World Population Day
Today, Monday July 11 2016 marks this year’s World Population Day. But what the heck is it?
World Population Day is an annual event (NOT a holiday), that aims at increasing awareness on global population issues such as: overpopulation, gender equality, family planning, widespread poverty, infant mortality, health challenges and many more.
The idea of the World population day was first conceived on July 11, 1987 – the day when the world population hit approximately 5 billion (known as the Five Billion Day) and was ratified in 1989 by the governing council of the United Nation Development Programme.
There are many controversial issues associated with world population today. One of such is Poverty vs. population. Many hastily (and thus erroneously) assume that the more the population of a country or region, the higher the rate of poverty without considering other factors.
This year’s theme “investing in the teenage girls” centers on another controversial and long debated issue about the girls, gender equality and child marriage.
The following are top five facts about the world population I found amazing:
(5) China is the most populous country in the World and Pitcairn Islands is the least populated country in the world. Well, we all know about China, no doubt about its position in terms of population. It boasts of about 1,377,453,498 people (18.78% of the world population). Pitcairn is not a country per say, it is described as a national jurisdiction and included on the United Nation list of non-self-governing territories. It is a British territory in the southern Pacific Ocean with a population of just 56 people (not up to the number of people in my street) and a total land area of 47 square kilometers.
(4) If Facebook were to be a country, it would displace United States to become the third most populous country in the world with over 500 million citizens. I knew this since I discovered I had more friends on Facebook than I really do.
(3) Every second there are 4.3 births and 1.8 deaths, for a net population gain of 2.5 people per second. The real cause of population explosion has been linked more to decrease in birth rate than increase in death rate. Does this means people are no longer dying like before?
(2) If everyone on earth as at now (7.4 billion) is to stand side to side in rows (like Muslims do when praying) we would all fit into 500 square miles. Not up to the size of Los Angele (502.7 square miles.
(1) Counting from the first man on earth till the present, an estimated 108 Billion people have lived on the earth since the beginning of creation. This means about 100.6 billion people have died and if we are to redistribute the dead to every living, everyone will go with nothing less than 13 dead people.