How to Understand Earth's Population Distribution

The Earth contains over 6.6 billion people. But these six billion are not evenly spread over the world's habitable surface. Where are all these people located? Many factors contribute to the geography spread of people and populations around the globe, such as climate, terrain and topography, physical and political boundaries, and more. However, broad general patterns of populations on Earth can still be understood. This article will outline the general characteristics of Earth's human population distribution.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• World map of population distribution

1. Two-thirds of Earth's population lives within the mid latitudes, and almost 90 percent of the world's population lives north of the equator.
2. Around 90 percent of the world's population is concentrated on only 20 percent of the land surface. Therefore, a large majority of Earth's inhabitants live on and occupy a small portion of Earth's total habitable land area.
3. Three major population centers around the world include: East Asia (China, the Koreas, and Japan); South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh); and Europe (Western, Eastern, and Southern Europe). In fact, two countries each contain over one billion people: China and India. Since Earth's population is over six billion, this means that China and India each contain at least one-sixth of the Earth's total human population. Each major world region contained the following percentage of the Earth's total population in 1999: Africa (12.8 %), Asia (60.8 %), Europe (12.2 %), Latin America and the Caribbean (8.5 %), North America (5.1 %), Oceania (0.5 %).
4. While low-lying areas are more preferable for the locations of settlements, still a large portion of the Earth remains quite uninhabited. The sparsely population regions include northern and western North America, northern and central Asia, and interior South America, interior Africa, and the interior of Australia.
5. Cities and urban regions have seen dramatic increases in population over the last fifty years, with much growth continuing at present and into the future. Currently the Earth's urban population is estimated to be around 3.5 billion people.