe, on the other hand, a higher share of the population is above 65 years than the population under 15 years. Fertility rates The high share of children and youth in Africa is connected to the high fertility rates on the continent. For instance, South Sudan and Niger have the highest population growth rates globally. However, about 50 percent of the world’s population live in countries with low fertility, where women have less than 2.1 children. Some countries in Europe, like Latvia and Lithuania, have experienced a population decline of one percent, and in the Cook Islands, it is even above two percent. In Europe, the majority of the population was previously working-aged adults with few dependents, but this trend is expected to reverse soon, and it is predicted that by 2050, the older population will outnumber the young in many developed countries. Growing global population As of 2025, there are 8.1 billion people living on the planet, and this is expected to reach more than nine billion before 2040. Moreover, the global population is expected to reach 10 billions around 2060, before slowing and then even falling slightly by 2100. As the population growth rates indicate, a significant share of the population increase will happen in Africa.
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Historical chart and dataset showing total population for Russia by year from 1950 to 2025.
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Historical chart and dataset showing total population for Japan by year from 1950 to 2025.
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<li>India population growth rate for 2022 was <strong>0.79%</strong>, a <strong>0.03% decline</strong> from 2021.</li>
<li>India population growth rate for 2021 was <strong>0.82%</strong>, a <strong>0.15% decline</strong> from 2020.</li>
<li>India population growth rate for 2020 was <strong>0.97%</strong>, a <strong>0.07% decline</strong> from 2019.</li>
</ul>Annual population growth rate for year t is the exponential rate of growth of midyear population from year t-1 to t, expressed as a percentage . Population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship.
The earliest point where scientists can make reasonable estimates for the population of global regions is around 10,000 years before the Common Era (or 12,000 years ago). Estimates suggest that Asia has consistently been the most populated continent, and the least populated continent has generally been Oceania (although it was more heavily populated than areas such as North America in very early years). Population growth was very slow, but an increase can be observed between most of the given time periods. There were, however, dips in population due to pandemics, the most notable of these being the impact of plague in Eurasia in the 14th century, and the impact of European contact with the indigenous populations of the Americas after 1492, where it took almost four centuries for the population of Latin America to return to its pre-1500 level. The world's population first reached one billion people in 1803, which also coincided with a spike in population growth, due to the onset of the demographic transition. This wave of growth first spread across the most industrially developed countries in the 19th century, and the correlation between demographic development and industrial or economic maturity continued until today, with Africa being the final major region to begin its transition in the late-1900s.
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<li>Total population for Italy in 2024 was <strong>58,697,744</strong>, a <strong>0.5% decline</strong> from 2023.</li>
<li>Total population for Italy in 2023 was <strong>58,993,475</strong>, a <strong>0.03% decline</strong> from 2022.</li>
<li>Total population for Italy in 2022 was <strong>59,013,667</strong>, a <strong>0.2% decline</strong> from 2021.</li>
</ul>Total population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship. The values shown are midyear estimates.
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<li>Total population for France in 2024 was <strong>64,881,830</strong>, a <strong>0.19% increase</strong> from 2023.</li>
<li>Total population for France in 2023 was <strong>64,756,584</strong>, a <strong>0.2% increase</strong> from 2022.</li>
<li>Total population for France in 2022 was <strong>64,626,628</strong>, a <strong>0.15% increase</strong> from 2021.</li>
</ul>Total population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship. The values shown are midyear estimates.
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<li>Total population for Nigeria in 2024 was <strong>229,152,217</strong>, a <strong>0.56% increase</strong> from 2023.</li>
<li>Total population for Nigeria in 2023 was <strong>227,882,945</strong>, a <strong>2.12% increase</strong> from 2022.</li>
<li>Total population for Nigeria in 2022 was <strong>223,150,896</strong>, a <strong>2.11% increase</strong> from 2021.</li>
</ul>Total population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship. The values shown are midyear estimates.
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Historical chart and dataset showing total population for Mexico by year from 1950 to 2025.
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<ul style='margin-top:20px;'>
<li>Total population for Greece in 2024 was <strong>10,302,720</strong>, a <strong>0.99% decline</strong> from 2023.</li>
<li>Total population for Greece in 2023 was <strong>10,405,588</strong>, a <strong>0.3% decline</strong> from 2022.</li>
<li>Total population for Greece in 2022 was <strong>10,436,882</strong>, a <strong>1.25% decline</strong> from 2021.</li>
</ul>Total population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship. The values shown are midyear estimates.
