World population. The total population of the earth. How many of us: an online counter of the planet's population Approximate number of people on earth

The counting of earthlings is not carried out out of simple curiosity. For a normal life, each of us needs a certain amount of water, air, food. In turn, each of the inhabitants of the Earth affects the environment. Therefore, it is very important to know how many people live on our planet.

How do earthlings think?

In order to find out how many people live on Earth, you need to identify their number in individual countries and regions of the planet. In most countries, the population is determined using a general population census. They are held regularly once every 5 or 10 years. But in some countries and regions of the world, censuses either did not take place at all, or were taken a very long time ago. Therefore, the total number is determined using special calculations.

How many people are there now?

Just under 7.4 billion people currently live on Earth. For many millennia, the number of people on Earth was small and did not increase very quickly. But since the 19th century began a rapid population growth that continues to this day.

What influences population growth?

The growth of the human population depends on many reasons. This is the level of development of the country, and the well-being of people, and national traditions. Until now, hunger, disease and war, as well as natural disasters, remain the reasons for the change in the number of inhabitants of the planet.

The change in population is determined by the ratio and mortality. There are currently 21 births and 18 deaths every second in the world. As a result, daily increases by 250 thousand people. But in different periods of human history and in different regions of the Earth, the value is not the same.

The average age of the inhabitants of these countries also depends on the state of fertility and mortality in different countries. Countries with high population growth have many children and young people. Countries with low growth have a high proportion of older people.

There are more than 200 states on planet Earth (including partially recognized and unrecognized countries).

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All of them differ in terms of living standards, incomes of the population, cultural development and other important indicators.

In this situation, it is natural that the number of inhabitants of the countries of the globe differs significantly.

Against the background of states with a huge number of inhabitants, there are countries where literally several thousand people live.

Total information

According to various estimates, 7.444-7.528 billion people live on planet Earth. The population is constantly growing by about 90 million people.

But the distribution of inhabitants across the planet is extremely uneven. More than 1/3 of all mankind lives in China and India, and 2/3 of the inhabitants of the Earth live in the 15 most populous countries.

For comparison, we present in the table information about the population of the planet in different periods of human development:

Note. Data in 1500 and earlier are obtained by scientific evaluation. At that time, accounting and census were not yet involved.

Basic indicators

The population of each country is taken into account, both by local authorities and by the international scientific community.

In this case, data obtained as a result of censuses, migration records, etc. are used. In some states, it is almost impossible to accurately estimate the number of inhabitants.

This is hindered by military conflicts, and also part of the population of some countries lives in extremely inaccessible areas.

Consider how much the population of the earth is by state for 2020 in the following table:

