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The world population has now reached 8 billion people. This milestone inspired us to conduct research to update our statistics in 2023, and the changes over the past 17 years are remarkable. In 2006, only 1 person out of 100 would have had a college education-- today that number has jumped to 39. The detailed research and source information can be found here and the statistics provided by Donella Meadows in 1990 that originally inspired our project can be viewed here.

If the World were 100 PEOPLE:
50 would be female
50 would be male

25 would be children
There would be 75 adults,
10 of whom would be 65 and older

There would be:
60 Asians
18 Africans
13 people from the Americas
9 Europeans

31 Christians
25 Muslims
16 people who would not be aligned with a religion
15 Hindus
7 Buddhists
5 people who practice a Folk religion
1 person who is Jewish or practices another religion

12 would speak Mandarin Chinese
6 would speak Spanish
5 would speak English
5 would speak Arabic
4 would speak Hindi
3 would speak Bengali
3 would speak Portuguese
2 would speak Russian
2 would speak Japanese
58 would speak other languages

87 would be able to read and write; 13 would not

39 would have a tertiary/college degree
66 would be active Internet users

78 people would have an adequate place to shelter them
from the wind and the rain, but 22 would not

11 would be undernourished
29 would be moderately or severely food insecure

92 would have access to safe drinking water
8 people would have no clean, safe water to drink


Sources: 2023 - Kimberly S. E. LaComba, Ph.D., Director of Ph.D. in Global Leadership Program and Assistant Professor of Global Leadership, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, Indiana, USA; Somer Nourse, D.N.P., RN, Associate Professor of Nursing, Indiana State University, Indiana, USA; Youjin Yang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Teaching, Learning, and Foundations, Eastern Illinois University, Illinois, USA; Unheard Voices: Celebrating Cultures from the Developing World, 1992; Donella H. Meadows, The Global Citizen, May 31, 1990.