Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Going by the Numbers
The world's 6.1 billion people are spread very unevenly across the planet's surface, as you can
see from Figure 11-1. Virtual empty quarters — large and totally uninhabited realms — cor-
respond with the ice caps and tundra of Antarctica, Greenland, and the very high latitudes in
general. Similarly, large desert areas often are low on people. Indeed, if you read the chapter
on climate (Chapter 10), then it should come as no surprise that the Sahara, Gobi, Arabian,
and other desert realms are fairly devoid of people. Also, most of the world's rainforest realms
have low population densities, as the Brazilian interior and central Congo indicate.
Figure 11-1:
Global popula-
tion geography.
But for every desolate area, you must consider the likes of Hong Kong, with some 16,000 people per
square mile, or Singapore with its 17,000 people per square mile. Those are small dots on the world
map that complement large areas of comparatively high density: the northeastern U.S. and adjoining
areas of Canada; much of Western and Central Europe; the Nile valley; north central India; eastern
China, and Japan and Java.
Table 11-1 on the world's most populous countries highlights the dominance of China and India,
which respectively are home to 21 percent and 17 percent of all the people on this planet. Given those
two population powerhouses, Asia contains some 60 percent of the world's population — the largest
continental percentage by far (as shown in Figure 11-2). The United States is now the third most pop-
ulous country on Earth, but North America as a whole contains only 8 percent of the human popula-
tion. All told, the 15 most populous countries account for fully two-thirds of humanity.
