How many people live in the world. Population growth and its mathematical model
Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences S. KAPITSA (Institute for Physical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences).
Of all the global problems of concern to mankind, the issue of world population growth seems to be one of the main ones. The population size expresses the total result of all the economic, social and cultural activities of a person that makes up his history. Demography is able to provide only quantitative data, without describing the laws of human development. Sergey Petrovich Kapitsa tried to fill this gap by creating a mathematical model of the world demographic process. The model shows that the rate of population growth does not depend on external conditions, explains the reasons for the current surge in the birth rate ("demographic transition") and predicts that in the near future the Earth's population will stop growing, stopping at about 14 billion people. On the fourteenth of February, Sergei Petrovich turned 70 years old. The editorial board of the magazine congratulates its author on the anniversary and wishes him many years of fruitful work.
This is how the world population grew according to demographic data (1) and a theoretical model (2), starting from 1600 BC (R.Kh.).
World population growth from 1750 to 2150, averaged over decades: 1 - developing countries, 2 - developed countries.
Different scenarios for the development of mankind predict the nature of population growth in different ways.
The growth of the world's population from the emergence of man to the foreseeable future, according to demographers.
Demographers predict that after 2000, the age composition of the world's population will begin to undergo dramatic changes. The number of people under the age of 14 will begin to fall (1), and over 65 years old - to grow (2), and by the end of the next century, our planet will greatly "age".
Development of mankind on a logarithmic time scale.
History has always described the past as a chain of events and processes in which we were primarily interested in what exactly happened, the qualitative side of the matter, and quantitative characteristics were of secondary importance. This was primarily because the accumulation of facts and concepts must precede them. quantitative characteristics... However, sooner or later they must penetrate into history, and not as an illustration of this or that event, but as a way of a deeper understanding of the historical process. To do this, it is necessary to begin to consider history as a process of system development.
In recent decades, this so-called systemic approach has become widespread. It was developed first in physics to describe the behavior of systems of many particles, then it came to chemistry and biology, and later it began to be used to study social and economic phenomena. However, it was believed that he was not suitable for describing the development of mankind, for only having well understood the mechanism demographic processes, you can explain them, measure the characteristics and move from the particular to the general.
But it was for humanity as a whole that this approach turned out to be unproductive. It was not clear what was to be measured, there were no clear quantitative data. Already in economics, fundamental difficulties arose in the quantitative comparison of dissimilar concepts, such as, for example, labor and goods, raw materials and information, and in history only the course of time in the past is well traced.
However, there is one parameter that is as universal as time and applies to all eras - population size. In life, we turn to him very often. Arriving in another city, we are interested in how many inhabitants there are, and having gathered in an unfamiliar country, we will certainly find out what its population is. In the 1930s, there were two billion people on the planet, but now there are almost six billion of us. But we rarely remember the population size in the historical past. So, in 1700 there were ten times less people on Earth than today, and how many of them lived then in Russia, hardly anyone will answer right away, although almost everyone knows the years of the reign of Peter I.
But it is precisely the size of the population that is closely related to the entire economic, social and cultural activity of mankind, which constitutes its history. Thus, quantitative demographic data provide a universal key to understanding the past. They make it possible to find an answer, albeit a limited one, to a clearly posed question about the mechanism of human development as a whole.
In a world where 21 people are born every second and 18 people die every second, the world's population is increasing by two hundred and fifty thousand people every day, and this increase is almost entirely in developing countries. The growth rate is so high - it is approaching ninety million a year - that it has come to be seen as population explosion capable of shaking the planet. It is the continuous increase in the world's population that requires an ever-increasing production of food and energy, the consumption of mineral resources and leads to an ever-increasing pressure on the biosphere of the planet. The image of unrestrained population growth, if naively extrapolated into the future, leads to alarming predictions and even apocalyptic scenarios for the global future of humanity. However, it is clear that it is possible to determine development in the foreseeable future - and this is precisely what is of the greatest interest - only by correctly describing the past of mankind.
Currently, humanity is going through the so-called demographic transition. This phenomenon consists in a sharp increase in the rate of population growth, then an equally rapid decrease and in the stabilization of the population. The demographic transition is accompanied by an increase in productive forces, the displacement of significant masses of the population from villages to cities, and a sharp change in the age composition of the population. In today's interconnected and interdependent world, it will be completed in less than a hundred years and will pass much faster than in Europe, where a similar process began at the end of the 18th century. Now the transition covers most of the world's population, it has already ended in the so-called developed countries ah, and now it goes only in developing countries.
WORLD POPULATION AS A SYSTEM
For a long time it was considered impossible to consider the world's population as a system, as a single closed object, which is sufficient to characterize the number of people at a given moment. Many demographers saw in humanity only the sum of the population of all countries, which does not make sense of an objective dynamic characteristic.
The key concept for the system is interaction. But it is the modern world, with its migration flows, transport, information and trade links that unite everyone into one whole, that can be considered as an interacting system. This approach is also valid in relation to the past: even when there were much fewer people and the world was largely divided, individual regions still slowly but surely interacted, remaining a system.
