Page 468 - Essencials of Sociology

A Planet with No Space for Enjoying Life? 441

FIGURE 14.1 How Fast Is the World’s Population Growing?

The Results of a Single Day The Accumulating Increase

Births S MTWT F S
Add 385,000
Each second Each minute Each hour Each day
Deaths 2.67 160 9,600 231,000
Minus 154,000
SMT WT F S S MTWT F S S MTWT F S
Population increase
Equals 231,000
Each week Each month Each year
1,617,000 7,000,000 84,000,000
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Thousands
Source: By the author. Based on Haub and Kaneda 2012.

130 years (1930) to add the second billion. Just 30 years later (1960), the world population
hit 3 billion. The time it took to reach the fourth billion was cut in half, to only 15 years
(1975). Then just 12 years later (in 1987) the total reached 5 billion, in another 12 years it
hit 6 billion (in 1999), and in yet another 12 years it hit 7 billion (in 2011).
Another way to put this is that in the past 43 years, the world’s population has
doubled—going from 3.5 billion to 7 billion.
On average, every minute of every day, 160 babies are born. As Figure 14.1 shows,
at each sunset, the world has 231,000 more people than it did the day before. In a year,
this comes to 84 million people. During the next four years, this increase will total more
than the entire U.S. population. Think of it this way: In the next dozen years, the world
will add as many people as it did during the entire time from when the first humans began
to walk the earth until the year 1800.
These totals terrify the New Malthusians. They are convinced that we are headed
toward a showdown between population and food. In the year 2050, the population

FIGURE 14.2 World Population Growth Watch on MySocLab
Video: Population Growth
18 2200 18 and Decline
17 17
16 2150 16
15 15
14 14
13 2100 13
12 12
Billions of People 10 9 8 2024 10 Billions of People
11
11
2050
9
8
2011
6
6 7 1999 Projected 7
5 1987 5
4 1975 4
3 Only 300 million 1960 3
2 people in the world? 1930 2
1800
1 1
0 0
The birth 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 2200
of Christ Year
Sources: Modified from Piotrow 1973; McFalls 2007; based on projections from Haub and Kaneda 2012.