A country	Number of inhabitants
PRC	1389983000
India	1350494000
USA	325719000
Indonesia	267272972
Pakistan	211054704
Brazil	209078488
Nigeria	196463654
Bangladesh	166576197
Russia	146880432
Japan	126560000
Mexico	123982528
Philippines	105908950
Ethiopia	104569310
Egypt	97351896
Vietnam	95600601
Germany	82521653
Iran	82018816
DRC	81339988
Türkiye	80810525
Thailand	69037513
Great Britain	65808573
France	64859599
Italy	60589445
Tanzania	57310019
South Africa	54956900
Myanmar	53370609
The Republic of Korea	51732586
Colombia	49749000
Kenya	49699862
Spain	46528966
Argentina	43131966
Uganda	42862958
Ukraine	42216766
Algeria	41318142
Sudan	40533330
Poland	38424000
Iraq	38274618
Canada	35706000
Afghanistan	35530081
Morocco	35197000
Uzbekistan	32511900
Saudi Arabia	32248200
Venezuela	31882000
Malaysia	31700000
Peru	31488625
Angola	29784193
Mozambique	29668834
Nepal	29304998
Ghana	28833629
Yemen	28250420
Australia	25787000
Madagascar	25570895
North Korea	25490965
Ivory Coast	24294750
Republic of China	23547448
Cameroon	23248044
Niger	21477348
Sri Lanka	20876917
Romania	19644350
Mali	18541980
Chile	18503135
Burkina Faso	18450494
Syria	18269868
Kazakhstan	18195900
Netherlands	17191445
Zambia	17094130
Zimbabwe	16529904
Malawi	16310431
Guatemala	16176133
Cambodia	15827241
Ecuador	15770000
Senegal	15256346
Chad	14496739
Guinea	12947122
South Sudan	12733427
Burundi	11552561
Bolivia	11410651
Cuba	11392889
Rwanda	11262564
Belgium	11250659
Somalia	11079013
Tunisia	10982754
Haiti	10911819
Greece	10846979
Dominican Republic	10648613
Czech	10578820
Portugal	10374822
Benin	10315244
Sweden	10005673
Hungary	9779000
Azerbaijan	9730500
Belarus	9491800
UAE	9400145
Tajikistan	8931000
Israel	8842000
Austria	8773686
Honduras	8725111
Switzerland	8236600
Papua New Guinea	7776115
Togo	7496833
Hong Kong (PRC)	7264100
Serbia	7114393
Jordan	7112900
Paraguay	7112594
Bulgaria	7101859
Laos	6693300
Sierra Leone	6592102
Libya	6330159
Nicaragua	6198154
Salvador	6146419
Kyrgyzstan	6140200
Lebanon	6082357
Turkmenistan	5758075
Denmark	5668743
Finland	5471753
Singapore	5469724
Slovakia	5421349
Norway	5383100
Eritrea	5351680
CAR	4998493
New Zealand	4859700
State of Palestine	4816503
Costa Rica	4773130
Republic of the Congo	4740992
Liberia	4731906
Ireland	4635400
Croatia	4190669
Oman	4088690
Kuwait	4007146
Panama	3764166
Georgia	3729600
Mauritania	3631775
Moldova	3550900
Bosnia and Herzegovina	3531159
Uruguay	3415866
Puerto Rico (US colony)	3411307
Mongolia	3119935
Armenia	2982900
Jamaica	2930050
Albania	2886026
Lithuania	2812713
Namibia	2513981
Botswana	2303820
Qatar	2269672
Lesotho	2160309
Slovenia	2097600
Macedonia	2069172
Gambia	2054986
Gabon	2025137
Latvia	1932200
Guinea-Bissau	1888429
Republic of Kosovo	1804944
Bahrain	1451200
Swaziland	1367254
Trinidad and Tobago	1364973
Estonia	1318705
Equatorial Guinea	1267689
Mauritius	1261208
East Timor	1212107
Djibouti	956985
Fiji	905502
Cyprus	854802
Reunion (France)	844994
Comoros	806153
Guyana	801623
Butane	784103
Macau (PRC)	640700
Montenegro	622218
Solomon islands	594934
SADR	584206
Luxembourg	576249
Suriname	547610
Cape Verde	526993
Transnistria	475665
Malta	434403
Brunei	428874
Guadeloupe (France)	403750
Bahamas	392718
Belize	387879
Martinique (France)	381326
Maldives	341256
Iceland	332529
Northern Cyprus	313626
French Polynesia (France)	285735
Barbados	285006
Vanuatu	270470
New Caledonia (France)	268767
Guiana (France)	254541
Mayotte (France)	246496
Republic of Abkhazia	243564
Samoa	194523
Sao Tome and Principe	194390
Saint Lucia	186383
Guam (USA)	172094
Curaçao (Nida)	158986
Kiribati	114405
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	109644
Grenada	107327
Tonga	106915
Virgin Islands (US)	106415
micronesia	104966
Aruba (Nid.)	104263
Jersey (UK)	100080
Seychelles	97026
Antigua and Barbuda	92738
Isle of Man (UK)	88421
Andorra	85470
Dominica	73016
Guernsey (UK)	62711
Bermuda (UK)	61662
Cayman Islands (UK)	60764
Greenland (Denmark)	56196
Saint Kitts and Nevis	56183
American Samoa (USA)	55602
Northern Mariana Islands (USA)	55389
South Ossetia	53532
Marshall Islands	53069
Faroe Islands (Denmark)	48599
Monaco	37863
Liechtenstein	37622
Sint Maarten (Nid.)	37224
Saint Martin (France)	36457
Turks and Caicos (UK)	34904
Gibraltar (UK)	33140
San Marino	31950
Virgin Islands (Brit.)	30659
Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba (Nid.)	24279
Palau	21501
Cook Islands (New Zealand)	20948
Anguilla (UK)	14763
Wallis and Futuna (France)	13112
Nauru	10263
Tuvalu	9943
Saint Barthelemy (France)	9417
Saint Pierre and Miquelon (France)	6301
Montserrat (UK)	5154
Saint Helena (UK)	3956
Falkland Islands (UK)	2912
Niue (New Zealand)	1612
Tokelau (New Zealand)	1383
Vatican	842
Pitcairn Islands (UK)	49