Applying the concept of a system, it is necessary to determine what processes and at what speed occur in it. So, the emergence of ethnic groups and the division of dialects and languages occurs in its own time scale. The division of humanity into races took more time, and the formation of a global demographic system takes even longer. Finally, the processes of biological evolution, determined by the genetic nature of man, are the slowest. There is reason to assert that over a million years, man has biologically little changed, and the main development and self-organization of mankind took place in the social and technological sphere.
Almost all convenient parts of the Earth serve as the habitat of mankind. In terms of numbers, we have outstripped all animals comparable to us in size and nutrition by five orders of magnitude (except, perhaps, only domestic animals, the number of which is artificially supported). Humanity has long created its own environment and separated from the rest of the biosphere. But now, when human activity has acquired a global scale, the question of its influence on nature has arisen with all the urgency. That is why it is very important to understand what factors determine the growth in the number of people on the planet.
MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF GROWTH IN THE EARTH'S POPULATION
The creation of a model does not consist in fitting formulas to certain numerical data, but in finding mathematical images that express the behavior of the system and correspond to the task at hand. This process of sequential model building is best developed in theoretical physics, which describes reality in the form of solving systems of certain equations (see "Science and Life" Nos. 2, 3, 1997).
The very possibility of using the methods of theoretical physics to build a demographic model capable of growing to the status of a theory seems far from obvious, rather even incredible. Nevertheless, for the population of the Earth, when many different factors and circumstances interact, such an approach is quite feasible precisely because of the complexity of the system. Random deviations in space and time will be averaged, and the main regularities will become visible, on which the dynamics of world population growth objectively depends.
We will characterize the world population at time T by the number of people N. We will consider the growth process over a significant time interval - a very large number of generations, so as not to take into account either the human life span or the distribution of people by age and sex. Under such conditions, it can be assumed that population growth occurs self-similarly (or, as they say, self-similar), that is, according to the same law for different time scales and the number of people. And this means that the relative growth rate of the number of people on the planet is constant and it can be described not by the exponent underlying so many models, but only by the power law.
How exponential growth is inapplicable can be seen in the following example. Suppose humanity in the past doubled in the same 40 years as it does today. Let us estimate when such a process could begin. To do this, we will express the world population as a power of two: 5.7. 10 9 ~ 10 32. Then 32 generations, or 40x32 = 1280 years ago, in the 7th century, two hundred years before the baptism of Russia, we could all descend from Adam and Eve! Even if the doubling time is increased tenfold, this moment will move back to the beginning of the Neolithic, when in fact there were about 10 million people.
There is, however, a formula that describes with surprising accuracy the growth of the Earth's population over hundreds and even many thousands of years and has the necessary - power - form:
This expression was obtained by processing data over many centuries by a number of researchers (Mackendrick, Forster, Horner), who saw in it only an empirical dependence, which has no deep meaning. The author of this article also received the same formula independently of them, but he regarded it as a physically and mathematically meaningful description of the process of self-similar development. It occurs according to the hyperbolic law of evolution, called the peaking regime. Such phenomena are characteristic precisely of the "explosive" behavior of systems and have been studied in detail in modern research on nonlinear dynamics.
Nevertheless, such formulas are fundamentally limited by their range of applicability. First, the formula implies that the world's population will tend to infinity as we approach 2025, forcing some to consider it the date of the coming of the Doomsday, an apocalyptic consequence of the population explosion. Secondly, an equally absurd result is obtained for the distant past, since at the creation of the Universe 20 billion years ago, ten people should have been present, undoubtedly discussing the greatness of what is happening. Thus, this solution is limited both in the future and in the past, and it is fair to raise the question of the limits of its applicability.
The factor that was not taken into account is the time that characterizes a person's life - his reproductive ability and life expectancy. This factor manifests itself when passing through the demographic transition - a process characteristic of all populations, clearly visible both in individual countries and throughout the world.
If we introduce into the model the time τ characteristic of a person's life, the features of population growth both in the past and in the present are excluded. The growth process begins at T 0 = = 4.4 million years ago and continues beyond the critical date T 1 into the foreseeable future. It is expressed by the formula
describing the era before the demographic transition and the transition itself. The value of the new constants is obtained by comparing modern demographic data with the calculation:
This formula becomes the original expression (1) in the past, and all solutions describe the growth of humanity over three eras. In the first - epoch A, with a duration of 2.8 million years - a linear growth occurs, which then turns into a hyperbolic growth of epoch B, which ends after 1965 with a demographic transition. After the demographic transition, the growth in the population over the course of a generation becomes comparable to the population of the world itself. And the number will begin to strive for the asymptotically stabilized regime of the C epoch, that is, it is steadily approaching the limit of 14 billion. This is 2.5 times more than at present.
Due to the introduction of the characteristic time, the critical year of the break T 1 is shifted from 2025 to 2007. The value τ = 42 years itself reflects quite well some average characteristic of a person's life, although it was obtained from the processing of demographic data, and not taken from life.
The main and only dynamic characteristic of the system that determines its development is the dimensionless constant K = 67,000. It serves as the internal scale of the size of a group of people and determines the collective nature of the interaction that describes growth. The numbers of this order determine the optimal size of a city or urban area and the number of a stably existing natural species.
