World population in 1970. How many people can planet Earth support? Most populous countries

Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences S. KAPITS (Institute physical problems RAS).

Of all global problems concerns humanity, the issue of world population growth seems to be one of the main ones. Population size expresses the total result of all economic, social and cultural activities of a person that make up his history. Demography can only provide quantitative data, without describing the patterns of human development. Sergei Petrovich Kapitsa tried to fill this gap by creating a mathematical model of the global demographic process. The model shows that the rate of population growth does not depend on external conditions, explains the reasons for the sharp surge in birth rates that is occurring today (the “demographic transition”), and predicts that in the near future the world’s population will stop growing, stopping at about 14 billion people. On February 14, Sergei Petrovich turned 70 years old. The editors of the magazine congratulate its author on his anniversary and wish him many years of fruitful work.

This is how the world population grew according to demographic data (1) and theoretical model (2), starting from 1600 BC.

World population growth from 1750 to 2150, averaged over decades: 1 - developing countries, 2 - developed countries.

Different human development scenarios predict population growth patterns differently.

World population growth from the origin of man to the foreseeable future, according to demographers.

Demographers predict that after 2000 age composition The world population will begin to undergo dramatic changes. The number of people under 14 years of age will begin to fall (1), and those over 65 years of age will begin to grow (2), and by the end of the next century our planet will “age” greatly.

Human development on a logarithmic time scale.

History has always described the past as a chain of events and processes in which we were primarily interested in what exactly happened, the qualitative side of the matter, and quantitative characteristics were of secondary importance. This was the case, first of all, because the accumulation of facts and concepts must precede their quantitative characteristics. However, sooner or later they must penetrate history, and not as an illustration of this or that event, but as a way of deeper understanding of the historical process. To do this, it is necessary to begin to consider history as a process of system development.

In recent decades, this so-called systems approach has become widespread. It was developed first in physics to describe the behavior of systems of many particles, then it came to chemistry and biology, and later it began to be used to study social and economic phenomena. However, it was believed that it was not suitable for describing the development of mankind, because only by thoroughly understanding the mechanism demographic processes, you can explain them, measure their characteristics and move from the specific to the general.

But for humanity as a whole, this approach turned out to be unproductive. It was unclear what was to be measured, and there were no clear quantitative data. Already in economics, fundamental difficulties have arisen in the quantitative comparison of heterogeneous concepts, such as labor and goods, raw materials and information, while in history only the passage of time in the past can be clearly traced.

However, there is one parameter that is as universal as time and applies to all eras - population. In life we ​​turn to it very often. Arriving in another city, we are interested in how many inhabitants there are, and when going to an unfamiliar country, we will certainly find out what its population is. In the 30s, there were two billion people on the planet, but now there are almost six billion of us. But we rarely remember the population size in the historical past. So, in 1700 there were ten times fewer people on Earth than today, and how many of them lived in Russia at that time is unlikely to be answered right away, although almost everyone knows the years of the reign of Peter I.

But it is precisely the population size that is closely related to all the economic, social and cultural activities of mankind that make up its history. Thus, quantitative demographic data provide a universal key to understanding the past. They make it possible to find an answer, albeit limited, to a clearly posed question about the mechanism of development of humanity as a whole.

In a world where 21 people are born and 18 die every second, the world's population is increasing by two hundred and fifty thousand people every day, and almost all of this growth is occurring in developing countries. The rate of growth is so great - it is approaching ninety million a year - that it has come to be regarded as population explosion, capable of shaking the planet. It is the continuous increase in the world population that requires ever-increasing production of food and energy, consumption of mineral resources and leads to ever-increasing pressure on the planet’s biosphere. The image of unbridled population growth, if naively extrapolated into the future, leads to alarming forecasts and even apocalyptic scenarios for the global future of humanity. However, it is clear that development in the foreseeable future - and this is what is of greatest interest - can only be determined by correctly describing the past of humanity.

Currently, humanity is experiencing a so-called demographic transition. This phenomenon consists of a sharp increase in the rate of population growth, then an equally rapid decrease and stabilization of the population. The demographic transition is accompanied by an increase in the productive forces, the movement of significant masses of the population from villages to cities and a sharp change in the age composition of the population. In today's interconnected and interdependent world, it will end in less than a hundred years and will pass much faster than in Europe, where a similar process began at the end of the 18th century. Now the transition covers most of the Earth's population; it has already ended in the so-called developed countries oh and now it only goes to developing countries.

WORLD POPULATION AS A SYSTEM

Consider the world population as a system, as a single closed object, which can be sufficiently characterized by the number of people in this moment, was considered impossible for a long time. Many demographers saw in humanity only the sum of the populations of all countries, without the meaning of an objective dynamic characteristic.

The key concept for the system is interaction. But it is the modern world, with its migration flows, transport, information and trade connections that unite everyone into one whole, that can be considered as an interacting system. This approach is also true in relation to the past: even when there were much fewer people and the world was largely divided, individual regions still interacted slowly but surely, remaining a system.

