Human Population Growth Rate

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World Population 1950-2100

During my research for this post, I found a graph on the world population and chose to implement the skills we’ve learned in class for this section. I decided to use the graph as my own new data to work off of. After gathering data from this graph, I found that in the 64 years between 1950 and 2014, the world’s population had increased by 4.76 billion people.

This computed out to be a 187.4% increase during the 64 year period (4.76 billion people [total change] / 2.54 billion people [initial] = 1.874). With this information, I went on to find the growth factor and rate of change.

2.54 billion people + 2.54 billion people x 1.874 = 2.54 billion people (1+1.874) = 2.54 billion people (2.287) = 7.3 billion people

After computing this solution, we can see that the growth factor was 2.287. To find the rate of change, I divided the total change (4.76 billion people) with the total amount of time (64 years), to find an increase of 74 million people per year.

Lastly, I have estimated that the growth of the world’s population between the years 1950 and 2014 was that of exponential growth, rather than linear. I found that the world’s population between 1950 and 2014 increased exponentially at around 1% per year.

 To find this, I made a table that looked something like this:

1950        1958        1966        1974

2.54         2.92         3.41            4        billion

_______________________

15%       16.78%      17.3%

380           490          590            million

 

4 thoughts on “Human Population Growth Rate”

  1. This article is very interesting to see that the world’s population has increased over 187% and it is crazy to think that the population could continue to grow at a constant rate and pass 10 billion before 2050. This rapid rise in the population provides humanity with some daunting questions like, where will house these people, and more importantly how will they all be fed. Drastic efforts need to be made to accommodate a population boom that could be the most in humanity’s existence.

  2. A 187.4% increase in the world’s population over 64 years is drastic. As Nick has mentioned, thinking that it will continue to grow at such a high rate makes me wonder about the impact it will have on human life as we know it. A question that arises when thinking about this issue is what will our world actually look like? Will we still have (for the most part) clean air, blue skies, and green grass? Or, will it look more like China—filled with smog and pollution? I think that the rising population is a problem we need to fix. However, I believe it is a difficult issue to combat.

  3. The math that you computed in this blog is very interesting and really shows some perspective on just how much the population is projected to increase. The graph you found is also very intriguing, as though the human population appears to grow exponentially, there is a slight stagnation in the line as we reach 2100. The population has already increase so much since the 1950s, I’d be curious to dive further into why the line evens out in the coming century.

  4. I think your post is extremely informative surrounding the issue of world population growth. As we see the population continue to grow exponentially how will our earth deal with this? You mentioned that there was a187% which is extremely significant. It will be interesting to see if the projections on your graph will remain true or if something will be done to slow the growth of the population.

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