The growth rate for time t in the epoch B turns out to be equal to N 2 / K 2, where the meaning of the parameter K is clearly visible: it determines the growth rate per generation as a result of pairwise interaction of groups of K people. This simplest non-linear expression describes collective relationships, summing up all the processes and elementary interactions that take place in society. It only applies to all of humanity. As is well known from algebra, the square of the sum is always more amount squares; that is why it is not possible to summarize growth factors for individual regions or countries.
The meaning of the law is that development is self-accelerating, and each next step uses all the experience previously accumulated by humanity, which plays a major role in this process. A person's long childhood, mastery of speech, training, education and upbringing to a large extent determine the only, specific for people, way of development and self-organization. One might think that it is not the rate of reproduction, but the cumulative experience, interaction, dissemination and transmission from generation to generation of knowledge, customs and culture that qualitatively distinguish the evolution of mankind and determine the rate of population growth. This interaction should be considered as an intrinsic property of a dynamic system. Therefore, the time has come to abandon once and for all the presentation of social phenomena in the form of a simple sum of elementary cause-and-effect relationships, which, in principle, is not able to describe the behavior of complex systems over long periods of time and over a large space.
Based on the ideas of the theory, it is easy to determine the limit to which the number of humanity tends in the foreseeable future: 14 billion people, and the time of the beginning of growth in epoch A: 4.4 million years ago. You can also estimate the total number of people who have ever lived on Earth: P = 2K 2 lnK = 100 billion people.
In this estimate, the average life span of a person is considered equal to τ / 2 = 21 years, as is customary among demographers and anthropologists, who have received values for P from 80 to 150 billion people. Significantly, the whole picture of growth is best described on a double logarithmic scale. This is not only a matter of convenience, when it is necessary to imagine the behavior of quantities changing by ten orders of magnitude, there is a much deeper meaning here. On a double logarithmic scale, all power laws - the laws of self-similar development - look like straight lines, showing that the relative growth rate remains constant at all times. This allows you to take a fresh look at the pace of development and periodization of the entire history of mankind.
COMPARISON WITH ANTHROPOLOGY AND DEMOGRAPHY DATA
Comparison of the model with the data of paleoanthropology and paleodemography will make it possible to describe the development of mankind over a gigantic period of time. The initial epoch of linear growth of A begins 4.4 million years ago and continues with Kτ = 2.8 million years. So the model outlines the initial stage of human growth, which can be identified with the era of separation of hominids from hominoids, which began 4.5 million years ago. By the end of Age A, Homo habilis ("skillful man") appeared, and its population increased to 100 thousand people.
To check the calculations, it was required to compare the calculated values with the already known ones. Such information could have been possessed by the famous French archaeologist and anthropologist Yves Coppens. I went to see him in the old building of the College de France on the Rue d'Ecole in the Latin Quarter of Paris and asked:
Professor, how many people lived on Earth 1.6 million years ago?
One hundred thousand, - the answer immediately followed, which completely amazed me, making me think that the researcher had calculated this figure. However, Coppens immediately rejected this assumption, saying that he was not a theoretician, but a field researcher. And his assessment is based on the fact that then in Africa there were about a thousand sites, in which large families - about a hundred people each - lived. This figure consolidated an essential moment in the history of mankind, when the “skillful man” appeared in the Lower Paleolithic.
Age B of hyperbolic growth spans the Paleolithic, Neolithic and historical periods. During this most important period of time lasting 1.6 million years, the number of people has once again increased by K times. By the time of the onset of the demographic transition, which can be attributed to 1965, the estimated population of the Earth was already 3.5 billion.
During the Stone Age, mankind spread across the globe. At that time, the Pleistocene climate was changing dramatically, up to five glaciations passed, and the level of the World Ocean changed by a hundred meters. The geography of the Earth was reshaped, continents and islands were connected and diverged again, man occupied more and more new territories. Its number grew slowly at first, but then with increasing speed.
From the concept of the model, it follows that when connections between individual groups of the population and the bulk of humanity were interrupted for a long time, development slowed down in them. Anthropology is well aware that the isolation of small groups leads to a slowdown in their evolution: even today, communities can be found that are at the Neolithic and even Paleolithic stages of development. But in the Eurasian space, through which tribes roamed and peoples migrated, ethnic groups and languages were formed, there was a systematic and constant growth. At a certain stage, the interaction proceeded along the Steppe Road, and later the Great Silk Road, connecting China, Europe and India, acquired the greatest importance. Since antiquity, there have been intensive intercontinental ties along it, world religions and new technologies have spread.
Data on the world's population over the entire time range fit fairly well into the proposed model, but as we move into the past, the accuracy of the estimate decreases. So, already for the time of the Nativity of Christ, paleodemographers give figures for the world's population from 100 to 250 million people, and from the calculation one should expect about 100 million.
Given the closeness of these estimates, they should be considered quite satisfactory up to the very beginning of the emergence of mankind. This is all the more surprising since the calculation implies the constancy of growth constants, which are determined on the basis of modern data, but nevertheless are applicable to the distant past. This means that the model correctly captures the main features of the growth of the world's population.