Applying the concept of a system, it is necessary to determine what processes and at what speed occur in it. Thus, the emergence of ethnic groups and the division of dialects and languages ​​occurs on its own time scale. The division of humanity into races took longer, and the formation of a global demographic system took even longer. Finally, the processes of biological evolution, determined by the genetic nature of man, proceed the slowest. There is reason to assert that for a million years man has changed little biologically, and the main development and self-organization of mankind took place in the social and technological sphere.

Almost all suitable parts of the Earth serve as habitat for humanity. In terms of our numbers, we are five orders of magnitude ahead of all animals comparable to us in size and nutrition (except, perhaps, only domestic animals, the number of which is maintained artificially). Humanity has long created its own environment and separated from the rest of the biosphere. But now, when human activity has acquired a global scale, the question of its impact on nature has become acute. That is why it is very important to understand what factors determine the growth in the number of people on the planet.

MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF EARTH POPULATION GROWTH

Creating a model does not consist in fitting formulas to one or another numerical data, but in searching for mathematical images that express the behavior of the system and correspond to the task at hand. This process of consistent model building is best developed in theoretical physics, which describes reality in the form of solving systems of certain equations (see “Science and Life” No. 2, 3, 1997).

The very possibility of using the methods of theoretical physics to build a demographic model that can grow to the status of a theory seems far from obvious, rather even incredible. Nevertheless, for the population of the Earth, when many different factors and circumstances interact, such an approach is quite feasible precisely because of the complexity of the system. Random deviations in space and time will be averaged, and the main patterns on which the dynamics of world population growth objectively depend will become visible.

We will characterize the population of the world at time T by the number of people N. We will consider the growth process over a significant time interval - a very large number of generations, so as not to take into account either the life expectancy of a person or the distribution of people by age and gender. Under such conditions, we can assume that population growth occurs self-similarly (or, as they also say, self-similarly), that is, according to the same law at different time scales and the number of people. This means that the relative growth rate of the number of people on the planet is constant and can be described not by the exponential that underlies so many models, but only by a power law.

How inapplicable exponential growth is can be seen from the following example. Suppose that humanity in the past doubled in the same 40 years as today. Let's estimate when such a process could begin. To do this, we express the world population as a power of two: 5.7. 10 9 ~10 32 . Then 32 generations, or 40x32 = 1280 years ago, in the 7th century, two hundred years before the baptism of Rus', we could all have descended from Adam and Eve! Even if we increase the doubling time tenfold, this point will be pushed back to the beginning of the Neolithic, when about 10 million people actually lived.

There is, however, a formula that with amazing accuracy describes the growth of the Earth's population over hundreds and even many thousands of years and has the necessary power-law form:

This expression was obtained by processing data over many centuries by a number of researchers (McKendrick, Forster, Horner), who saw in it only an empirical dependence that did not have any deep meaning. The author of this article independently obtained the same formula, but he considered it as a physically and mathematically meaningful description of the process of self-similar development. It occurs according to the hyperbolic law of evolution, called the escalation regime. Such phenomena are characteristic precisely of the “explosive” behavior of systems and have been studied in detail in modern research on nonlinear dynamics.

However, such formulas are fundamentally limited in their scope of applicability. First, the formula implies that the world's population will tend to infinity as we approach 2025, leading some to consider it the date of Judgment Day, an apocalyptic consequence of the population explosion. Secondly, an equally absurd result is obtained for the distant past, since at the creation of the Universe 20 billion years ago there should have been ten people present, undoubtedly discussing the greatness of what was happening. Thus, this solution is limited both in the future and in the past, and it is fair to question the limits of its applicability.

A factor that was not taken into account is time, which characterizes a person’s life - his reproductive ability and life expectancy. This factor manifests itself when going through a demographic transition - a process characteristic of all populations, clearly visible both in the examples of individual countries and the whole world.

If we introduce into the model the time τ characteristic of human life, the features of population growth both in the past and in the present are excluded. The growth process begins at T 0 = = 4.4 million years ago and continues beyond the critical date T 1 into the foreseeable future. It is expressed by the formula

describing the era before the demographic transition and the transition itself. The value of the new constants is obtained by comparing modern demographic data with the calculation:

This formula goes into the original expression (1) in the past, and all solutions describe the growth of humanity over three eras. In the first - epoch A, lasting 2.8 million years - there is linear growth, which then turns into the hyperbolic growth of epoch B, which ends after 1965 with the demographic transition. After the demographic transition, population growth over the course of a generation becomes comparable to the world population itself. And the number will begin to tend to the asymptotically stabilized regime of era C, that is, steadily approaching the limit of 14 billion. This is 2.5 times more than currently.

Due to the introduction of the characteristic time, the critical year of the T1 fracture shifts from 2025 to 2007. The very value τ = 42 years old fairly well reflects some average characteristic of a person’s life, although it was obtained from processing demographic data, and not taken from life.

