Ya, me neither, but I stumbled across a site that wanted to tell me anyway so I played along. I have to say that it was kind of fun and I did learn some interesting facts along the way.
For example apparently when I was born I was the 3,207,856,107th person alive on Earth and the 77,011,637,501st person to have lived since history began. Those are some great big numbers!
The world’s population is now over seven billion. After growing very slowly for most of human history, the number of people on Earth has more than doubled in the last 50 years. Wowzers!
If you’d like to see where you fit in to this story of human life you can play here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515#output_1
Here are my stats:
3,207,856,107 people were alive when I was born
6,203,820,373 people were born since me
2,411,535,844 people have died since I was born
As a result, the population today is 7,000,140,637 …and growing!
What’s next? The global population will continue to increase during your lifetime and beyond, reaching 10 billion by 2083. However, the rate of growth is expected to slow. Little of the current growth is happening in developed countries like yours.
Longer lives: In your area, women can expect to have one or two children. People are also living longer. This means people of working age like you will be supporting increasing numbers of older people. By 2050, there will be just 2.2 working-age people supporting every person 65 or older. In Europe, this will drop to two.
Battle for resources: It is estimated that your group of the richest countries consumes double the resources used by the rest of the world. The UN estimates that if current population and consumption trends continue, by the 2030s we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us.
Did you know? By mid-century, the world’s urban population is likely to be the same size as the global population was in 2004.
Today, all over the world people are living longer and healthier lives. That’s a good thing, but we need to be able to look after each other too and that may become more and more difficult if we don’t practice living a more sustainable existence. A world of 7 billion people poses many challenges – and countless opportunities to make a positive difference. 7 Billion Actions, established by the United Nations Population Fund, inspires change that will make a difference by highlighting positive action by individuals and organizations around the world.