It will be instructive to compare model calculations with demographic forecasts for the near future. The mathematical model points to an asymptotic transition to the 14 billion limit, with 90% of the population limit - 12.5 billion - expected by 2135. And according to the optimal scenario of the UN, the population of the Earth will reach the permanent limit of 11 600 million by this time. Note that over the past decades, demographic forecasts have been repeatedly revised upward. In the latest study, the estimated human population up to 2100 and the estimates made converge and essentially overlap.
DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION
Let us turn to the phenomenon of demographic transition as a very special period that requires separate consideration. The duration of the transition is only 2τ = 84 years, but during this time, which is 1/50 000 of the entire history, a radical change in the nature of the development of mankind will take place. This time will outlive 1/10 of all people who have ever lived on Earth. The severity of the transition is largely due to the synchronization of development processes, to the strong interaction that is observed today in the world demographic system.
It is the "shock", aggravated nature of the transition, with time less than the average life expectancy of 70 years, that leads to a violation of the value and ethical concepts developed over the millennia of our history. Today, this is seen as the cause of the disintegration of society, the growing disorder of life and the reasons for the stress so characteristic of our time.
With the demographic transition, the ratio between the younger and older generations changes radically. From the point of view of the systems approach and statistical physics, the transition resembles a phase transformation, which should be associated with a change in the age distribution of the population.
TRANSFORMATION OF RATES OF DEVELOPMENT IN TIME
One more significant conclusion can be drawn from the developed concepts: the scale of historical time changes with the growth of humanity. Thus, the history of Ancient Egypt spans three millennia and ended 2700 years ago. The decline of the Roman Empire lasted 1,500 years, while the current empires were created over the centuries and disintegrated over the decades. This change in the time scale by hundreds and thousands of times clearly shows the scale invariance of the historical process, its self-similarity. On a logarithmic scale, each subsequent cycle is shorter than the previous one by e = 2.72 times and leads to an increase in the number by the same time. In each of the lnK = 11 periods of epoch B, 2K 2 = 9 billion people lived, while the duration of the cycles varied from 1 million to 42 years.
ND Kondrat'ev first drew attention to such periodicity of large socio-technological cycles in the history of modern times in 1928, and since then such cycles have been associated with his name. However, this periodicity is clearly realized only in the logarithmic representation of development and covers the entire history of mankind. The stretching of time is clearly visible as the distance from the critical date - 2007, increases. So, a hundred years ago, in 1900, the population growth rate ∆N / N = 1% per year, 100 thousand years ago it was 0.001%. And at the beginning of the Paleolithic, 1.6 million years ago, a noticeable increase - by 150 thousand people (today this amount is added in half a day) - could have occurred in only a million years.
It was in the Paleolithic that that self-accelerated development began, which has since continued unchanged for a million years. By the beginning of the Neolithic, 10-12 thousand years ago, the growth rate was already 10 thousand times higher than at the beginning of the Stone Age, and the world population was 10-15 million. There is no Neolithic revolution as a leap within the framework of the model, since it describes only the average picture of development, which, on average, for mankind proceeded quite smoothly. Let's pay attention to the fact that by this time half of all people who have ever lived managed to live, and on a logarithmic scale, half of the time has passed from T 0 to T 1. Thus, in a sense, the past of humanity is much closer than it seems to us. After 2007, the population will stabilize, and in the future, the historical passage of time may again become more and more stretched.
It is interesting to note that recently the Russian historian I. M. Dyakonov in his review "The Paths of History. From the Most Ancient Man to the Present Day" clearly pointed out the exponential reduction in the duration of historical periods as we approach our time. The historian's thoughts fully correspond to our model, where the same conclusions are simply clothed in another - mathematical - form. This example shows how closely the vision of the traditional humanities and the images belonging to the exact sciences touch, even intersect.
IMPACT OF RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT ON POPULATION GROWTH
The human development model predicts that the population growth limit is not affected external factors- environment and availability of resources. It is determined only by internal factors that invariably operate for a million years. Indeed, humanity as a whole has always had sufficient resources, which man mastered, settling on the Earth and increasing production efficiency. When contacts ceased, there were no resources and free space, local development ended, but the overall growth was steady. Today in developed countries 3-4 percent of the population can feed the entire country. According to experts The International Organization food, currently there is on the planet and in the foreseeable future there will be enough reserves to feed 20-25 billion people. This will allow humanity to safely bypass the demographic transition, in which the population will increase by only 2.5 times. Thus, the limit to population growth should be sought not in the global lack of resources, but in the laws of human development, which can be formulated as the principle of the demographic imperative, as a consequence of the law of population growth inherent in humanity itself. This conclusion requires deep and comprehensive discussion and is very significant, since the long-term strategy of humanity is associated with it.
Resources, however, are highly unevenly distributed across the planet. In overcrowded cities and countries, they are already depleted or close to being depleted. Argentina, for example, has an area of only 30% less than India, the country of the most ancient civilization, whose population is 30 times larger and lives very poor. But Argentina, modern development which began 200 years ago, could, according to experts, feed the whole world.