The main and only dynamic characteristic of the system that determines its development is the dimensionless constant K = 67,000. It serves as the internal scale of the size of a group of people and determines the collective nature of the interaction that describes growth. Numbers of exactly this order determine optimal size city ​​or urban area and the number of sustainable natural species.

The growth rate over time t in epoch B turns out to be equal to N 2 /K 2 , where the meaning of the parameter K is clearly visible: it determines the growth rate per generation as a result of pairwise interaction of groups of K people. This simplest nonlinear expression describes collective relationships, summing up all the processes and elementary interactions occurring in society. It only applies to all humanity. As is well known from algebra, the square of a sum is always more than the amount squares; This is why it is impossible to summarize growth factors for individual regions or countries.

The meaning of the law is that development is self-accelerating, and each next step uses all the experience previously accumulated by humanity, which plays a major role in this process. A person’s long childhood, mastery of speech, training, education and upbringing largely determine the only way of development and self-organization specific to people. One might think that it is not the rate of reproduction, but rather the cumulative experience, interaction, dissemination and transmission from generation to generation of knowledge, customs and culture that qualitatively distinguish the evolution of mankind and determine the rate of population growth. This interaction should be considered as an internal property of a dynamic system. Therefore, the time has come to once and for all abandon the representation of social phenomena in the form of a simple sum of elementary cause-and-effect relationships, which, in principle, is not capable of describing the behavior of complex systems over long periods of time and over a large space.

Based on the ideas of the theory, it is easy to determine the limit to which the human population tends in the foreseeable future: 14 billion people, and the time when growth began in era A: 4.4 million years ago. You can also estimate the total number of people who have ever lived on Earth: P=2K 2 lnK=100 billion people.

In this assessment average duration human life is considered equal to τ/2 = 21 years, as is customary among demographers and anthropologists, who obtained values ​​for P from 80 to 150 billion people. It is significant that the entire growth pattern is best described on a logarithmic scale. This is not just a matter of convenience when it comes to representing the behavior of quantities that vary by ten orders of magnitude, there is a much deeper meaning here. On a double logarithmic scale, all power laws - the laws of self-similar development - look like straight lines, showing that the relative growth rate remains constant at all times. This allows us to take a fresh look at the pace of development and periodization of the entire history of mankind.

COMPARISON WITH ANTHROPOLOGY AND DEMOGRAPHY DATA

Comparison of the model with data from paleoanthropology and paleodemography will make it possible to describe the development of mankind over a gigantic period of time. The initial epoch of linear growth A begins 4.4 million years ago and lasts Kτ = 2.8 million years. Thus, the model outlines the initial stage of human growth, which can be identified with the era of the separation of hominids from hominoids, which began 4.5 million years ago. By the end of Epoch A, Homo habilis (“handy man”) appeared, and its number increased to 100 thousand people.

To check the calculations, it was necessary to compare the calculated values ​​with already known ones. The famous French archaeologist and anthropologist Yves Coppens might have had such information. I came to him in the old building of the Collège de France on the Rue d'Ecole in the Latin Quarter of Paris and asked:

Professor, how many people lived on Earth 1.6 million years ago?

One hundred thousand,” came the answer instantly, which completely amazed me, making me think that the researcher had calculated this figure. However, Coppens immediately rejected this assumption, saying that he was not a theorist, but a field researcher. And his assessment is based on the fact that at that time in Africa there were about a thousand sites in which large families lived - about a hundred people each. This figure consolidated a significant moment in the history of mankind, when “handy man” appeared in the Lower Paleolithic.

Epoch B of hyperbolic growth spans the Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Historical periods. During this crucial period of time, lasting 1.6 million years, the number of people once again increased by K times. By the time of the demographic transition, which can be dated back to 1965, the estimated population of the Earth was already 3.5 billion.

During the Stone Age, humanity spread throughout the globe. At that time, the Pleistocene climate changed greatly, up to five glaciations took place, and the level of the World Ocean changed by a hundred meters. The geography of the Earth was redrawn, continents and islands connected and diverged again, man occupied more and more new territories. Its numbers grew slowly at first, but then grew with increasing speed.

From the concept of the model it follows that when connections between individual groups of the population and the bulk of humanity were interrupted for a long time, development slowed down in them. Anthropology is well aware that the isolation of small groups leads to a slowdown in their evolution: even today you can find communities that are at the Neolithic and even Paleolithic stage of development. But in the Eurasian space, through which tribes roamed and peoples migrated, ethnic groups and languages ​​were formed, and systematic and constant growth occurred. At a certain stage, interaction followed the Steppe Road, and later the Great Silk Road, connecting China, Europe and India, acquired the greatest importance. Since antiquity, there have been intensive intercontinental connections along it, world religions and new technologies have spread.

Data on the world's population over the entire range of times fit quite well into the proposed model, but as we move into the past, the accuracy of the estimate decreases. So, already for the time of the Nativity of Christ, paleodemographers give figures for the world population from 100 to 250 million people, and from the calculation we should expect about 100 million.

