BBC asks: What number are you?

By Timothy Herrmann | November 2, 2011

BBC recently launched an interactive website where you can learn where you fall within the world’s 7 billion. The website was created in tadem with the UN’s announcement this year that the world’s population has now reached 7 billion.

These are the results I received after putting in my information:

You are 25, male and living in the USA

You were the 4,927,748,491st person

Your country’s population is 310,383,948

Average life expectancy as a Male is 75.4 years

What’s next? The global population will continue to increase during your lifetime, reaching 10 billion by 2083. However, the rate of growth is expected to slow. Little of the current growth is happening in developed countries like yours.

Young people: The world’s population is young, like you. Under-25s make up 43% of the global population, but they make up 60% of the world’s least-developed countries. Some 97 out of every 100 new births are in countries classified as less developed than yours.

Battle for resources: It is estimated that your group of the richest countries consumes double the resources used by the rest of the world. The UN estimates that if current population and consumption trends continue, by the 2030s we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us.

Did you know? People in your area have, on average, more than one mobile phone subscription per person.

59 people – the amount the population has grown while you’ve been on this site

Unfortunately, the program does not calculate how much the world’s population weighs. Or perhaps that would be too embarrassing.

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