Human Population Growth

• Demography is the study of statistics related to human populations, such as trends in human population growth.
• Exponential growth occurs when the birth rate remains constant while the death rate decreases.
• Doubling time is the amount of time it takes for the population to double in size.
• In 1650, the human population was 500 million.
• By 1850, the human population had reached 1 billion.
• By 1930, the human population had grown to 2 billion.
• By 1975, the human population had reached 4 billion.
• Human population growth is not uniform across the globe.
• Developed countries, such as Canada and the U.S., tend to have a slower growth rate than developing countries, such as Mexico and Honduras.
• A population pyramid is a type of bar graph that shows the age distribution in a population.
• Available biocapacity refers to the Earth’s carrying capacity for the human population.
• An ecological footprint is the total amount of land needed to support one person.
• People around the world have different ecological footprints.