Considering how close these estimates are, they should be considered quite satisfactory right up to the very beginning of the appearance of mankind. This is all the more surprising since the calculation assumes the constancy of growth constants, which are determined on the basis of modern data, but nevertheless apply to the distant past. This means that the model correctly captures the main features of world population growth.

It will be instructive to compare model calculations with demographic forecasts for the near future. The mathematical model indicates an asymptotic transition to the 14 billion limit, with 90% of the 12.5 billion limit to be expected by 2135. And according to the UN’s optimal scenario, by this time the world’s population will reach a permanent limit of 11,600 million. Note that over the past decades, demographic forecasts have been repeatedly revised upward. In the latest study, the calculated human population until 2100 and the estimates made have moved closer and essentially overlap.

DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION

Let us turn to the phenomenon of demographic transition as a completely special period that requires separate consideration. The duration of the transition is only 2τ = 84 years, but during this time, which is 1/50,000 of the entire history, a radical change in the nature of human development will occur. This time will survive 1/10 of all people who have ever lived on Earth. The severity of the transition is largely due to the synchronization of development processes, the strong interaction that is observed today in the world demographic system.

It is the “shock”, aggravated nature of the transition, over time less than the average life expectancy of 70 years, that leads to a violation of the value and ethical ideas developed over millennia of our history. Today, this is seen as the reason for the collapse of society, the growing unsettled life and the reasons for the stress that is so characteristic of our time.

During the demographic transition, the relationship between the younger and older generations radically changes. From the point of view of a systems approach and statistical physics, the transition resembles a phase transformation, which should be associated with a change in the age distribution of the population.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE RATE OF DEVELOPMENT OVER TIME

From the developed ideas, one more significant conclusion can be drawn: the scale of historical time changes as humanity grows. Thus, the history of Ancient Egypt spans three millennia and ended 2700 years ago. The decline of the Roman Empire lasted 1.5 thousand years, while current empires were created over centuries and collapsed over decades. This change in the time scale by hundreds and thousands of times clearly shows the scale invariance of the historical process, its self-similarity. On a logarithmic scale, each subsequent cycle is shorter than the previous one by e = 2.72 times and leads to an increase in population by the same amount. In each of the lnK = 11 periods of era B, 2K 2 = 9 billion people lived, while the duration of the cycles varied from 1 million to 42 years.

N. D. Kondratiev first drew attention to such periodicity of large socio-technological cycles in the history of modern times in 1928, and since then such cycles have been associated with his name. However, this periodicity is clearly realized only in the logarithmic representation of development and already covers the entire history of mankind. The stretching of time is clearly visible as we move away from the critical date - 2007. So, a hundred years ago, in 1900, the population growth rate ∆N/N = 1% per year, 100 thousand years ago it was 0.001%. And at the beginning of the Paleolithic, 1.6 million years ago, a noticeable increase - by 150 thousand people (today this is added in half a day) - could only occur in a million years.

It was in the Paleolithic that self-accelerated development began, which has since continued unchanged for a million years. By the beginning of the Neolithic, 10-12 thousand years ago, the growth rate was already 10 thousand times greater than at the beginning of the Stone Age, and the world population was 10-15 million. There is no Neolithic revolution as a leap within the framework of the model, since it describes only an average picture of development, which on average for humanity occurred quite smoothly. Let us pay attention to the fact that by this time half of all people who have ever lived had lived, and on a logarithmic scale, half the time from T 0 to T 1 had passed. Thus, in a certain sense, the past of humanity is much closer than we think. After 2007, the population level stabilizes, and in the future the historical passage of time may again become increasingly extended.

It is interesting to note that recently the Russian historian I.M. Dyakonov, in his review “The Paths of History. From Ancient Man to the Present Day,” clearly pointed out the exponential reduction in the duration of historical periods as we approach our time. The historian’s thoughts fully correspond to our model, where these same conclusions are simply presented in a different - mathematical - form. This example shows how closely the vision of the traditional humanist and the images belonging to the exact sciences come into contact, even intersect.

INFLUENCE OF RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT ON POPULATION GROWTH

The human development model predicts that the limit to population growth is not influenced by external factors - the environment and the availability of resources. It is determined only by internal factors that have been invariably active for a million years. Indeed, humanity as a whole has always had sufficient resources, which people have mastered by settling around the Earth and increasing production efficiency. When contacts ceased, there were no resources and free space left, local development ended, but overall growth was steady. Today in developed countries, 3-4 percent of the population can feed the entire country. According to experts International organization food, there are currently and in the foreseeable future there will be enough reserves on the planet to feed 20-25 billion people. This will allow humanity to calmly pass through the demographic transition, during which the population will increase by only 2.5 times. Thus, the limit to population growth should be sought not in the global lack of resources, but in the laws of human development, which can be formulated as the principle of the demographic imperative, as a consequence of the law of population growth inherent in humanity itself. This conclusion requires a deep, comprehensive discussion and is very significant, since the long-term strategy of mankind is connected with it.