But within the framework of this approach, there is no difference between developed and developing countries. All of them equally belong to the same system of humanity and are simply in different stages of the demographic transition. Moreover, now, primarily due to the exchange of information, the development of the so-called third world countries is going twice as fast as it did in developed countries, just as younger brothers often develop faster than the older one, borrowing his experience.
In the foreseeable future, after the demographic transition, the question of the criteria for the development of mankind will arise. If in the past quantitative growth was the basis, then after the stabilization of the number, it should be the quality of the population. A change in the age structure will lead to a deep restructuring of the hierarchy of values, a greater burden on health care, social protection and education systems. These fundamental changes in the value attitudes of society will undoubtedly constitute the main problem in the near future, at a new stage in the evolution of mankind.
SUSTAINABILITY OF DEVELOPMENT
The sustainability of human development in the process of growth and especially during the transition period is of exceptional importance from a historical and social point of view. However, at the first stage of the demographic transition, as the calculation shows, stability is minimal, and at this moment there is a historically sudden appearance of a young and active generation. This was the case in Europe in the 19th century, where demographic prerequisites for rapid economic growth and powerful waves of emigration that led to the settlement of the New World, Siberia and Australia emerged. But they were unable to sufficiently stabilize the process of world development and prevent the crisis that led to world wars.
On the eve of the First World War, Europe developed at an unprecedented and unsurpassed pace. The economies of Germany and Russia were growing at more than 10% per year. The flourishing of science and arts of that time predetermined the entire intellectual life of the twentieth century. But "Belle Epoque" is beautiful time the heyday of Europe, was cut short by a fatal shot in Sarajevo.
World wars have led to the death of about 100 million people - 5% of the world's population. From the "black death" - a terrible plague epidemic - entire countries died out in the XIV century. But even then, humanity always very quickly made up for the losses and, what is remarkable, returned to the previous stable growth trajectory.
At present, however, the potential for sustainability of growth may be lost, as the demographic transition in developing countries is going twice as fast as in Europe, and will reach ten times as many people. Comparing the dynamics of population growth in Europe and Asia, one can see that Europe will forever become a small outskirts, and the center of development will soon move to the Asia-Pacific region. Only taking into account the speed of its development, it is possible to understand what kind of world our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have to live in. Uneven settlement of territories on the borders of states and their economic inequality can also threaten global security. The vast expanses of Siberia, for example, are now losing population, while the northern provinces of China are rapidly populating. There is a constant northward migration across the US-Mexico border, and similar processes could occur with Indonesia's 200 million people north of vast Australia, where only 18 million live.
The rapidly growing unevenness of development can lead to a complete loss of sustainability of growth and, as a result, lead to armed conflicts. It is impossible to predict the course of events in principle, but it is not only possible, but also necessary to indicate their probability. Today, the world community faces an important task: to preserve peace in an era of drastic changes and prevent local conflicts from flaring up into a global military conflagration similar to those that broke out in Europe in the early and mid-twentieth century. Without global sustainability, it is impossible to solve any other problems, no matter how significant they may seem. Therefore, their discussion, along with issues of military, economic and environmental security, should include, and not in the last place, the demographic factor, taking into account its quantitative, qualitative and ethnic aspects.
DEMOGRAPHIC SITUATION IN RUSSIA
As already mentioned, the fate of a single country cannot be considered by the methods developed to describe all of humanity. However, developed ideas allow us to consider each individual country as a part of the whole. This was all the more true for the Soviet Union and is true now for Russia (see Science and Life, No.).
Due to the size and multinational composition, the variety of geographic conditions, historical paths development and a closed economy, the regional processes taking place in the Union largely reflected and modeled global phenomena. At present, the demographic transition is nearing completion in Russia; population growth stops, its numbers stabilize. However, this secular process is superimposed on the events of the last ten years, and first of all - economic crisis... It led to profound shocks and resulted in a decrease in the average life expectancy, especially for men, which was less than 60 years old.
With the birth rate, according to demographers, nothing so catastrophic is happening. Its systematic decline is quite natural and characteristic of all modern developed countries. Therefore, Russia will have to continue to live in conditions of low fertility, in which migration of the population has begun to play an important role. If before 1970 there was mainly emigration from Russia, now up to 800 thousand people arrive in the country every year. Migration directly affects demographic situation in the country and contributes to some compensation for losses.
Reducing the number of young citizens will require a transition to a professional army and an abandonment of universal conscription - a very wasteful form of use of human resources. Russia will face this situation by the beginning of the next century, and by that time the reform of the army should lead to new principles for the formation of the armed forces. A decrease in the share of unskilled labor will increase the requirements for the quality of education, for the early choice of vocational guidance and create incentives for creative growth.
