World Population Day 2012: 7 billion and counting

To celebrate World Population Day we have selected some of the most interesting and impacting questions, data and discussions about the consequences of sharing a world with more than 7billion people.

Did you know that…

• On World Population Day (11/07/2012) the US Census Bureau estimates the Earth’s population at 7,025,523,939.
• It took until the 1800s for the world’s population to reach 1 billion. At the current rate, we are adding another billion every 13 years (7billionactions.org).
• About 210 million people are unemployed, including 75 million young people, and 1.52 billion workers are in precarious employment, many of them women. Are we facing an economic and social time bomb?
• By 2050, the urban population of the world will almost double with 70% of the projected 8.9 billion people living in cities. This means we will have to build the same urban capacity in the next 40 years that we have built over the last 4000 years. How can we build sustainable and resilient cities?
• By 2020 more than 2 billion of us will be aged 60 years or above. This compares to 200 million in 1959 and 760 million in 2009. What if we fail to provide for our ageing population?
• Over 900 million people worldwide are hungry, according to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Should global food and nutrition security be a top global priority?

Population growth by continent (1960 – 2010):

Photo: Commuters disembark from crowded suburban trains during the morning rush hour at Churchgate railway station on World Population Day in Mumbai (Vivek Prakash / Reuters).