Resources, however, are distributed extremely unevenly across the planet. In overpopulated cities and countries they have already been exhausted or are close to exhaustion. Argentina, for example, has an area only 30% smaller than India, a country with an ancient civilization, whose population is 30 times larger and lives very poorly. But Argentina modern development which began 200 years ago, could, according to experts, feed the whole world.

But within the framework of the approach under consideration, there is no difference between developed and developing countries. They all belong equally to the same system of humanity and are simply in different stages of the demographic transition. Moreover, now, primarily thanks to the exchange of information, the development of the so-called third world countries is going twice as fast as in developed countries, just as younger brothers often develop faster than the older one, borrowing his experience.

In the foreseeable future, after the demographic transition, the question of the criteria for human development will arise. If in the past the basis was quantitative growth, then after stabilization of numbers it will have to be the quality of the population. Change age structure will lead to a deep restructuring of the hierarchy of values, a greater burden on healthcare, social protection and education systems. These fundamental changes in the value systems of society will undoubtedly constitute the main problem in the near future, at a new stage in the evolution of mankind.

SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability of human development in the process of growth and especially during transition period is of exceptional importance from a historical and social point of view. However, at the first stage of the demographic transition, as calculations show, stability is minimal, and at this moment the historically sudden emergence of a young and active generation occurs. This was the case in 19th-century Europe, where the demographic preconditions arose for rapid economic growth and powerful waves of emigration that led to the settlement of the New World, Siberia and Australia. But they were unable to sufficiently stabilize the process of world development and prevent the crisis that led to world wars.

On the eve of the First World War, Europe was developing at an unprecedented and unsurpassed pace. The economies of Germany and Russia grew by more than 10% per year. The flourishing of science and the arts of that time predetermined the entire intellectual life of the twentieth century. But the Belle Epoque, this wonderful time of the heyday of Europe, ended with a fatal shot in Sarajevo.

World wars led to the death of about 100 million people - 5% of the world's population. Entire countries died out from the “Black Death” - a terrible plague epidemic - in the 14th century. But even then, humanity always very quickly made up for losses and, remarkably, returned to its previous stable growth trajectory.

At present, however, the possible sustainability of growth may be lost, as the demographic transition of developing countries proceeds twice as fast as in Europe, and will cover ten times more people. Comparing the dynamics of population growth in Europe and Asia, one can see that Europe will forever become a small outskirts, and the center of development will in the very near future move to the Asia-Pacific region. Only taking into account the speed of its development can we understand what kind of world our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will live in. Uneven settlement of territories on the borders of states and their economic inequality can also threaten global security. The expanses of Siberia, for example, are now losing population, while the northern provinces of China are rapidly populating. There is a constant flow of northward migration across the US-Mexico border, and similar developments could be taking place in Indonesia's 200 million people north of vast Australia, home to just 18 million.

Rapidly growing uneven development can cause a complete loss of sustainable growth and, as a consequence, lead to armed conflicts. It is impossible in principle to predict the course of events, but indicating their probability is not only possible, but also necessary. Today the world community faces important task: to maintain peace in an era of dramatic change and prevent local conflicts from flaring up into a global military conflagration, similar to those that arose in Europe in the early and mid-twentieth century. Without global sustainability, it is impossible to solve any other problems, no matter how significant they may seem. Therefore, their discussion, along with issues of military, economic and environmental security, should include, and not in last place, the demographic factor, taking into account its quantitative, qualitative and ethnic aspects.

DEMOGRAPHIC SITUATION IN RUSSIA

As already mentioned, the fate of a single country cannot be considered using methods developed to describe all of humanity. However, developed ideas allow us to consider each individual country as part of the whole. This was especially true for Soviet Union and is now true for Russia (see "Science and Life" No.).

Due to its size and multinational composition, diversity of geographical conditions, historical paths development and a closed economy, the regional processes taking place in the Union largely reflected and modeled global phenomena. Currently, Russia is completing a demographic transition; population growth stops and its numbers stabilize. However, this age-old process is superimposed by the events of the last ten years, and first of all - economic crisis. It led to deep upheavals and resulted in a decrease in average life expectancy, especially among men, which became less than 60 years.

With regard to the birth rate, according to demographers, nothing so catastrophic is happening. Its systematic decline is quite natural and characteristic of all modern developed countries. Therefore, Russia will continue to live in conditions of low birth rate, in which population migration has begun to play an important role. If before 1970 there was mainly emigration from Russia, now up to 800 thousand people arrive in the country annually. Migration directly affects the demographic situation in the country and contributes to some compensation for losses.

Reducing the number of young citizens will require a transition to a professional army and the abandonment of universal conscription - a very wasteful use of human resources. Russia will face this situation by the beginning of the next century, and by this time army reform should lead to new principles for the formation of the armed forces. Reducing the share of unskilled labor will increase the requirements for the quality of education, for early choice of vocational guidance and create incentives for creative growth.

