Population Facts

Population Facts

As you learn about poverty and its causes and symptoms, you will learn many facts about population. In fact, the world population facts are a good picture of how quickly the world is changing and how important and necessary organizations like Compassion are.

One of the most astounding facts about population is the sheer speed at which the world population is growing. Even with the high death rates of those living in poverty, the world population is still expanding at an incredible rate.

While the developed world argues over the ethics of issues like birth control and family planning, the poor continue to experience unprecedented population growth. Population facts show that a vast majority of the world's adolescents live in developing countries.

Compassion’s program educates those living in poverty to help them understand the issues surrounding population growth. When the poor begin to grasp the serious implications of the population facts and the role they play, they begin to understand how they can be a part of changing the facts.

Population Facts
Population Facts Get the facts about population issues in developing countries and how they affect children and their families.
  • There are now over 7 billion people living on earth.
  • Approximately 4.7 billion people live in low and middle-low income economies. In contrast, 65 high-income countries have a combined population of about 1 billion less than one-sixth of the world's population.
  • Nearly one in four people in the world is young, between age 10 and 24; while 85 percent of all adolescents live in developing countries.
  • The world population is growing by about 0.8 percent, or almost 80 million people, per year.
  • As of 2006, approximately 48.8 percent of the world's population lived in urbanized areas. In developing countries more than one third of this growing urban population lives in slum conditions.
  • Every second 4.3 people are born worldwide; while every second 1.8 deaths occur. The world population has a net gain of 2.5 people every second.
  • In Sub-Saharan Africa 55 percent of children under 5 have never been registered; worldwide nearly 50 million children each year are not registered and begin life with no identity.