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Demographics

Population Boom: Charting How We Got to Nearly 8 Billion People

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Today, the global population is estimated to sit at 7.91 billion people.

By the end of 2022 or within the first months of 2023, that number is expected to officially cross the 8 billion mark. Incredibly, each new billion people has come faster than the previous—it was roughly only a decade ago that we crossed the 7 billion threshold.

How did we get here, and what has global population growth looked like historically?

In this series of six charts from Our World in Data, we’ll break down how the global population got to its current point, as well as some big picture trends behind the data.

#1: Mapping the Population Over 5,000 Years

New York, São Paulo, and Jakarta were not always bustling metropolises. In fact, for long parts of the history of civilization, it was unusual to find humans congregating in many of the present-day city locations we now think of as population centers.

The human population has always moved around, seeking out new opportunity and freedoms.

5,000 years of population movement

As of 3,000 BC, humans could be mainly found in Central America, the Mediterranean, the Fertile Crescent, and parts of India, Japan, and China. It’s no coincidence that that agriculture was independently discovered in many of these same places during the Neolithic Revolution.

#2: The Hockey Stick Curve

For even more context, let’s zoom way out by using a timeline that goes back to when woolly mammoths still roamed the Earth:

Annual World Population since 10,000 BC

From this 10,000-foot view, it’s clear that human population growth started going exponential around the time of the Second Agricultural Revolution, which started in the 17th century in Britain. This is when new technologies and farming conventions took root, making it possible to grow the food supply at an unprecedented pace.

Soon these discoveries spread around the world, enabling population booms everywhere.

#3: The Time to Add 1 Billion

The data and projections in this chart are a few years old, but the concept remains the same:

Time to Add 1 Billion in Population

It took all of human history until 1803 to reach the first billion in population. The next billion took 124 years, and the next 33 years. More recent billions have come every dozen or so.

So why then, are future billion people additions projected to take longer and longer to achieve?

#4: The Growth Rate is Shrinking

Because of demographics and falling fertility rates, the growth rate of the global population has actually been on a downward trend for some time.

Falling Population Growth Rate

As this growth rate gets closer to zero, the population curve has become less exponential like we saw in the first graphs. Population growth is leveling out, and it may even go negative at some point in the future.

#5: The Regional Breakdown

Although the rate of population growth is expected to slow down, there are still parts of the world that are adding new people fast, as you can see on this interactive regional breakdown:

Since 1973, Asia has doubled its population from 2.3 billion to 4.6 billion people.

Comparatively, over the same time frame, Europe has gone from 670 million to 748 million, equal to just an 11% increase.

#6: The Present and Future of Population Growth

Population projections by groups like the United Nations see the global population peaking at around 10.9 billion people in 2100.

World Population 1700 to 2100

That said, there isn’t a consensus around this peak.

Organizations like the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) have a different perspective, and they have recently modeled that the global population will top out at 9.7 billion people by the year 2064.

As we climb to surpass the 8 billion mark in the coming months, it will be interesting to see what path humanity ends up following.

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This article was published as a part of Visual Capitalist's Creator Program, which features data-driven visuals from some of our favorite Creators around the world.

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Demographics

Top 20 Countries Where Older People Are the Happiest

Advanced economies are the happiest countries for older people, likely due to their stronger social security systems.

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A cropped chart ranking the top 20 happiest countries, for those over 60 years old, sourced from the World Happiness Report 2024.

Top 20 Countries Where Older People Are the Happiest

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

The newest global happiness index doesn’t have any massive surprises from the ongoing trends of the last decade: Europe generally does the best, Africa is still finding its footing, and Asia and South America have vast rank disparities between constituent nations.

However, as the World Happiness Report notes, happiness levels differ across age groups, and countries’ overall ranks tend to obfuscate how the old and young feel separately. To counter this, the report also creates a happiness index by age.

We’ve visualized the top 20 happiest countries according to those aged above 60. For comparison, we have also included a country’s overall index rank.

Data and Takeaways

ℹ️ Gallup’s survey in Israel occurred after October 7th, but before much of the subsequent warfare. As a result, overall life evaluations in the country fell by 0.9 for 2023. Note that each country’s rank is based on a three-year average score.

The top two countries where the seniors are most satisfied—Denmark and Finland—also happen to be the top two countries on the overall happiness index.

As a general trend, advanced economies make up the bulk of this top 20 list, likely due to their stronger social security systems and financial security. Relatedly, they also tend to do well when it comes to the best countries to retire in.

CountryHappiness Rank
(Age 60+)
Overall Happiness
Rank (All ages)
Rank
Difference
🇩🇰 Denmark12-1
🇫🇮 Finland21+1
🇳🇴 Norway37-4
🇸🇪 Sweden440
🇮🇸 Iceland53+2
🇳🇿 New Zealand611-5
🇳🇱 Netherlands76+1
🇨🇦 Canada815-7
🇦🇺 Australia910-1
🇺🇸 U.S.1023-13
🇦🇪 UAE1122-11
🇱🇺 Luxembourg128+4
🇰🇼 Kuwait13130
🇨🇭 Switzerland149+5
🇦🇹 Austria1514+1
🇮🇪 Ireland1617-1
🇨🇷 Costa Rica1712+5
🇮🇱 Israel185+13
🇧🇪 Belgium1916+3
🇬🇧 UK20200

Norway, at third, has the first real discrepancy, with its elderly population ranking four places higher compared to its overall 7th place rank.

New Zealand (6th) and Canada (8th) also have gaps with their overall ranks: indicating that the older generation is happier than other generations within the country.

But for the U.S., (10th) and the UAE (11th), this rank discrepancy is in the double-digits.

In fact, when ranking only by those aged below 30, the U.S. ranks outside of the top 50, indicating that its younger residents are significantly unhappier than their older counterparts.

This is an interesting phenomenon mirrored in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. According to the report, as recently as a decade ago, the younger generation in these countries were about as happy as those aged over 60.

“In the West, the received wisdom was that the young are the happiest and that happiness thereafter declines until middle age, followed by substantial recovery.” –- World Happiness Report.

For other countries like Costa Rica (17) and Israel (18), this pattern reverses. Their overall rank is higher than their rank for older populations, indicating that the young are happier.

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