Leading countries

Most people live in China and India. In total, more than 2.740 billion people live in these two states.

Occupying 3rd place in terms of the number of inhabitants, the United States lags behind any of these countries very significantly, because only 325.719 million people live in them.

In Russia, which is in 9th place, even significantly fewer people live - 146.880 million people.

Who's behind

On the political map of the planet, there are also states with a very small number of inhabitants. Least of all people live in the Vatican (less than 850 people).

But this does not mean that a sparsely populated country is an exception to the rule. There are also full-fledged states, where there are literally several thousand people.

For example, only about 10 thousand people live in Tuvalu or Nauru. Less than 50 thousand people live in such states as Palau, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Monaco.

Growth dynamics

For a long time, the number of people on planet Earth was relatively small. It began to grow significantly only in the 19th century, but the real population explosion occurred in the 1960s-1980s.

It is associated with an increase in the availability of quality medical care, a general increase in the standard of living and an undecreasing birth rate in a number of states.

Most of the newborns are in countries such as China, India. Many in the states of Latin America, as well as Africa.

Forecast for the future

Scientists are constantly considering various scenarios for the further development of mankind and changes in the number of inhabitants of the planet.

According to them, by 2020, about 7.7-7.8 billion people will live in the world, and in the future it will only increase.

According to forecasts, by 2030 there will be more than 8.463 billion people on the planet, and by 2050 - already 9.568 billion. In 2100, the population of the Earth can reach 11 billion.

Image copyright Thinkstock

Does the Earth have enough resources to support a rapidly growing human population? Now it is over 7 billion. What is the maximum number of inhabitants, above which the sustainable development of our planet will no longer be possible? The correspondent undertook to find out what the researchers think about this.

Overpopulation. At this word, modern politicians wince; in discussions about the future of planet Earth, he is often referred to as the "elephant in the room."

Often, a growing population is spoken of as the biggest threat to the existence of the Earth. But is it right to consider this problem in isolation from other contemporary global challenges? And is it really so threateningly many people live on our planet now?

• What do giant cities suffer from?
• Seva Novgorodtsev about overpopulation of the Earth
• Obesity is more dangerous than overcrowding

It is clear that the Earth does not increase in size. Its space is limited, and the resources necessary to sustain life are finite. Food, water and energy may simply not be enough for everyone.

It turns out that demographic growth is a real threat to the well-being of our planet? Not at all necessary.

Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption The earth is not rubber!

"The problem is not the number of people living on the planet, but the number of consumers and the scale and nature of consumption," says David Satterthwaite, senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

In support of his thesis, he cites a consonant statement by the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, who believed that "there are enough [resources] in the world to satisfy the needs of every person, but not universal greed."

The global effect of a multi-billion increase in urban population could be much smaller than we think

Until recently, the number of representatives of the modern human species (Homo sapiens) living on Earth was relatively small. Just 10 thousand years ago, no more than a few million people lived on our planet.

It wasn't until the early 1800s that the human population reached a billion. And two billion - only in the 20s of the twentieth century.

Currently, the world's population is over 7.3 billion people. According to UN forecasts, by 2050 it could reach 9.7 billion, and by 2100 it is expected to exceed 11 billion.

Population has only begun to grow rapidly in the last few decades, so we do not yet have historical examples on which to base our predictions on the possible consequences of this growth in the future.

