Talk:World population

copyedit: It seems to me more accurate to say:

• world population reached 6 billion on 12 october 1999

than:

• 12 October 1999 is the approximate day on which the the six billionth baby was born, somewhere in the world

The second phrase implicitly says : "counting from the first baby born in the history of mankind".

It is generally estimated that about 60 billion man lived so far.

Precision

This figure is deceptively precise...

Is it absolutely necessary to first make an untrue claim and then explain that it is untrue? Would it not be better to give the number rounded to the nearest million and then parenthetically provide specific reported numbers along with dates? Fredrik | talk 01:35, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

also, if this number is constantly changing by the second, shouldn't there be an indication of when this number was posted?

Distribution among the genders

There should be gender-specific information either in this article or linked by it. Above all, approx. how many percent of the world population is male/female? How did that number develop over the time? In which countries/regions are the numbers far from average, etc.

Early N. American populations

How can the population of North America in 1750 possibly be 2000?? Surely there were many, many more Native Americans living there than that. Are these figures counting only European descendents?

I would assume that the values in the table are 1,000's, though it's not mentioned at all.

Oh yeah, you're right.

Definition of North America

Can anyone clarify "North America" to show that it means only the 2 large countries of the United States and Canada rather than the whole continent?? Georgia guy 15:22, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Table

19:04, Mar 6, 2005 Eleassar777 m (Population is not given in thousands in the table.)

It has to be. It states World population anno 2005 to be 6453628 — slightly less than 6.5 millions. Bogfjellmo 18:16, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. I made a mistake. Sorry and happy editing! --Eleassar777 19:28, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In the "Different Continents" section, BOTH the vertical axis of the chart AND the population figures in the table are in thousands!

Unclear picture

In the Image:AreaPerCapita_500_BC_to_2050_AD.PNG, there is a clear dip indicated by a vertical line. However, there is no indication of what year this line corresponds to, nor what event triggered it (collapse of the roman empire maybe?)

UnHoly 16:08, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Judging from the position, I'd guess that the line just shows the year 1. No guess on what caused the dip. Illuvatar 16:56, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

1971 / 1974 inconsistency

According to the "x billions reached" list 4 billion people were reached in 1974, according to "population doubling" just below it happened in 1971. 213.47.152.252 22:56, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

blip

What is the cause of the blip around 1960 in this world population growth graph [1]? The Great Leap Forward?--Deglr6328 01:32, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This is a blip in the population increase, not in total population. It usually occurs during economic crises, when people decide to postpone the decisions to have babies for a few years, and is not necessarily correlated with an event where people actually died, like the great leap forward. The fact that growth came back in line after those years as if nothing happened seems to indicate that this was such a case, like during World War II, and that the total adult population did not change significantly.

However, I could understand how one would not want a baby during those times, and the years fit.

UnHoly 18:41, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See Baby boomer --Alterego 19:25, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

I think it may have to do with the widespread availability of the contraceptive pill around 1960 Kewpid 11:50, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

It wouldn't have come back to its previous level after 5 years if it were that. UnHoly 14:44, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Inconsistency

Image:Population curve.png shows a violent exponential increase in population growth while Image:World population increase history.png shows that th world population has actually decreased over the last years. I suppose I'm reading it wrong but if I am, chances are other people are as well...? Celcius 21:35, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

There are two main differences:

1. Image:Population curve.png covers the last 12000 years but Image:World population increase history.png only covers the last 50 years

2. Image:Population curve.png plots the world population, while Image:World population increase history.png plots the increase of this population in a given year. Even if the increase in population goes down, the total population still increases, only less rapidly.

UnHoly 23:43, 21 August 2005 (UTC)