THE NUMBERS OF MEN 



85 



that more accurate surveys of outlying parts of the world are 

 being made available each year. These have led in recent years 

 to official revisions of area particularly in French West Africa, 

 Venezuela, Iraq, Nicaragua, Tanganyika, and Southwest Africa. 

 The results of these surveys, as they become available, we 

 incorporate in our revisions. In the second place we are in- 

 creasingly able to make corrective deductions for the areas 

 included in inland waters (lakes, broad rivers, etc.), which 

 formerly were counted as land area. 



Table 3 

 World Population 



Area (sq. miles) 



Total population (in millions) . . . 

 Density (persons per sq. mile) . . . 

 Mean date to which figures apply 



1934 



revision 



52,139,677 

 2,050.4 

 39.3 

 1930.1 



1935 

 revision 



51,742,763 

 2,073.3 

 40.1 

 1931.5 



1937 

 revision 



51,422,465 

 2,104.8 

 40.9 

 1934.7 



Our figure for total world population of 2,104.8 millions is 

 a little greater than the latest League of Nations figure, which, 

 is 2,095.0 millions. But obviously the two world estimates are 

 in substantial agreement, the difference being less than one-half 

 of one per cent of the mean of the two estimates. 



The mean density of world population between 1930 and 

 1935 appears to have been almost exactly identical with that of 

 continental United States at the 1930 census — about 41 persons 

 on the average for each 640 acres of the earth's land surface. 



The af parent mean annual growth rate per cent of the world 

 population between the mean dates 1930.1 and 1934.7 is 0.58 

 per cent j that is six-tenths of a person added in each year net to 

 the living population for each hundred living at the beginning 

 of the year. 



It is, however, uncertain as to how much significance should 

 be attached to these apparent growth rates, because of the fact 

 that they include at all stages purely estimated population 