In some regions of Russia and especially in the adjacent countries of Central Asia, population growth continues, due to the first stage of the demographic transition. It is accompanied by characteristic phenomena: an influx of population into cities, a growing mass of restless youth, an imbalance in the development of the country and, as a consequence, increasing instability of society. It is very important for Russia to understand that these processes are fundamental in nature and will drag on for a very long time. On the one hand, they are connected not only with global, but also with internal, specific to our history, circumstances. If we can and must cope with the latter, then global processes are beyond our influence: it requires global political will, which does not yet exist. On the other hand, it is in the destinies of our country that one can see the complex nature of the demographic revolution taking place in the world - a rapid transition unique in its dynamics, which ends a million years of tireless quantitative growth of humanity.

CONCLUSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The proposed model allows us to cover a huge range of time and a range of phenomena, which, in essence, includes the entire history of mankind. It is not applicable to individual regions and countries, but it shows that the course of world development affects each country, each demographic subsystem, as part of the whole. The model provides only a general, macroscopic description of phenomena and cannot claim to explain the mechanisms leading to population growth. The validity of the modeling principles should be seen not only and not so much in how closely the calculation coincides with the observed data, but in the validity of the basic assumptions and in the successful application of nonlinear mechanics methods to the analysis of population growth.

The theory established a boundary from which time should be counted, and a time scale that stretches as one moves into the past, responding to the intuitive ideas of anthropologists and historians about the periodization of development and giving them a quantitative meaning.

Analysis of the theoretical equation shows that population growth has always followed a quadratic law, and now humanity is undergoing an unprecedented change in the development paradigm. The end of an extremely vast era is coming, and the time of transition that we have witnessed and participated in has been greatly compressed.

The model paradoxically indicates that throughout history, the development of mankind has depended not on external parameters, but on the internal properties of the system. This circumstance made it possible to reasonably refute the principle of Malthus, who argued that it is resources that determine the rate and limit of population growth. Therefore, it should be considered appropriate to launch interdisciplinary comprehensive studies of demographic and related problems, in which mathematical modeling should participate together with other methods.

Mathematical models are not only a means for quantitatively describing phenomena. They should be seen as a source of images and analogies that can expand the range of ideas to which the strict concepts of the exact sciences cannot be applied. This primarily applies to demography, since the number of people as a characteristic of a community has a clear and universal meaning. Thus, in demographic problem A new object should also be seen for theoretical research in physics and mathematics.

If the ideas developed above will help to offer a certain development perspective common to humanity, a picture suitable for anthropology and demography, sociology and history, and will allow doctors and politicians to see the prerequisites for the current transition period as a source of stress for an individual and a critical state for the entire world community, the author will consider the experience of its interdisciplinary research worthwhile.

Literature

Kapitsa S.P. Phenomenological theory of world population growth. "Advances in Physical Sciences", vol. 166, no. 1, 1996.

Kapitsa S.P., Kurdyumov S.P., Malinetsky G.G. The World of the Future. M.: Nauka, 1997.

King A. and Schneider A. The First Global Revolution. M.: Progress, 1992.

The world population is more than 7 billion people. According toThe US Census Bureau's global population exceeded 7 billion on March 12, 2012. According to the UN, the world's population reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011. In June 2013, the UN estimated the world population at approximately 7.2 billion. World population - total number people living on Earth.Selective translation (Wikipedia article, internal ss arrows are lowered). The world's population has been growing continuously since the end of the Great Famine of 1315-1317 and the Black Death (plague epidemics) in the 1350s, when the population was about 370 million. The highest rates of population growth (above 1.8% per year) were seen briefly in the 1950s, and for a longer period during the 1960s and 1970s. The growth rate peaked at 2.2% in 1963, then fell to below 1.1% by 2012. Total annual births peaked at the end of 1980 at about 138,000,000, and now remain largely constant at 134,000,000 as of 2011, while deaths stood at 56,000,000 per year and are expected to will rise to 80 million per year by 2040.

Current UN forecasts show a further increase in population in the near future (with a steady decline in population growth rates), with the global population ranging from 8.3 to 10.9 billion by 2050. Some analysts have questioned the sustainability of continued world population growth, noting growing pressure on the environment and global food and energy supplies.

Earth's population by region

Six of Earth's seven continentsconstantly populated in large numbers. Asia is the most populous continent, with 4.2 billion inhabitants - more than 60% of the world's population. The population of the two most populated countries in the world is China and India together they make up about 37% of the world's population. Africa is the second most populous continent, with a population of about 1 billion people, or 15% of the world's population. Europe with a population of 733,000,000 people represents 11% of the world's population, while in countries Latin America And Caribbean The region is home to about 600,000,000 (9%). INNorth America, mainly inUnited States and Canada lives about 352,000,000 (5%), and Oceania - the least populated region, has about 35 million inhabitants (0.5%).