In other words, if it is true that more than 11 billion people will live on our planet by the end of the century, our current level of knowledge does not allow us to say whether sustainable development is possible with such a population - simply because there has not yet been precedents in history.

However, we can get a better picture of the future if we analyze where the most significant population growth is expected in the coming years.

The problem is not the number of people living on Earth, but the number of consumers and the scale and nature of their consumption of non-renewable resources

David Satterthwaite says that most of the demographic growth in the next two decades will occur in the megacities of those countries where the level of income of the population at the current stage is assessed as low or medium.

At first glance, an increase in the number of inhabitants of such cities, even if by several billion, should not have serious consequences on a global scale. This is due to historically low levels of urban consumption in low- and middle-income countries.

Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases are a good indication of how high a city's consumption can be. “We know about cities in low-income countries that emissions of carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide) and its equivalents are less than a tonne per person per year,” says David Satterthwait. “In high-income countries, the values ​​​​of this indicator fluctuate ranging from 6 to 30 tons".

Residents of more economically prosperous countries pollute the environment to a much greater extent than people living in poor countries.

Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Copenhagen: high standard of living, but low greenhouse gas emissions

However, there are exceptions. Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark, a high-income country, while Porto Allegre is in Brazil, an upper-middle income country. Both cities have a high standard of living, but emissions (on a per capita basis) are relatively low in volume.

According to the scientist, if we look at the lifestyle of one single person, the difference between rich and poor categories of the population will be even more significant.

There are many low-income urban dwellers whose consumption is so low that it has little to no effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

When the Earth's population reaches 11 billion, the additional burden on its resources may be relatively small.

However, the world is changing. And it's entirely possible that low-income megacities will see carbon emissions rise soon.

Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption People living in high-income countries must do their part to keep the Earth sustainable with a growing population

There is also concern about the desire of people in poor countries to live and consume at levels that are now considered normal for high-income countries (many would say that this would be some kind of restoration of social justice).

But in this case, the growth of the urban population will bring with it a more serious burden on the environment.

Will Steffen, professor emeritus at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian State University, says this is in line with a general trend that has emerged over the past century.

According to him, the problem is not population growth, but the growth - even more rapid - of world consumption (which, of course, is unevenly distributed around the world).

If so, then humanity may find itself in an even more predicament.

People living in high-income countries must do their part to keep the Earth sustainable with a growing population.

Only if richer communities are willing to reduce their consumption levels and allow their governments to support unpopular measures can the world as a whole reduce the negative human impact on the global climate and more effectively address issues such as resource conservation and recycling.

In a 2015 study, the Journal of Industrial Ecology tried to look at environmental issues from a household perspective, where consumption is at the center of attention.

If we adopt smarter consumer habits, the state of the environment can improve dramatically

The study showed that private consumers account for more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions, and in the use of land, water and other raw materials, their share is up to 80%.

Moreover, the researchers concluded that the pressure on the environment differs from region to region and that, per household, it is highest in economically prosperous countries.

Diana Ivanova of the University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, who developed the concept for this study, explains that it changes the traditional view of who should be responsible for industrial emissions associated with the production of consumer goods.

"We are all trying to shift the blame to someone else, to the state or to enterprises," she notes.

In the West, for example, consumers often express the opinion that China and other countries that produce consumer goods in industrial quantities should also be responsible for emissions associated with production.

Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Modern society depends on industrial production

But Diana and her colleagues believe that an equal share of the responsibility lies with the consumers themselves: "If we begin to follow smarter consumer habits, the state of the environment can significantly improve." According to this logic, radical changes are needed in the basic values ​​of developed countries: the emphasis should move from material wealth to a model where the most important thing is personal and social well-being.

But even if favorable changes take place in mass consumer behavior, it is unlikely that our planet will be able to sustain a population of 11 billion people for a long time.

Therefore, Will Steffen proposes to stabilize the population somewhere in the region of nine billion, and then begin to gradually reduce it by reducing the birth rate.

Stabilization of the Earth's population implies both a reduction in resource consumption and the expansion of women's rights.

In fact, there are signs that some stabilization is already underway, even if the population continues to grow statistically.

