World Population[2]

Human beings are the Central theme in the subject matter of human geography. As of 2016 the world population stands at 7.4 billion.

Population Doubling Time       

The population doubling time is the time it takes for the population to double.                                         

2% growth rate - population doubling time would be about 35 years.                                            

3% growth rate - population doubling time would be about 24 years.                                            

4% growth rate - population doubling time would be about 17 years.                                            

Components of Population Change

Life Expectancy - The average number of years a person from a specific country is expected to live.                                         

Birth Rate - The number of (live) people born per 1000 of the population per year.                                 

Death Rate - The number of people who die per 1000 of the population per year.                                               

Natural Change - The change in the size of a population caused by the interrelationship between birth and death rates. If the birth rate exceeds the death rate then the population will increase. If the death rate exceeds the birth rate then the population will decrease.                                            

Annual Population Change - The cumulative change to the size of a population after both natural change and

migration have been accounted for.                                     

Uneven Distribution

More than half of the world’s people live in Asia which accounts for only one-fifth of the world’s land area. North, Central and South Africa together occupying more than a quarter of the land surface, have only one-seventh of the population. The African continent also accounts for a quarter of the land surface but has just over one-tenth of the world population. Europe, whose area is only one twenty-fifth of the total, has about one-ninth of the world’s people.

While the great majority of the land surface is sparsely or moderately populated, some limited areas are densely populated (Western Europe, the Indian subcontinent the plains and river valleys of China and north-Eastern U.S.A). Agriculture dominated (Nile valley of Egypt the river valleys and plains of mainland China the Indo-Gangetic plain and the island of Java in Indonesia) and Industry dominated (Western Europe, north-eastern U.S.A. and Japan) are densely populated areas.

Moderately populated areas: Tropical Savannas (Brazil Northern Australia, many parts of Africa) and Temperate Grassland are continental in location and lack of communications and remoteness have helped to keep the population small. Tropical savannas, Temperate Grassland-areas are in North America (the Prairies), Russia (the Steppes), and Argentina (the Pampas).

Both tropical and temperate coastland (eastern Europe, South-eastern Australia, central chile) are more densely populated than the continental interiors, partly because the climate is more favourable and partly because communications and markets are better.

Fertility and Mortality

Birth rate

Number of live births per year per 1,000 of the population.

Death rate

Number of deaths per year, 1,000 of the population.

Leading causes of death around the world

As per WHO data for 2002-2012.

Life expectancy

The average age at which people die. List of countries with highest life expectancy.

Countries with lowest life expectancy

Age

The size of population in lower age groups is large in those regions where birth rates are higher e.g. in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In those countries where birth rate is low but life expectancy is high, the number of children is lower but the number of older people is higher.

Sex Ratio

is measured in terms of number of males per thousand females. In Europe the number of females per thousand males is more. The same situation prevails in Africa too but the cause for high sex ratio in both the regions are different.

Literacy

The literacy is higher in urban areas as compared to rural areas throughout the word. Likewise the female literacy in rural areas in much lower than the female literacy in urban areas. In Muslim countries the female literacy is also low.

Major factors influencing literacy rate are, level of Economic development, level of urbanization, standard of living, the status of females and other groups in the society, the availability of educational facilities and the policies of the government.

Languages in world

Humans communicate through speech, writing, or both. Different nationalities or ethnic groups typically have different languages or variations on particular languages; for example, Armenians speaking the Armenian language and British and Americans speaking distinctive varieties of the English language. One language may have various dialects, which may be seen by those who use them as languages in their own right. There are about 6,000 languages spoken worldwide, but 90% of these are in some danger of falling into disuse. More than half the world's population speaks one of just five languages - Chinese, English, Hindi, Russian, and Spanish.

The term language is also used for systems of communication with language like qualities, such as animal language (the way animals communicate), body language (gestures and expressions used to communicate ideas), sign language (gestures for the deaf for use as a lingua franca, as among Native Americans), and computer languages (such as BASIC and COBOL).

Language Acquisition

 Language appears to develop in all children under normal circumstances, either as a unilingual or multilingual skill, crucially between the ages of one and five, and as a necessary interplay of innate and environmental factors. Any child can learn any language, under the appropriate conditions.

Language Families

The families into which the languages of the world are grouped include

• the Indo-European (the largest, with subfamilies or branches from northern India to Ireland), (2 billion speakers)
• the Hamito-Semitic or Afro-Asiatic (with a Hamitic branch in N Africa and a Semitic branch in W Asia and Africa, and containing Arabic, Hebrew, and Berber), (230 million)
• the Finno-Ugric (including Finnish and Hungarian),
• the Sino-Tibetan (including Chinese and Tibetan), (1,040 million)
• the Malayo-Polynesian or Austronesian (including Malay and Maori), and the Uto-Aztecan (one of many Native American families, including Ute and Aztec or Nahuatl). (200 million)

Linguists estimate that there are about 6,000 distinct languages in the world. The number is uncertain because:

(1)     it is not always easy to establish whether a speech form is a distinct language or a dialect of another language;

(2)     some parts of the world remain incompletely explored (such as New Guinea); and

(3)     the rate of language death is often unknown (for example, in Amazonia, where many undescribed Native American languages have died out).

It is also difficult to estimate the precise number of speakers of many languages, especially where communities mix elements from several languages elsewhere used separately (as in parts of India).  Chinese (which may or may not be a single language) is spoken by around 1 billion people, English by about 350 million native speakers and at least the same number of non-natives, Spanish by 250 million, Hindi 200 million, Arabic 150 million, Russian 150 million, Portuguese 135 million, Japanese 120 million, German 100 million, French 70 million, Italian 60 million, Korean 60 million, Tamil 55 million, and Vietnamese 50 million.

One of the world's richest language banks is Papua New Guinea, where more than 100 languages were threatened with extinction in 1995. The trend is linked largely to the destruction of natural habitat by foreign commercial exploitation. In the Americas, 100 languages, each of which has fewer than 300 speakers, are all close to extinction. North America, which once had hundreds of languages, had only about 100 languages left in 1995.

Religions in world

Religious Following

Christianity is the most followed religion and others in the decreasing order of the following are Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism etc.

Latin religare `to bind´; bond of humans to God, Code of belief or philosophy that often involves the worship of a God or gods. Belief in a supernatural power is not essential (absent in, for example, Buddhism and Confucianism), but faithful adherence is usually considered to be rewarded; for example, by escape from human existence (Buddhism), by a future existence (Christianity, Islam), or by worldly benefit (Soka Gakkai Buddhism). Religions include:

1.       Ancient and pantheist religions of Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome;

2.       Animist or polytheistic traditional central African religions, voodoo and related beliefs in Latin America and the Caribbean, traditional faiths of Native Americans, Maoris, Australian Aborigines, and Javanese; 

3.       Oriental Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto

4.       Religions of a book´ Judaism, Christianity (the principal divisions are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant), and Islam (the principal divisions are Sunni and Shi'ite); combined derivation these include Baha'ism, the Unification church, and Mormonism.

Countries with the Largest Muslim Populations

1.         Indonesia

2.         Pakistan[1]

3.         India

4.         Bangladesh

5.         Turkey

6.         Iran

7.         Egypt

8.         Nigeria

9.         Algeria

10.       Morocco