Population in countries around the world today

During the European agricultural and industrial revolutions, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. From 1700 to 1900, Europe's population increased from 100 million to 400 million. Overall, in 1900 Europe accounted for 36% of the world's population.
Population growth in Western countries accelerated after the introduction of mandatory vaccinations and improvements in medicine and sanitation Following dramatic changes in living conditions and improvements in healthcare during the 19th century, Britain's population began to double every fifty years. by 1801, population of Englandgrew to 8.3 million, and by 1901 it reached 30.5 million, the population of the United Kingdom reached 60 million in 2006.In the US, the population will increase from 5.3 million in 1800 to 106 million in 1920, and will exceed 307 million in 2010.
First half of the 20th century in Russia and the Soviet Union was marked by a series of wars, famines and other disasters, each of which was accompanied by large-scale population losses. Stephen J. Lee estimates that by the end of World War II in 1945, Russia's population was 90 million less than it otherwise would have been. Russia's population has declined significantly in recent decades, from 148 million in 1991 to 143 million in 2012, but as of 2013 this decline appears to have stopped.
In many countries developing world there has been rapid population growth over the last century. China's population has grown from approximately 430 million in 1850 to 580 million in 1953 and currently stands at over 1.3 billion. The population of the Indian subcontinent, which was about 125 million in 1750, reached 389,000,000 in 1941. Today, India and surrounding countries are home to about 1.6 billion people. Java's population has increased from five million in 1815 to more than 130 million at the beginning of the 21st century. Mexico's population grew from 13.6 million in 1900 to 112 million in 2010. During the 1920s-2000s, Kenya's population grew from 2.9 million to 37 million.

Cities ("urban areas") that had at least one million inhabitants in 2006. Only 3% of the world's population lived in cities in 1800, a proportion that rose to 47% by 2000 and was 50.5% in 2010. By 2050, the share could reach 70%.Image Source,

There are more than 200 states on planet Earth (including partially recognized and unrecognized countries).

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They all differ in living standards, incomes, cultural development and other important indicators.

In this situation, it is natural that the number of residents of countries globe varies significantly.

Against the backdrop of states with a huge number of inhabitants, there are countries where literally several thousand people live.

Total information

According to various estimates, 7.444-7.528 billion people live on planet Earth. There is a constant population increase of approximately 90 million people.

But the distribution of inhabitants around the planet is extremely uneven. More than 1/3 of all humanity lives in China and India, and 2/3 of the Earth’s inhabitants live in the 15 most populous countries.

For comparison, we present in the table information on the planet’s population during different periods of human development:

Note. Data for 1500 and earlier periods are obtained by scientific assessment. At this time, registration and census were not yet carried out.

Basic indicators

The population of each country is counted as local authorities, and the international scientific community.

This is hampered by military conflicts, and also part of the population of some countries lives in extremely inaccessible areas.

Let's look at the world population by state for 2020 in the following table:

Leading countries

Most people live in China and India. In total, more than 2.740 billion people live in these two states.

The United States, which ranks third in terms of the number of inhabitants, lags behind any of these countries very significantly, because only 325.719 million people live in them.

In Russia, which is in 9th place, even significantly fewer people live - 146.880 million people.

Who's behind?

On political map There are planets and states with a very small number of inhabitants. The fewest people live in the Vatican (less than 850 people).

But this does not mean that a sparsely populated country is an exception to the rule. There are also full-fledged states with literally several thousand inhabitants.

For example, only about 10 thousand people live in Tuvalu or Nauru. Less than 50 thousand people live in countries such as Palau, San Marino, Liechtenstein, and Monaco.

Growth dynamics

For a long time, the number of people on planet Earth was relatively small. It began to grow significantly only in the 19th century, but the real demographic explosion occurred in the 1960-1980s.

It is associated with an increase in the availability of quality medical care, overall growth standard of living and a non-declining birth rate in a number of countries.

The majority of newborns occur in countries such as China and India. Many in Latin America and Africa.

Forecast for the future

Scientists are constantly considering different scenarios further development humanity and changes in the number of inhabitants of the planet.

According to them, by 2020 there will be about 7.7-7.8 billion people living in the world and in the future it will only increase.

According to forecasts, by 2030 there will be more than 8.463 billion people on the planet, and by 2050 - already 9.568 billion. In 2100, the world's population may reach 11 billion.

Based on data set out in UN projections of world population

Around 8000 BC, the world population was approximately 5 million people. Over the 8000 year period before 1 AD. it grew to 200 million people (some estimates say 300 million or even 600 million), with a growth rate of 0.05% per year. A huge change in population occurred with the advent of the Industrial Revolution:

• In 1800, the world population reached one billion.
• The second billion in population was reached in just 130 years in 1930.
• The third billion was reached in less than 30 years in 1959.
• Over the next 15 years, the fourth billion was reached in 1974.
• In just 13 years, in 1987 - the fifth billion.

During the 20th century alone, the world's population grew from 1.65 to 6 billion.

In 1970 the population was half what it is now. Due to declining population growth rates, it will take more than 200 years for the population to double from today's levels.

Table with population data by year and population growth dynamics in the world by year until 2017

The world population is currently (2017) growing at a rate of about 1.11% per year (up from 1.13% in 2016).