In some regions of Russia and especially in the neighboring countries of Central Asia, population growth continues, due to the first stage of the demographic transition. It is accompanied by characteristic phenomena: an influx of population into cities, a growing mass of restless youth, an imbalance in the development of the country and, as a consequence, an increasing instability of society. It is very important for Russia to understand that these processes are fundamental and will drag on for a very long time. On the one hand, they are associated not only with world, but also with internal, specific to our history, circumstances. If we can and must cope with the latter, then global processes are outside our influence: it requires a global political will, which is not yet available. On the other hand, it is in the destinies of our country that the complex nature of the demographic revolution taking place in the world is visible - a rapid transition, unique in its dynamics, which ends a million years of relentless quantitative growth of humanity.
CONCLUSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The proposed model makes it possible to cover a huge range of time and a range of phenomena, which, in fact, includes the entire history of mankind. It is not applicable to individual regions and countries, but it shows that the course of world development affects every country, every demographic subsystem, as a part of a whole. The model provides only a general, macroscopic description of the phenomena and cannot pretend to explain the mechanisms leading to population growth. The validity of the modeling principles should be seen not only and not so much in how closely the calculation coincides with the observed data, but in the validity of the basic assumptions and in the successful application of methods of nonlinear mechanics to the analysis of population growth.
The theory established the line from which time should be counted, and the scale of time, which stretches with distance into the past, responding to the intuitive ideas of anthropologists and historians about the periodization of development and giving them a quantitative meaning.
An analysis of the theoretical equation shows that population growth has always followed a quadratic law, and now humanity is undergoing an unprecedented change in the development paradigm. The end of an extremely vast era is coming, and the time of the transition, of which we have become witnesses and participants, is very compressed.
The model paradoxically indicates that throughout history, the development of mankind has depended not on external parameters, but on the internal properties of the system. This circumstance made it possible to reasonably refute the principle of Malthus, who asserted that it is resources that determine the rate and limit of population growth. Therefore, it should be considered expedient to deploy interdisciplinary complex studies of demographic and related problems, in which mathematical modeling should be involved along with other methods.
Mathematical models are not only a means for quantitatively describing phenomena. They should be seen as a source of images and analogies that can expand the range of ideas to which the strict concepts of the exact sciences cannot be applied. First of all, this applies to demography, since the number of people as a characteristic of a community has a clear and universal meaning. Thus, in demographic problem one should see a new object for theoretical research in physics and mathematics.
If the ideas developed above help to offer some kind of common development perspective for mankind, a picture suitable for anthropology and demography, sociology and history, and if doctors and politicians will allow them to see the prerequisites of the current transition period as a source of stress for an individual and a critical state for the entire world community, the author will consider the experience of their interdisciplinary research justified.
Literature
Kapitsa S.P. Phenomenological theory of the growth of the Earth's population. "Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk", vol. 166, no. 1, 1996.
Kapitsa S.P., Kurdyumov S.P., Malinetskiy G.G. The world of the future. Moscow: Nauka, 1997.
King A. and Schneider A. The first global revolution. Moscow: Progress, 1992.
Contents: I. Statistics: 1) The number of inhabitants of the Earth in general and Europe in particular; 2) Population density; 3) Accommodation of the population; 4) Composition of the population: a) by sex, b) by age, c) by sex and age, d) by sex, age and marital status; ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron
Population- (population) in demography, the totality of people living on Earth (population of the Earth) or within a specific territory of a continent, country, region, etc. Population is continuously renewed in the course of reproduction ... Wikipedia
German population- The population of the Federal Republic of Germany is 81,802,000 (2009). Germany is the most populous country in the European Union. On May 9, 2011, for the first time since the unification of Germany, a general population census was carried out. Contents 1 ... ... Wikipedia
Loire lands- Pays de la Loire ... Wikipedia
Population of the Pskov region- The population of the districts of the Pskov region ... Wikipedia
Population of Udmurtia- The population of the Udmurt Republic, as of October 14, 2010, amounted to 1,521,420 people. Udmurtia ranks 29th in terms of population, among the subjects Russian Federation... According to preliminary results, for the first time in ... ... Wikipedia
Loire lands- (West Loire, District of the Loire, Pays de la Loire, fr. Pays de la Loire) region in the west of France (see France), includes the departments of Mayenne, Sarthe, Maine and Loire, Loire Atlantique and Vendée. The region is located in the lower reaches of the Loire and on the coast ... ... Geographical encyclopedia
Trinidad and Tobago population- is very diverse in its composition, which reflects the history of the country's development. As of July 2008, the population of the state was estimated at 1,231,323 people. Contents 1 Demographic history ... Wikipedia
Population. Economically active population- Statistics refer to the economically active population of Latin American countries all employed, unemployed and first-time job seekers ( able-bodied population, in accordance with conventionally established age limits, in Latin America ... ...
Population. Urbanization- The cities created before European colonization were destroyed in the process. The cities founded by the Spaniards and the Portuguese had mainly administrative, military, commercial and religious functions. By 1900 in Latin America in cities ... ... Encyclopedic guide "Latin America"
Books
- The population of the steppe interfluve of the Danube and the Dniester at the end of the 8th - beginning of the 11th centuries A.D. NS. Balkan-Danube culture, V.I.Kozlov. The book summarizes information about the Balkan-Danube archaeological culture in the steppe interfluve of the Danube and the Dniester, the carriers of which are directly related to the history of the early medieval Bulgarian ... Buy for 1555 rubles
- The population of rural societies and the amount of arable allotment land they have,. The population of rural societies and the amount they have of arable allotment land according to a survey of 1893 on rural societies in 46 provinces of European Russia. Proceedings of the Central Statistical ...
