Population Demographics

Calculating the answer to the question “How many people have ever lived on Earth?” is complicated. To begin with, when we initially wrote this article back in 1995, “modern” Homo sapiens (that is, people who were roughly like we are now) were thought to have first walked the Earth around 50,000 B.C.E. Discoveries now suggest modern Homo sapiens existed much earlier, around 200,000 B.C.E. This major change in our understanding of human existence spurred new calculations and consultations with experts, resulting in an estimate that about 117 billion members of our species have ever been born on Earth.

How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?

Author(s): Toshiko Kaneda and Carl Haub

Publisher: Population Reference Bureau (PRB)

Global Prison Trends 2021 exposes the impact of the global pandemic on prison populations and staff, showing that in the face of the COVID-19 crisis millions of people in prison have suffered as a result of preventive measures, at a huge cost to their mental health and human rights.

Global Prison Trends 2021

Publisher: Penal Reform International

Publication Date: 5/1/2021

https://www.penalreform.org/global-prison-trends-2021/

The aftermath of the 2008-09 financial crisis spotlighted unequal access to jobs and opportunities in the US. After the Occupy Wall Street protests, many industries and agencies re-examined policy areas for their impacts on inequality (including even the Federal Reserve1). Many policies today, including universal basic income,2 free education and health care, reduced labor inflows, and controlled trade and investments, are partly in response to unequal access to opportunities and uncertainties about the future of work.

This is the third report as required under the First Step Act of 2018 (FSA; P.L. 115-391). It includes data on federal prisoners provided to BJS by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) for calendar year 2020. Under the FSA, BJS is required to report on selected characteristics of persons in prison, including marital, veteran, citizenship, and English-speaking status; education levels; medical conditions; and participation in treatment programs. Also, BJS is required to report facility-level statistics, such as the number of assaults on staff by prisoners, prisoners’ violations of rules that resulted in time credit reductions, and selected facility characteristics related to accreditation, on-site health care, remote learning, video conferencing, and costs of prisoners’ phone calls.

An estimated 3,890,400 adults were under community supervision at yearend 2020, which was a 6.6% decline from the 4,167,100 who were supervised in the community on January 1, 2020. This decline was solely driven by a reduction in people on probation, who made up the majority (79%) of the community supervision population. During 2020, the number of people on probation decreased from 3,330,200 to 3,053,700 (down 8.3%), the largest annual decline since the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) began the probation collection in 1980. The number of adults on parole increased 1.3% during 2020, from 851,000 on January 1, 2020 to 862,100 at yearend. Among all adult U.S. residents, 1 in 66 were supervised in the community at yearend 2020.

More than 3.5 million, or 1 in 72, adults were on probation in the United States at the end of 2018—the most recent year for which U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) data is available—more than triple the number in 1980. Nationwide, on any given day, more people are on probation than in prisons and jails and on parole combined.

Throughout this report, we use the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2017 National Population Projections to examine potential mortality and life expectancy changes in the coming decades. To provide historical context, we draw extensively on life expectancy data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The report includes projections of life expectancy from 2017 to 2060 and explores projected differences in mortality for men and women and for different race and Hispanic origin groups in the United States. The report also focuses on projected life expectancy dif-ferences between the native-born and foreign-born populations. The mortality projections covered in this report are based on the first nativity-specific life ables and life expectancies to be published by the Census Bureau.

• There are an estimated 272 million international migrants – 3.5% of the world’s population.
• While most people leave their home countries for work, millions have been driven away due to conflict, violence and climate change.
• Most migrants come from India; the United States is the primary destination.

There are an estimated 272 million international migrants around the world. And while that equals just 3.5% of the world’s population, it already surpasses some projections for 2050. Since 1970, the number of people living in a country other than where they were born has tripled.

Given a current global population of about 7.8 billion, the revised estimate means those alive in 2020 represent nearly 7% of the total number of people who have ever lived.

The world continues to experience an unprecedented and sustained change in the age structure of the global population, driven by increasing levels of life expectancy and decreasing levels of fertility. People are living longer lives, and both the share and the number of older persons in the total population are growing rapidly. Globally, there were 727 million persons aged 65 years or over in 2020. Since women live longer than men, on average, they comprise the majority of older persons, especially at advanced ages. Over the next three decades, the number of older persons worldwide is projected to more than double, reaching over 1.5 billion in 2050. All regions will see an increase in the size of the older population between 2020 and 2050.