Population growth has been slowing since the 1960s, and surveys of fertility rates by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs indicate that, worldwide, the birth rate per woman has fallen from 4.7 children in 1970-75 to 2.6 in 2005-10.

However, it will take centuries for any really significant changes to take place in this area, according to Corey Bradshaw of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

The trend towards an increase in the birth rate is so deeply rooted that even a major catastrophe will not be able to radically change the situation, the scientist believes.

According to a 2014 study, Corey concluded that even if the world's population were reduced by two billion tomorrow due to increased mortality, or if governments of all countries, like China, passed unpopular laws that limit the number of children, then by 2100 the number of people on our planet would at best remain at its current level.

Therefore, it is necessary to look for alternative ways to reduce the birth rate, and look for it without delay.

If some or all of us increase our consumption, then the upper limit for sustainable (sustainable) population of the Earth will decrease

One relatively simple way is to raise the status of women, especially in terms of their educational and employment opportunities, says Will Steffen.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimated that 350 million women in the poorest countries were not going to have their last child, but they had no way to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

If the basic needs of these women in terms of personal development were met, the problem of overpopulation of the Earth due to excessively high birth rates would not be so acute.

Following this logic, the stabilization of the population of our planet implies both a reduction in resource consumption and the expansion of women's rights.

But if a population of 11 billion is unsustainable, how many people - in theory - can our Earth support?

Corey Bradshaw thinks it's nearly impossible to give a specific number as it will depend on technology in areas like agriculture, energy and transportation, and how many people we're willing to condemn to a life of deprivation and limitation, including and in food.

Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Slums in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay)

It is a fairly common belief that humanity has already exceeded the permissible limit, given the wasteful lifestyle that many of its representatives lead and which they are unlikely to want to give up.

As arguments in favor of this point of view, such environmental trends as global warming, the reduction of biospecies diversity and pollution of the world's oceans are given.

Social statistics also come to the rescue, according to which currently one billion people in the world are actually starving, and another billion suffer from chronic malnutrition.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the problem of population was associated equally with female fertility and soil fertility.

The most common option is 8 billion, i.e. a little more than the current level. The lowest figure is 2 billion. The highest is 1024 billion.

And since assumptions about the allowable demographic maximum depend on a number of assumptions, it is difficult to say which of the above estimates is closest to reality.

But ultimately the determining factor will be how society organizes its consumption.

If some of us - or all of us - increase our consumption, then the upper limit on the acceptable (in terms of sustainable development) population of the Earth will decrease.

If we find opportunities to consume less, ideally without giving up the benefits of civilization, then our planet will be able to support more people.

The acceptable population limit will also depend on the development of technology, an area in which it is difficult to predict anything.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the problem of population was associated equally with both female fertility and the fertility of agricultural land.

In his 1928 book The Shadow of the World to Come, George Knibbs suggested that if the world's population reaches 7.8 billion, humanity will need to be much more efficient in cultivating and using land.

Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption With the invention of chemical fertilizers began a rapid population growth

And three years later, Carl Bosch received the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the development of chemical fertilizers, the production of which was, presumably, the most important factor in the population boom that occurred in the twentieth century.

In the distant future, scientific and technological progress can significantly raise the upper limit of the permissible population of the Earth.

Ever since people first traveled into space, mankind is no longer content with observing stars from the Earth, but is seriously discussing the possibility of resettlement to other planets.

Many prominent scientists and thinkers, including the physicist Stephen Hawking, even state that the colonization of other worlds will be crucial for the survival of humans and other biological species present on Earth.

Although the NASA exoplanet program launched in 2009 discovered a large number of Earth-like planets, they are all too distant from us and little studied. (As part of this program, the US space agency created the Kepler satellite equipped with an ultra-sensitive photometer to search for Earth-like planets outside the solar system, the so-called exoplanets.)

Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption The earth is our only home and we need to learn how to live in it in a sustainable way

So moving people to another planet is not yet an option. For the foreseeable future, the Earth will be our only home, and we must learn to live in it in an environmentally friendly way.

