Geographers study where and why people live in particular locations. In this chapter we will look at the human population. We’ll look at the size of it, and whether it may be growing or shrinking. We’ll explore the role of scale. We’ll look at differences between countries. And we’ll do all of this through the lens of spatiality.

Neither people nor resources are distributed uniformly across Earth. In regards to population growth, geographers emphasize three elements: the population size, the rate of increase of world population, the unequal distribution of population growth. Geographers seek to explain why these patterns exist. Human-environment interaction and overpopulation can be discussed in the contexts of carrying capacity, the availability of Earth’s resources, as well as the relationship between people and earth’s resources.

List of countries and inhabited territories by total population. United Nations

Location	Population (1 July 2022)	Population (1 July 2023)	Change	UN Continental Region	UN Statistical Subregion
World	7,975,105,156	8,045,311,448	+0.88%
India	1,417,173,173	1,428,627,663	+0.81%	Asia	Southern Asia
China	1,425,887,337	1,425,671,352	−0.02%	Asia	Eastern Asia
United States	338,289,857	339,996,564	+0.50%	Americas	Northern America
Indonesia	275,501,339	277,534,123	+0.74%	Asia	South-eastern Asia
Pakistan	235,824,862	240,485,658	+1.98%	Asia	Southern Asia
Nigeria	218,541,212	223,804,632	+2.41%	Africa	Western Africa
Brazil	215,313,498	216,422,446	+0.52%	Americas	South America
Bangladesh	171,186,373	172,954,319	+1.03%	Asia	Southern Asia
Russia	144,713,314	144,444,359	−0.19%	Europe	Eastern Europe
Mexico	127,504,126	128,455,567	+0.75%	Americas	Central America

Figure 2.1.1 The Top Ten Most Populated Countries in the World. UN Data from 2022 and 2023. Retrieved from Wikipedia

Many of the countries with large populations are physically large themselves. Places like China and India have had comparably large populations for a long time. Very often, explorations of population growth are short circuited by discussions of religion or levels of development. Although religion and development are not irrelevant, they are not as important as is often assumed. Individual characteristics have come to mean less than they have in the past. The most obvious characteristic that often leads to higher population growth is poverty. One major reason is that the effect of infant mortality drives some people to have a large number of children in the forlorn hope that some of them survive to adulthood and take care of their parents. Another is the effect of migration, which can boost incomes by sending some population to other countries to work, but depopulate the places that are sending migrants.

In almost all countries, the rate of population growth has slowed. Two countries, China and India, account for 36 percent of the world’s population. Any change in these two places will have a large impact on the values for the entire planet. According to the World Bank for 2022, the population of China is growing 0.0 (!) percent per year, India is growing 0.7% down from 1.2 % in 2013 per year, the United States is growing by 0.4%  per year, and Indonesia is growing by  0.6% down from 1.4% in 2013 per year. Pakistan has grown by 0.9%. The rates for all these countries have been falling for decades, even Indonesia and India and Pakistan.

The study of the human population has never been more critical than it is today as there are over 8 billion people on the planet.  Humans do not live uniformly around the world, but rather in clusters because of earth’s physical geography. Environments that are too dry, wet, cold, or mountainous create a variety of limiting factors to humans.  Thus, two-thirds of the world’s population is located within three significant clusters: East Asia (China), South  and Southeast Asia (India and Indonesia), and Europe, with an overwhelming majority in East and South/Southeast Asia.

Please also watch this YouTube that gives a good introduction to many of the topics that will be discussed in this chapter and course:

Demographers, scientists that study population issues, and other scientists say there is more to the story than pure population growth. Ecologists believe that humans have outgrown the Earth’s carrying capacity, i.e. the number of people, other living organism and crops  that a region can support without environmental degradation.. There is not enough of the world’s resources to give every human a standard of living expected by most Americans. If all the people on the planet lived the average American lifestyle, it would require over three Earths. At this level of consumption, the earth cannot sustain a population of 8 billion, though we are expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.