Currently, the average annual population growth is estimated at approximately 80 million people. The annual growth rate peaked in the late 1960s, when it was 2% or higher. The population growth rate peaked at 2.19 percent per year in 1963.

Annual growth rates are currently declining and are projected to continue declining in the coming years. Population growth is projected to be less than 1% per year by 2020 and less than 0.5% per year by 2050. This means that the world population will continue to grow in the 21st century, but at a slower rate compared to the recent past.

The world population doubled (100% increase) in the 40 years from 1959 (3 billion) to 1999 (6 billion). The world's population is currently projected to increase by another 50% in 39 years, to 9 billion by 2038.

Forecast of the world population (all countries of the world) and demographic data for the period until 2050:

The main stages of world population growth

10 billion (2056)

The United Nations projects a world population of 10 billion by 2056.

8 billion (2023)

The world population is expected to reach 8 billion in 2023 according to the United Nations (and in 2026 according to the US Census Bureau).

7.5 billion (2017)

The current world population is 7.5 billion as of January 2017, according to United Nations estimates.

7 billion (2011)

According to the United Nations, the world's population reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011. The US Census Bureau made a lower estimate - 7 billion was reached on March 12, 2012.

6 billion (1999)

According to the United Nations, on October 12, 1999, the world population was 6 billion. According to the US Census Bureau, this value was reached on July 22, 1999, at approximately 3:49 a.m. GMT.

The main thing in the secular dynamics of the Earth's population was the growth of its numbers, with some fluctuations in individual periods and regions of the world. However, until the end of the 20th century, the growth rate of the population as a whole increased. According to demographers, the population of the Earth in past centuries was (in round numbers):

1000 year. - 250 - 300 million people. 1900 - 1600 - 1650 million people.

1500 - 400 - 450 million people. 1950 - 2500 million people.

1800 - 900 - 950 million people. 2000 - 6060 million people.

Thus, if in the first 500 years of the second millennium the population of the Earth increased by about 1.5 times, then in the second - by 12 times, and only in the last - 20th century - almost 4 times. The acceleration of population growth is well reflected by data on the number of years during which the Earth's population increases by 1 billion inhabitants. Such calculations show that the Earth's population has reached the population size:

1 billion people - in 1820, i.e. over the entire history of its development;

2 billion people - in 1927 - 107 years later,

3 billion people - in 1960 - 33 years later,

4 billion people - in 1974 - 14 years later,

5 billion people - in 1987 - 13 years later,

6 billion people - in 1999 - in 12 years.

As you can see, it took several tens of millennia to accumulate the first billion inhabitants of the Earth, while the 6th billion appeared over the past 12 years.

Thus, the 20th century became the period of the fastest growth in the world's population. The general accumulation of the human mass was stimulated by the entry of everything more countries during a period of dramatically expanded population reproduction - a demographic revolution (Table 1).

Table 1

World population dynamics in the 20th century

The table shows that population growth for every 10 years of the period 1960 - 2000 produced almost as many new inhabitants of the Earth as the entire 19th century produced. At the same time, it is clear that the peak of growth has already passed: after 1970, a gradual decline in growth rates began, and over the last decade (after 1990) the overall population growth has decreased.

The demographic situation varies significantly across regions of the world, each of which has its own development dynamics. General data by region of the world is presented in Table 2.

table 2

Population of major regions of the world

The table shows that the bulk modern population lives in developing countries; The share of the population of these countries increased from 65% to 80% during the 20th century. If during this period the population of developed countries

grew by 2.1 times, then in developing countries - by 4.5 times and amounts to almost 5 billion people compared to 1.2 billion people in developed countries.

Among developing regions, Asia stands out especially, where about 60% of the world's population lives. Most high tempo Africa has a growth rate of 20-25% by the end of the 20th century, which ensures a doubling of the population every 30 years. Latin America, which in the 20th century gave the largest - 8 times - increase in the number of inhabitants, by the end of the century was already reducing its growth rate to the level of the world average.

Among developed countries, the North maintains the greatest growth. America and Australia, which is supported by the migration of people from other regions here.

Russia's population growth was generally not high and close in rate to the average European rate - both regions experienced catastrophic wars and social cataclysms over the course of a century, the direct and indirect losses from which exceeded 100 million human lives.

Thus, demographic situation in the 20th century was determined by the demographic revolution, which swept most of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, which account for the main increase in the world population (Fig. 3). During this period, the population of developed countries grew by 0.6 billion, and developing countries - by 3.8 billion.

Among the countries of the world, the total number of which is about 240, 10 countries with a population of more than 100 million people each stand out. They concentrate more than half of the world's population and determine the prospects for human growth. These countries include (with 2000 population estimates):

China-1260 Russia-145

India -1020 Pakistan -132

USA-277 Bangladesh-131

Indonesia-206 Japan-127

Brazil -174 Nigeria -124

Thus, developing countries predominate among the largest ones. Among them are 6 Asian countries, including China and India, where a third of the world's population lives, and one country each on the continents of North and South America, Europe and Africa.