This implies, of course, an overall reduction in consumption, in particular a transition to a lifestyle with low CO2 emissions, as well as an improvement in the status of women around the world.

Only by taking some steps in this direction, we will be able to roughly calculate how much the planet Earth can support the people.

• You can read it in English on the website.

How many people have lived on earth or even been born at all is an intriguing question that can be justified, at least in part, on a scientific basis.
In order to evaluate and for it to be true, one must understand that childbirth, the survival of infants both at the beginning of the 20th century and now in the 21st century are not the same as they were in the past.

It is known that a large number of elderly people born in the middle of the last century are now living.

However, the number of prehistoric people or how many people lived on earth with a high degree of probability can be determined.

How many people have ever lived on earth?

	Number of people on Earth	Births per 1000 people	Estimated births
50,000 BC	2000	–	–
8000 BC	5 000 000	80	1137 789769
1 AD	300 000 000	80	46025332354
1200	450 000 000	60	26591343000
1650	500 000 000	60	12782002453
1750	795 000 000	50	3171931513
1850	1 265 000 000	40	4046240009
1900	1 656 000 000	40	2900237856
1950	2 516 000 000	31-38	3390198215
1995	5 760 000 000	31	5427305000
2011	7 000 000 000	20	2143327599
How many people were			107 615 707,768
October 31, 2011 The UN announced: the population of the Earth
Percentage of those ever born who live in 2019			6,5 %

Any estimate of the total number of people who have ever been born will mainly depend on two factors: the length of time people have lived on Earth and the average size of the human population at different periods.

Fixing the time when humanity actually came into existence is not a simple matter. Various ancestors of Homo sapiens ( Homo sapiens) appear to have appeared at least 700,000 years ago with brains as large as 900 cm 3 . Of course, great apes walked the earth already several million years ago.

Growth rate of world population

According to the United Nations, the determinants for the consequences of demographic trends in modern Homo sapiens appeared around 50,000 BC. This long period of 50,000 years is the key to the question of how many people have lived on earth.

At the dawn of agriculture around 8000 BC, the world's population was somewhere in the order of 5 million. Slow population growth over a period from about 5 million to 300 million per year. 8000 years have been very low growth - only 0.0512 percent per year. In different regions, the number was different and deviated as a reaction to the vagaries of nature, military operations, changes in weather and climatic conditions, hunger.

In any case, people's lives were short and probably average life expectancy has been around 10 years for most of human history. An estimate of the average life expectancy in Iron Age France was, for example, according to scientists, only 10-12 years. Under these conditions, a birth rate of about 80 per 1000 people is determined just to survive. Today, a high birth rate of about 45-50 per 1000 population is observed only in a few countries in Africa and in a few countries in the Middle East with a young population.

The birth rate assumption significantly affects the estimate of the number of people how many people lived in total on earth. Infant mortality in early human history is thought to have been very high - perhaps 500 deaths per 1,000 births or even higher. Children were probably a liability among hunter-gatherer societies and the fact is that this most likely led to the practice of infanticide. Under these circumstances, a disproportionate number of births would be required to support the growth of the world's population, and this would raise the estimated number of "how many people lived on earth".

Until the 1st century BC, the world may have consisted of 300 million people. According to one estimate of the population of the Roman Empire from Spain to Asia Minor - 45 million.

In 1650, the world's population had grown to about 500 million, a slight increase since the 1st century BC. The average annual growth rate of the earth's population in the Middle Ages was actually lower than BC. One of the reasons for this abnormally slow growth was the Black Death. This terrible plague was not limited to 14th century Europe. The epidemic began around 542 in Western Asia and spread slowly from there. It is believed that half of the Byzantine Empire was destroyed in the 6th century, with a total of 100 million deaths. Such large fluctuations in population greatly exacerbate the difficulty of estimating the number of people who have ever lived. Diseases did not lead to natural.

By 1800, however, the world's population had passed the 1 billion mark and has continued to rise since then to the current UN number on October 31, 2011 of 7 billion.

How many people lived on earth in total requires choosing a time interval from antiquity to the present and applying the number of births for each period.