* Estimated world population at the moment based on average fertility and mortality rates. The data error is no more than 1%.
Above you see the number of inhabitants at the moment based on the latest population censuses and the average birth and death rates. While maintaining the growth rates, we will overcome the 8 billion mark by 2024.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, there has been an explosive growth in the number of inhabitants. If we consider the history of mankind from 10,000 BC, then over the first 12 thousand years, the population increased linearly. The mark of one billion people was first crossed only in 1820. And in the last 100 years alone, the population has grown from 1.5 billion to 7.5 billion! Before the eyes of people born before 1970, there was a doubling of the world's population.
Population growth peaked in 1963, when the annual growth was 2.2%. But even now, the population in absolute terms continues to grow rapidly (in 2002 by 74 million, in 2014 by 87 million).
Since 1990, there has been a decline in the growth rate of the world's population. The 8 billion mark is planned to be reached in 2024. In 2030, the population will be about 8.4 billion, in 2050 - 9.4 billion, in 2100 - 11.3 billion. It is predicted that in 2135 the world population will stabilize with a total population of 12-14 billion people.
According to a rough estimate of Peter Grunwald, a statistician at the Dutch Center for Mathematics and Informatics, in the entire history of mankind, which began 162 thousand years ago, more than 107 billion people were born on Earth.
As for the population of individual countries, you will find detailed statistics in our section.
Since countries have different birth and death rates, growth rates are also uneven. In this regard, by 2025, a change in the leader in terms of the number of inhabitants is expected, China will give way to India. If we look at the continents as a whole, then the countries in Africa have the highest population growth rates.
There are more than 200 states on planet Earth (including partially recognized and unrecognized countries).
Dear Readers! The article talks about typical ways of solving legal issues, but each case is individual. If you want to know how solve your problem- contact a consultant:
APPLICATIONS AND CALLS ARE ACCEPTED 24/7 and WITHOUT DAYS.
It's fast and IS FREE!
They all 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 world 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 around the planet is extremely uneven. More than 1/3 of all humanity lives in China and India, and 2/3 of the world's inhabitants live in the 15 most populous countries.
For comparison, we give in the table information about the population of the planet in different periods of human development:
Note. Data for 1500 and earlier are derived from scientific assessment. At that time, accounting and census were not yet engaged.
Main factors
The population of each country is counted as local authorities and the international scientific community.
In this case, data obtained as a result of censuses, keeping migration records, etc. are used. In some states, it is almost impossible to estimate the exact number of inhabitants.This is hindered by military conflicts, and 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:
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 |
Turkey | 80810525 |
Thailand | 69037513 |
United Kingdom | 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 |
DPRK | 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 |
Byelorussia | 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 |
Moldavia | 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 |
Curacao (Nid.) | 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 (UK) | 30659 |
Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba (Nid.) | 24279 |
Palau | 21501 |
Cook Islands (New Zel.) | 20948 |
Anguilla (British) | 14763 |
Wallis and Futuna (France) | 13112 |
Nauru | 10263 |
Tuvalu | 9943 |
Saint Barthélemy (France) | 9417 |
Saint Pierre and Miquelon (France) | 6301 |
Montserrat (UK) | 5154 |
Saint Helena (UK) | 3956 |
Falkland Islands (UK) | 2912 |
Niue (New Zel.) | 1612 |
Tokelau (New Zel.) | 1383 |
Vatican | 842 |
Pitcairn Islands (UK) | 49 |
Leading countries
Most of all people live in China and India. In total, more than 2.740 billion people live in these two states.
Ranking 3rd in terms of the number of residents, the United States lags behind any of these countries very significantly, because they are home to only 325.719 million people.
In Russia, which is in 9th place, there are even significantly fewer people - 146.880 million people.
Who are the laggards
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 and 1980s.
It is associated with an increase in the availability of quality medical care, a general increase in living standards and a continuing birth rate in a number of countries.
Most of the newborns are in countries such as China and 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 world's population may reach 11 billion.
Based on data from UN projections for the world's population
Around 8000 BC, the world's population was approximately 5 million. Over the 8000-year period up to 1 A.D. it has grown to 200 million people (according to some estimates, 300 million or even 600 million), with a growth rate of 0.05% per year. A huge change in population size happened with the arrival of the industrial revolution:
- In 1800, the world's population reached one billion.
- The second billion in population was reached in just 130 years in 1930.
- The third billion was reached in less than 30 years in 1959.
- Over the next 15 years, in 1974 it will reach the fourth billion.
- In just 13 years, in 1987 - the fifth billion.
During the 20th century alone, the world's population grew from 1.65 to 6 billion.
In 1970, the population was half what it is today. Due to the decline in population growth, to double the population from the data today will take over 200 years.
