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Old 12-12-2011, 12:22 AM
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The Lone Ranger The Lone Ranger is offline
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Default Re: Live people outnumber all dead people

That the majority of people who have ever lived are alive today is one of those remarkably stupid ideas that falls to pieces the moment one thinks about it.

The median age worldwide is estimated to be 28.4 years. This means that fewer than half the people alive today were alive 29 years ago -- because, you know, that's the definition of median age. Because of medical advances and lowered infant mortality rates, the median age worldwide is almost-certainly higher today than it has been at any time in the past.


Okay, the world's current population is 7.0 billion. Half of that is ... um ... 3.5 billion. So, how far back in history do we have to go before the total number of people who have lived exceeds 3.5 billion? Not very far.


The best estimate is that the world's population reached 4.0 billion sometime in 1974. That was 37 years ago, so fewer than half the people alive then (much fewer) are still alive today. So let's be ultra-conservative and say that there were 2.0 billion people alive in 1974 who are not part of the world's current population.

The world's population was estimated to have reached 2.0 billion in 1927. There's a 47-year gap between 1974 and 1927, so fewer than half (many fewer than half) of the people alive in 1927 were still living in 1974, and a vanishingly-small number of the people alive in 1927 are still alive today. So -- again, to be ultra-conservative -- let's assume that there were 1.0 billion people alive in 1927 who were not still living in 1974.

This brings us to some 3.0 billion people who have lived and are not still alive, and we've gone back less than 100 years.


The world's population was estimated to have reached 1.0 billion in 1804. I think that we can safely assume that none of those people were still alive 123 years later in 1927. So we'll add another 1.0 billion to the total number of people who have lived but are no longer alive.

That brings us to ... let me see now ... 4.0 billion people. At last check, 4.0 billion exceeds 3.5 billion. And that 4.0 billion is a deliberately ultraconservative estimate.

So we only have to go back about 200 years to completely destroy the silly notion that more than half the people who have ever lived are alive today.
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