Hello.
The most widely quoted research on this subject has been done by Carl
Haub of the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington DC research
organization. Haub's work has been cited by the United Nations and the
U.S. Census Bureu
Haub estimates that 106,456,367,669 people had ever been born by the year 2002.
See: How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? (2003) by Carl Haub
source: Population Reference Bureau
http://www.prb.org/Template.cfm?Section=PRB&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=7421
As for when to start the calculation, Haub selects 50,000 B.C. as his
beginning point.
"Various ancestors of Homo sapiens seem to have appeared at least as
early as 700,000 B.C. Hominids walked the Earth as early as several
million years ago. According to the United Nations' Determinants and
Consequences of Population Trends, modern Homo sapiens may have
appeared about 50,000 B.C. This long period of 50,000 years holds the
key to the question of how many people have ever been born."
http://www.prb.org/Template.cfm?Section=PRB&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=7421
Haub's methodology assumes a high birth rate (80 births per 1000) for
the years 50,000 B.C. to 1 A.D.
Haub uses the United Nations' estimate of a world population of
300,000,000 at 1 A.D.
The annual birth rate is for the entire world is about 133 million
births per year. See: madsci.og
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/mar2001/984165342.Ot.r.html
Thus, you should figure than at least a couple hundred million people
have been born since mid-2002.
Also see:
Census.gov: Historical Estimates of World Population
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html
United Nations, 1999, The World at Six Billion, Table 1, "World Population From
Year 0 to Stabilization"
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/sixbilpart1.pdf
"Most studies place the total number of human beings to have ever
lived at 60 billion to 120 billion"
source: geography.about.com
http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzalivetoday.htm
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search strategy:
"People Have Ever Lived"
humans "have ever live"
I hope this helps. |