Table with data on population by years and dynamics of population growth in the world by years until 2017
Pop% | Population in the world | Increase in% over the previous year | Absolute annual growth in the number of people | Average age of the population | Population density: number of people per 1 sq. Km. | Urbanization (urban population) in% of the total | Urban population |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2017 | 7 515 284 153 | 1,11% | 82 620 878 | 29,9 | 58 | 54,7% | 4 110 778 369 |
2016 | 7 432 663 275 | 1,13% | 83 191 176 | 29,9 | 57 | 54,3% | 4 034 193 153 |
2015 | 7 349 472 099 | 1,18% | 83 949 411 | 30 | 57 | 53,8% | 3 957 285 013 |
2010 | 6 929 725 043 | 1,23% | 82 017 839 | 29 | 53 | 51,5% | 3 571 272 167 |
2005 | 6 519 635 850 | 1,25% | 78 602 746 | 27 | 50 | 49,1% | 3 199 013 076 |
2000 | 6 126 622 121 | 1,33% | 78 299 807 | 26 | 47 | 46,6% | 2 856 131 072 |
1995 | 5 735 123 084 | 1,55% | 85 091 077 | 25 | 44 | 44,8% | 2 568 062 984 |
1990 | 5 309 667 699 | 1,82% | 91 425 426 | 24 | 41 | 43% | 2 285 030 904 |
1985 | 4 852 540 569 | 1,79% | 82 581 621 | 23 | 37 | 41,3% | 2 003 049 795 |
1980 | 4 439 632 465 | 1,8% | 75 646 647 | 23 | 34 | 39,4% | 1 749 539 272 |
1975 | 4 061 399 228 | 1,98% | 75 782 307 | 22 | 31 | 37,8% | 1 534 721 238 |
1970 | 3 682 487 691 | 2,08% | 71 998 514 | 22 | 28 | 36,7% | 1 350 280 789 |
1965 | 3 322 495 121 | 1,94% | 60 830 259 | 23 | 21 | There is no data | There is no data |
1960 | 3 018 343 828 | 1,82% | 52 005 861 | 23 | 23 | 33,8% | 1 019 494 911 |
1955 | 2 758 314 525 | 1,78% | 46 633 043 | 23 | 21 | There is no data | There is no data |
The world's population is currently (2017) growing at a rate of about 1.11% per year (up from 1.13% in 2016).
Currently, the average annual population growth is estimated at about 80 million. The annual growth rate peaked in the late 1960s, when it was 2% or more. The population growth rate peaked at 2.19 percent per year in 1963.
Annual growth rates are currently declining and are projected to continue to decline in the coming years. Population growth is projected to be less than 1% per annum by 2020 and less than 0.5% per annum by 2050. This means that the global population will continue to grow in the 21st century, but at a slower pace than in the recent past.
The world population doubled (100% increase) in the 40 years from 1959 (3 billion) to 1999 (6 billion). The world's population is now projected to increase by another 50% in 39 years, to 9 billion by 2038.
Forecast of the population of the Earth (all countries of the world) and demographic data for the period up to 2050:
date | Population | Growth in the number of a% in 1 year | Absolute growth in 1 year in the number of people | Average age of the world's population | Population density: number of people per 1 sq. km. | Percentage of urbanization | Total urban population |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2020 | 7 758 156 792 | 1,09% | 81 736 939 | 31 | 60 | 55,9% | 4 338 014 924 |
2025 | 8 141 661 007 | 0,97% | 76 700 843 | 32 | 63 | 57,8% | 4 705 773 576 |
2030 | 8 500 766 052 | 0,87% | 71 821 009 | 33 | 65 | 59,5% | 5 058 158 460 |
2035 | 8 838 907 877 | 0,78% | 67 628 365 | 34 | 68 | 61% | 5 394 234 712 |
2040 | 9 157 233 976 | 0,71% | 63 665 220 | 35 | 70 | 62,4% | 5 715 413 029 |
2045 | 9 453 891 780 | 0,64% | 59 331 561 | 35 | 73 | 63,8% | 6 030 924 065 |
2050 | 9 725 147 994 | 0,57% | 54 251 243 | 36 | 75 | 65,2% | 6 338 611 492 |
The main stages of the growth of the world's population
10 billion (2056)
The United Nations predicts a world population of 10 billion by 2056.
8 billion (2023)
The world's population is expected to reach 8 billion in 2023 according to the United Nations (and in 2026 according to the US Census Bureau).
7.5 billion (2017)
The current population of the Earth is 7.5 billion as of January 2017, according to United Nations estimates.
7 billion (2011)
According to the United Nations, the world's population reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011. The US Census Bureau made a lower estimate - 7 billion was reached on March 12, 2012.
6 billion (1999)
According to the United Nations, on October 12, 1999, the population of the entire world was 6 billion. According to the US Census Bureau, this value was reached on July 22, 1999, at approximately 3:49 am GMT.
- How to buy games or applications in the App Store without linking a card Payment methods for purchases in the app store
- Calculator for calculating insurance premiums SP for yourself
- There is a problem with the payment of the previous purchase how to remove Updating the payment information in the Apple device
- Invalid credit card number