On Monday, October 31st, the world will add its 7 billionth person. Population Action International (PAI) is marking the milestone with an online application and a new report that explore the dimensions of our world at 7 billion.
- What's Your Number?, an interactive online application, makes population personal. The app lets you enter your birth date to find out where you fall in the world's 7 billion people, share your number on Facebook and Twitter and add yourself to a map of the world's population. The app is already going viral and thousands have gotten and posted their numbers.
- PAI is releasing a new 11 chapter publication called Why Population Matters that explains how population is connected to other development issues such as maternal health, poverty, security, climate change, and biodiversity. Embargoed copies are available to the media in advance of the 31st. Additionally, PAI released an issue brief earlier this year called 7 Billion and Counting.
The rate of growth is slowing, but the population is still increasing. World population hit 1 billion people in 1804. It took 123 years to add the next billion, but less than a century to pass the next four billion - from 2 billion people in 1927 to 6 billion people in 1999. The number of people on the planet has doubled since 1960. While the rate of population growth has slowed in most parts of the world, the overall number of people continues to grow. We increase by nearly 80 million people every year - the numerical equivalent of adding another U.S. to the world every four years.
The world’s population will reach 7 billion people on Oct. 31, 2011, and according to United Nations projections, we are on pace to add 3 billion or more by the end of this century. Already, millions of women in developing countries are unable to determine the size of their families because they lack access to contraception.
Worldwide, the largest group of young people in history is entering their reproductive years. The decisions and policies we make today, and the options available to these young people, will ultimately determine whether our numbers climb to anywhere from 8 billion to 11 billion by 2050.
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