# Amount of people alive vs dead **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 30, 2006, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744 "2006-06-30T12:59:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Nausea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/35a633/32.png) [@Nausea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nausea)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2006, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/1 "2006-06-30T12:59:18Z")
O.K. I have a feeling this may be an oldie… so sorry to bore you if you’ve heard it before. I was recently told that there are more people alive today than have died throughout history… is this true? If not, when are we likely to reach this point? Help! ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2006, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/2 "2006-06-30T13:07:46Z")
[It’s not true according to Cecil Adams.](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_085.html) > [@Cecil](#): > > Estimates of the total roster of humankind rely heavily on guesswork, a state of affairs not entirely unknown to us here at the Straight Dope, and accordingly the numbers vary widely. > > Demographers have come up with estimates ranging between 69 billion and 110 billion humans. This gives us a spread of 41 billion, a pretty formidable margin of error. > > Still, it should put to rest the line of baloney put out years ago by the zero-population-growth alarmists, namely that the majority of humans who have ever lived is alive today. That’s flat wrong no matter what your assumptions. > [@nausea](#): > > If not, when are we likely to reach this point? Never. The Earth’s population [is stabilising](http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/pop850.doc.htm) and within 50 years is expected to begin to fall. We clearly can’t produce another 63 billion living people within the next 50 years and a declining population can never exceed it’s own ancestors in size. So there will never be a time when the living outnumber the dead. ---
**Author:** ![Alonzo\_John\_Blitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@Alonzo\_John\_Blitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alonzo_John_Blitz)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2006, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/3 "2006-06-30T15:49:31Z")
Per **Blake** “So there will never be a time when the living outnumber the dead.” Perhaps not, but the living are more robust and involved with the world. That should count for something. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2006, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/4 "2006-06-30T16:21:47Z")
Man, our children are in for it! there oughta be more ZOMBIES, GHOSTS, and EVIL DEAD people walking around than at any point in history! I predict; good career opportunities for exorcists, priests, and zombie-hunters. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2006, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/5 "2006-06-30T17:34:43Z")
> [@](#): > > Never. The Earth’s population is stabilising and within 50 years is expected to begin to fall. We clearly can’t produce another 63 billion living people within the next 50 years and a declining population can never exceed it’s own ancestors in size. Even if the population kept increasing, it’d be approximately exponential, which means that the ratio of dead to living should remain more or less constant. Remember, all the people alive now will eventually die, and add their numbers to those of the dead, so it’s an ever-moving target. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2006, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/6 "2006-06-30T23:03:08Z")
See, this is why I oppose giving the dead voting rights. ---
**Author:** ![Antonius\_Block](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/51bf81/32.png) [@Antonius\_Block](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antonius_Block)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2006, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/7 "2006-06-30T23:32:28Z")
[Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=243142) is a 2004 thread on the same topic. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2006, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/8 "2006-07-01T04:57:00Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > So there will never be a time when the living outnumber the dead. Well, except for once in 4004 BC ;). ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2006, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/9 "2006-07-01T13:34:31Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > So there will never be a time when the living outnumber the dead. You may scoff, and I don’t blame you as it is a pretty far fetched example, but say that in 500 years, we have populated the our spiral arm of the galaxy, and there is a huge population boom over the period of 100 years. Would the growth of multiple planets from a stock of say 10 billion people over the course of a hundred years- say final product being 1 trillion people, be possible? Would then the living outnumber the dead? ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2006, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/10 "2006-07-01T23:18:02Z")
> [@Epimetheus](#): > > Would the growth of multiple planets from a stock of say 10 billion people over the course of a hundred years- say final product being 1 trillion people, be possible? Would then the living outnumber the dead? It’s possible but it seems unlikely. Chronos made a very good point above, which is that the goal posts are constantly moving. Imagine that we had the opportunity to do this today, when the dead only outnumber the living about 10-fold. That means that within the next 45 years every female will have to produce, _on average_, 11 surviving children just to equal the number of dead. Given that many females are already at or approaching menopause, many more are infertile etc. that means that many women will have to produce 20 or more children to meet that 11 child average. And if we leave it for another generation the dead population will eqaul 69 billion rather than 63 billion so every living female will need to produce 12 children. And so the goal posts will move ever further away each generation. 11 surviving children per femalke isn’t a completely unobtainable number and becomes increasingly more plausible as medical technology improves but it is hard to envision a time when a majority of woman would _want_ to have more than 10 children. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2006, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/11 "2006-07-02T02:43:15Z")
> [@](#): > > 11 surviving children per femalke isn’t a completely unobtainable number and becomes increasingly more plausible as medical technology improves but it is hard to envision a time when a majority of woman would want to have more than 10 children. I think the most plausible way for it to occur would be some sort of medical breakthrough which vastly extended the natural human lifespan, and possibly the fertile period as well. Few women would want to have twenty children over a span of, say, 30 years between puberty and menopause, but over a span of 300 years? Maybe. And if you extend lifespans far enough, you wouldn’t even need to extend fertility: A woman might not be having any more children in her hundreds, but her great-great-great-great-great-granddaughters (whom she would live to see) would still be having them. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/12 "2006-07-06T04:46:17Z")
Today I happened to run across a chapter in [this book](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691102848/qid=1152160628/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-0650895-6316063?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) that tries to answer the question “How many people have ever lived?” The mathematical model that the author developed, which fit the data available pretty well, assumed not exponential growth but rather hyperbolic (or coalition) growth. His results: > [@Robert B. Banks](#): > > through the year 1990, about 80 billion people have lived on earth. Some observations: > > The world’s population in 1990 was 5.32 billion. This is about 6.5% of the number of people who have ever lived. Said another way, about one person in fifteen who have ever lived is currently living. > > About half of the 80 billion people lived between 1,000,000 B.C. and 4000 B.C.; the other half since then. > > During the nearly 2000-year period from the year 0 A.D. to 1990, about 32 billion people have lived. This is 40% of the total who have ever lived. > > Our final answer, P = 80 billion, agrees fairly well with results obtained by others; they range from 50 billion to 110 billion. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2006, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amount-of-people-alive-vs-dead/362744/13 "2006-07-06T05:00:07Z")
> [@Antonius Block](#): > > [Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=243142) is a 2004 thread on the same topic. [Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=344976) is a 200_5_ thread on the same dagon topic.