In the middle of 2023, about 60 percent of the global population was living in Asia.The total world population amounted to 8.1 billion people on the planet. In other words 4.7 billion people were living in Asia as of 2023. Global populationDue to medical advances, better living conditions and the increase of agricultural productivity, the world population increased rapidly over the past century, and is expected to continue to grow. After reaching eight billion in 2023, the global population is estimated to pass 10 billion by 2060. Africa expected to drive population increase Most of the future population increase is expected to happen in Africa. The countries with the highest population growth rate in 2024 were mostly African countries. While around 1.47 billion people live on the continent as of 2024, this is forecast to grow to 3.9 billion by 2100. This is underlined by the fact that most of the countries wit the highest population growth rate are found in Africa. The growing population, in combination with climate change, puts increasing pressure on the world's resources.
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Historical chart and dataset showing World death rate by year from 1950 to 2025.
On March 10, 2023, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center ceased its collecting and reporting of global COVID-19 data. For updated cases, deaths, and vaccine data please visit: World Health Organization (WHO)For more information, visit the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.COVID-19 Trends MethodologyOur goal is to analyze and present daily updates in the form of recent trends within countries, states, or counties during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The data we are analyzing is taken directly from the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases Dashboard, though we expect to be one day behind the dashboard’s live feeds to allow for quality assurance of the data.DOI: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.125529863/7/2022 - Adjusted the rate of active cases calculation in the U.S. to reflect the rates of serious and severe cases due nearly completely dominant Omicron variant.6/24/2020 - Expanded Case Rates discussion to include fix on 6/23 for calculating active cases.6/22/2020 - Added Executive Summary and Subsequent Outbreaks sectionsRevisions on 6/10/2020 based on updated CDC reporting. This affects the estimate of active cases by revising the average duration of cases with hospital stays downward from 30 days to 25 days. The result shifted 76 U.S. counties out of Epidemic to Spreading trend and no change for national level trends.Methodology update on 6/2/2020: This sets the length of the tail of new cases to 6 to a maximum of 14 days, rather than 21 days as determined by the last 1/3 of cases. This was done to align trends and criteria for them with U.S. CDC guidance. The impact is areas transition into Controlled trend sooner for not bearing the burden of new case 15-21 days earlier.Correction on 6/1/2020Discussion of our assertion of an abundance of caution in assigning trends in rural counties added 5/7/2020. Revisions added on 4/30/2020 are highlighted.Revisions added on 4/23/2020 are highlighted.Executive SummaryCOVID-19 Trends is a methodology for characterizing the current trend for places during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Each day we assign one of five trends: Emergent, Spreading, Epidemic, Controlled, or End Stage to geographic areas to geographic areas based on the number of new cases, the number of active cases, the total population, and an algorithm (described below) that contextualize the most recent fourteen days with the overall COVID-19 case history. Currently we analyze the countries of the world and the U.S. Counties. The purpose is to give policymakers, citizens, and analysts a fact-based data driven sense for the direction each place is currently going. When a place has the initial cases, they are assigned Emergent, and if that place controls the rate of new cases, they can move directly to Controlled, and even to End Stage in a short time. However, if the reporting or measures to curtail spread are not adequate and significant numbers of new cases continue, they are assigned to Spreading, and in cases where the spread is clearly uncontrolled, Epidemic trend.We analyze the data reported by Johns Hopkins University to produce the trends, and we report the rates of cases, spikes of new cases, the number of days since the last reported case, and number of deaths. We also make adjustments to the assignments based on population so rural areas are not assigned trends based solely on case rates, which can be quite high relative to local populations.Two key factors are not consistently known or available and should be taken into consideration with the assigned trend. First is the amount of resources, e.g., hospital beds, physicians, etc.that are currently available in each area. Second is the number of recoveries, which are often not tested or reported. On the latter, we provide a probable number of active cases based on CDC guidance for the typical duration of mild to severe cases.Reasons for undertaking this work in March of 2020:The popular online maps and dashboards show counts of confirmed cases, deaths, and recoveries by country or administrative sub-region. Comparing the counts of one country to another can only provide a basis for comparison during the initial stages of the outbreak when counts were low and the number of local outbreaks in each country was low. By late March 2020, countries with small populations were being left out of the mainstream news because it was not easy to recognize they had high per capita rates of cases (Switzerland, Luxembourg, Iceland, etc.). Additionally, comparing countries that have had confirmed COVID-19 cases for high numbers of days to countries where the outbreak occurred recently is also a poor basis for comparison.The graphs of confirmed cases and daily increases in cases were fit into a standard size rectangle, though the Y-axis for one country had a maximum value of 50, and for another country 100,000, which potentially misled people interpreting the slope of the curve. Such misleading circumstances affected comparing large population countries to small population counties or countries with low numbers of cases to China which had a large count of cases in the early part of the outbreak. These challenges for interpreting and comparing these graphs represent work each reader must do based on their experience and ability. Thus, we felt it would be a service to attempt to automate the thought process experts would use when visually analyzing these graphs, particularly the most recent tail of the graph, and provide readers with an a resulting synthesis to characterize the state of the pandemic in that country, state, or county.The lack of reliable data for confirmed recoveries and therefore active cases. Merely subtracting deaths from total cases to arrive at this figure progressively loses accuracy after two weeks. The reason is 81% of cases recover after experiencing mild symptoms in 10 to 14 days. Severe cases are 14% and last 15-30 days (based on average days with symptoms of 11 when admitted to hospital plus 12 days median stay, and plus of one week to include a full range of severely affected people who recover). Critical cases are 5% and last 31-56 days. Sources:U.S. CDC. April 3, 2020 Interim Clinical Guidance for Management of Patients with Confirmed Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). Accessed online. Initial older guidance was also obtained online. Additionally, many people who recover may not be tested, and many who are, may not be tracked due to privacy laws. Thus, the formula used to compute an estimate of active cases is: Active Cases = 100% of new cases in past 14 days + 19% from past 15-25 days + 5% from past 26-49 days - total deaths. On 3/17/2022, the U.S. calculation was adjusted to: Active Cases = 100% of new cases in past 14 days + 6% from past 15-25 days + 3% from past 26-49 days - total deaths. Sources: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e4.htm https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions If a new variant arrives and appears to cause higher rates of serious cases, we will roll back this adjustment. We’ve never been inside a pandemic with the ability to learn of new cases as they are confirmed anywhere in the world. After reviewing epidemiological and pandemic scientific literature, three needs arose. We need to specify which portions of the pandemic lifecycle this map cover. The World Health Organization (WHO) specifies six phases. The source data for this map begins just after the beginning of Phase 5: human to human spread and encompasses Phase 6: pandemic phase. Phase six is only characterized in terms of pre- and post-peak. However, these two phases are after-the-fact analyses and cannot ascertained during the event. Instead, we describe (below) a series of five trends for Phase 6 of the COVID-19 pandemic.Choosing terms to describe the five trends was informed by the scientific literature, particularly the use of epidemic, which signifies uncontrolled spread. The five trends are: Emergent, Spreading, Epidemic, Controlled, and End Stage. Not every locale will experience all five, but all will experience at least three: emergent, controlled, and end stage.This layer presents the current trends for the COVID-19 pandemic by country (or appropriate level). There are five trends:Emergent: Early stages of outbreak. Spreading: Early stages and depending on an administrative area’s capacity, this may represent a manageable rate of spread. Epidemic: Uncontrolled spread. Controlled: Very low levels of new casesEnd Stage: No New cases These trends can be applied at several levels of administration: Local: Ex., City, District or County – a.k.a. Admin level 2State: Ex., State or Province – a.k.a. Admin level 1National: Country – a.k.a. Admin level 0Recommend that at least 100,000 persons be represented by a unit; granted this may not be possible, and then the case rate per 100,000 will become more important.Key Concepts and Basis for Methodology: 10 Total Cases minimum threshold: Empirically, there must be enough cases to constitute an outbreak. Ideally, this would be 5.0 per 100,000, but not every area has a population of 100,000 or more. Ten, or fewer, cases are also relatively less difficult to track and trace to sources. 21 Days of Cases minimum threshold: Empirically based on COVID-19 and would need to be adjusted for any other event. 21 days is also the minimum threshold for analyzing the “tail” of the new cases curve, providing seven cases as the basis for a likely trend (note that 21 days in the tail is preferred). This is the minimum needed to encompass the onset and duration of a normal case (5-7 days plus 10-14 days). Specifically, a median of 5.1 days incubation time, and 11.2 days for 97.5% of cases to incubate. This is also driven by pressure to understand trends and could easily be adjusted to 28 days. Source
Until the 1800s, population growth was incredibly slow on a global level. The global population was estimated to have been around 188 million people in the year 1CE, and did not reach one billion until around 1803. However, since the 1800s, a phenomenon known as the demographic transition has seen population growth skyrocket, reaching eight billion people in 2023, and this is expected to peak at over 10 billion in the 2080s.