The seven billionth person on Earth was likely born on October 31, 2011, according to United Nations data. With this milestone, how the planet can sustain such a large population has become an urgent question.
But even beginning to envision a billion people can boggle the mind — let alone seven.
100 People: A World Portrait tries to simplify global issues like this. Using World Health Organization, Census, United Nations, and other data, the project shrank the world population stats down to apply to just 100 people.
Inspired by a 2010 visualization of old data by designer Allysson Lucca, we produced our own graphic to show 100 people that would represent the world.
In 1992, the Retired Peace Corps of Madison, Wis. published the original statistics which inspired 100 People's project. Then, the world population was 5.48 billion.
Now, 22 years and 1.52 billion people later, the world portrait has changed. There are:
- two more Africans
- one more Asian
- four fewer children
- one more elderly
- four more Muslims
- two less Hindus
- three fewer "non-religious"
- three more literate
- six more college educated
- 21 more who own or share a computer
- three less homeless
- five less undernourished
- six more overweight
- the same number starving
- four more with access to safe drinking water
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