Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
are not certain. Instead, the future projections are (highly) educated guesses based upon reasonable
assumptions concerning the global courses of birth and death.
OK, everybody into Rhode Island!
Rhode Island is the smallest state in the United States. Imagine if every person on Earth
went there to participate in a meeting. Would they all fit? And what would be the popula-
tion density?
Rhode Island contains 1,212 square miles, and about 6.1 billion people currently live on
Earth. If all of them went to Rhode Island and stood evenly spaced apart, that would work
out to 5,033,003 people per square mile. One square mile (5,280 feet x 5,280 feet) equals
27,878,400 square feet. Dividing that many square feet by 5,033,003 people gives each
person 5.54 square feet in which to stand. That works out to a square that is roughly 2
feet, 4 inches on each side.
Get out a foot ruler, measure an area that size on the floor, and stand in it. Now imagine
being surrounded for miles and miles by people who are allotted an equal amount of
space. Would you feel cramped? Well, people may respond differently to that question.
But with 5.54 square feet per person, 6.1 billion people could stand in Rhode Island with
little or no physical contact between them. And all of the rest of the world would be com-
pletely empty of humans.
This mathematical exercise is just that. It's not meant to play down the global impact of
6.1 billion people who need to be housed, fed, and otherwise sustained — all of which
requires considerably more space than exists in Rhode Island.
Checking Behind the Curve: Population Change
Population change is a matter of birth, death, and/or migration. That is, in a given year in a
given country, some people are born, some people die, some people move in, and some people
leave. Demographers have developed a statistically based vocabulary that addresses these is-
sues. Three terms in particular are worth passing along to you at the present time because they
appear frequently in the following pages:
Birth rate:
The annual number of births per 1,000 population.
