How Many People Have Ever Lived 

 on Earth? ' 



By Annabelle Desmond 



How many people have ever been born since the beginning of the 

 human race? 



What percentage does the present world population of 3 billion 

 represent of the total number of people who have ever lived? 



These questions are frequently asked the Population Reference 

 Bureau's Information Service. Because of the perennial interest and 

 because of the credence sometimes given to what would seem to be un- 

 realistic appraisals, this issue presents an estimate prepared by 

 Fletcher Wellemeyer, Manpower, Education and Personnel Consul- 

 tant, Washington, D.C., with Frank Lorimer of American University, 

 Wasliington, D.C., acting as adviser. This estimate, based on certain 

 statistical, historical, and demographic assumptions set forth in the 

 appendix, should be regarded as no more than a reasonable guess. It 

 assumes that man first appeared about 600,000 years ago, a date which 

 has been proposed for the dawn of the prehistoric era. However, 

 this date obviously is a compromise, anthropologically speaking, be- 

 tween varying extremes. 



Since then, it is estimated that about 77 billion babies have been 

 born. Thus, today's population of approximately 3 billion is about 

 4.0 percent of that number. 



Absolutely no information exists as to the size and distribution of 

 prehistoric populations. Presumably they were not large, nor very 

 widely distributed. If the 600,000 B.C. date is accepted as a somid 

 compromise, then only about 12 billion people — less than one-sixth of 

 the total number ever bom — are estimated to have lived before 6000 

 B.C. 



Anthropologists and paleontologists differ by hundreds of thou- 

 sands of years as to when man first walked this earth. Recent dis- 

 coveries strongly suggest that the life-span of the human species might 



^ Reprinted by permission from Population Bulletin, vol. IS, No. 1, February 1962. 



2 This article was based on a research report prepared by Fletcher Wellemeyer, with the 

 technical assistance of Frank Lorimer, and on supplemental research by Georgia Ogden. — 

 Robert C. Cook, editor. Population Bulletin. 



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