What determines the growth rate of the number of people on Earth

One of the complicating factors in the number of people is the growth rate of the world's population. Do they rise from a certain level and then change dramatically in response to hunger and climate change? Or do they grow at a constant rate from one point in time to another? Scientists cannot know the answers to these questions, although paleontologists have produced a number of theories. To support this hypothesis, constant growth was assumed to apply to every period up to the present. Birth rates were set at 80 per 1000 per year BC. and 60 per 1000 in the Middle Ages. The birth rate then declined in the middle of the last century to below 40 per 1,000 people and even lower in the modern period. The truth is growing.

This semi-scientific approach gives an estimate of about 108 billion births at the dawn of the human race.

Obviously, the period 8000 BC. BC. is the key to the extent of the definition, but unfortunately little is known about that era. Some aspects, or perhaps almost all aspects, are conjectures and one approach to this question is not achievable. The conditions of the constant growth of the earth's population in an earlier period may underestimate the number at that time. And, of course, timing the evolutionary consequences of humanity on the planet about 50,000 years ago is also probabilistic.

Thus, the estimate is determined that about 6.5% of all people ever born are alive today. This is actually quite a large percentage with such an "old" Earth.

Recently, scientists have calculated the maximum number of people that the biosphere can withstand. On the one hand, the forecast turned out to be optimistic - even if the population size Homo sapiens reaches 10 billion people, hunger can still be avoided. However, at the current rate of population growth, this milestone may soon be overcome.

"The strength of mankind is so much greater than the strength of the Earth, spent on supporting its existence, that the human race must be overtaken by premature death - in one form or another." The philosopher Thomas Malthus wrote these ominous words at the end of the 18th century in his essay about how he sees the future of mankind.

Humanity's irresistible urge to reproduce, according to Malthus, will inevitably lead to overpopulation of the planet, the destruction of all resources and death from starvation. To what maximum in the "support of the existence" of mankind can the Earth reach? And how right is Malthus in his vision of our future?

The maximum "capacity" of the planet, according to modern scientists, is nine to ten billion people. The sociobiologist Edward Wilson bases his assessment on calculations of the earth's available resources. First, the amount of fresh water is limited. And secondly, the Earth can no longer produce the same amount of food as 200 years ago. Even at maximum efficiency, that is, if absolutely all the grown grain goes to people and not to livestock (which is an inefficient way of converting plant energy into food energy), there are limits to the distribution of the crop.

“If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving the livestock with little or no grain, 1.4 billion hectares of arable land could feed 10 billion people,” Wilson cites his calculations. The harvest from these hectares would amount to two billion tons of grain per year. This is enough for 10 billion herbivorous citizens, but omnivores could feed four times less with such an amount of grain. With so much of the world's grain harvest going to feed livestock and poultry, two billion tons of grain would barely cover the needs of the 2.5 billion meat-eaters and those who end up eating them.

Ten billion people is the level at which there will still be no squabbling over a piece of bread. And this is the extreme limit. It is unrealistic to transfer everyone to plant foods - many are not going to give up meat - therefore, we can already say with confidence now: the Earth will not be able to feed ten billion people.

Population biologist Doel Cohen of Columbia University in New York adds that there are a number of other factors limiting the planet's ability to cycle nitrogen, the rate of carbon dioxide recycling in the atmosphere, ensuring enough phosphorus, and so on. Even if the entire world's population could be converted to vegetarianism, we could easily die out due to lack of oxygen. How exactly humanity will affect the atmosphere is not yet known for sure - the volume of emissions is rather big, but more and more methods are being developed to help avoid turning the Earth into a giant greenhouse. "The truth is, no one knows when and at what population level the limit will be reached," says Cohen.

The seven billionth inhabitant of the planet was born a month ago. The United Nations predicts that the 10 billionth baby will be born in 2100. However, in almost 90 years, humanity can turn around in the opposite direction, scientists say. The trend is that families are becoming smaller and smaller in composition. Comparing data from 230 countries since 1950, the researchers concluded that in most countries, the birth rate has been steadily falling, says Gerhard Heilig, head of the UN's Office of Population Estimates and Projections.