Here's a graph of the growth in human population globally over the past 2024 years. I updated it this morning for a first-year lecture. On it I mark the years my grandparents and parents were born, when I was born, and when my teenage daughter was born.
I still find it hard to grasp just how quickly and massively the human population has exploded. There's 6 billion(!!!) more people on the planet today than when my grandparents were born.
@joncounts It’s so hard to grasp! I want to find a graph that does it by country or continent too. I’d love to see the changes in the USA or North America compared to China or Europe.
@mez Good point. I bet someone's made a series of graphs like that. The growth is certainly far from even across the world, of course. Even here in New Zealand we've grown by 4 million since my grandparents were born, from 1.2 million in 1923 to ~5.2 million now.
@joncounts Wow, I didn’t realise it was that steep here! Was that still an era of strong colonisation / get out of the UK/EU? I know several people who’s parents or grandparents migrated from the UK. Though, here I am, so maybe that influx of people never really stopped.
@mez It looks like most of the historical population increase in NZ has come from births and people living longer rather than immigration. I found a report on NZ immigration from the New Zealand Productivity Commiission which states:
"Migration has become more important for New Zealand. While most population growth in the last century-and-a-half has come from natural increase (births less deaths), the contribution of immigration has increased in recent years."
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