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QuickFacts

Need help turning population jargon into everyday language? Looking for a fresh angle on a population issue?

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Education
Employment
Environment
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Family Planning
Fertility
Gender
Health
HIV/AIDS
Immunization
Income/Poverty
Migration
Mortality
Older Population
Policy
Population Trends
Race/Ethnicity
Reproductive Health
Urbanization
U.S. Census 2000
Youth

You can also search our QuickFacts by region.

Education

December 2003
What is the literacy rate among females in Mozambique? Even though the male-female literacy gap in Mozambique narrowed somewhat between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of men 15 years and older who can read and write is more than double that for women. Female adult literacy was 28 percent in 2000, compared with 60 percent for men. Read more.

What is the link between women’s education and family size? Educated women generally want smaller families and make better use of reproductive health and family planning information and services in achieving their desired family size. In Morocco, for instance, a woman with at least some secondary education had, on average, half as many children as women with no education. Read more.

April 2003
How many high school dropouts are there in the United States? The percentage of U.S. teens ages 16 to 19 who were dropouts fell from 11 percent in 1990 to about 10 percent in 2000, when 1.6 million teens were dropouts. Thirteen states had rates higher than the national average in 2000. The dropout rate was highest in Nevada (16 percent), Arizona (15 percent), and Georgia (14 percent). Read more. (PDF: 807KB)

June 2001
How is HIV/AIDS affecting schooling in Africa? The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS says that AIDS is reducing the number of children in schools in the countries in Africa that are most affected by the epidemic. A few factors account for the decline. According to UNAIDS, women who are infected with the virus have fewer children and up to a third of the children born to these women are themselves infected and may not survive to school age. Children who have been orphaned by AIDS may be forced to abandon their schooling because there is no money available to send them or because they have to start earning a living.

As HIV/AIDS kills workers at all levels of the workforce in African countries, teachers are also seriously affected. A 1999 UNICEF survey in Malawi found that the rate of HIV infection among teachers was 30 percent. UNAIDS notes that in Zambia, teachers are increasingly dying of AIDS, while many more go to work only sporadically because they are ill. (For more, see UNAIDS' Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic, June 2000.)

June 2001
Education highs and lows among the foreign-born in the United States. Public policy initiatives often stress education as a means of guaranteeing a well-paid, productive population. In general, a person with a college degree earns more money and has more employment opportunities than a person with only a high school degree or less. This is of particular concern to immigrant communities. U.S. Census Bureau figures for 1998 show that persons born in the United States are more than twice as likely to have completed high school compared with the foreign-born.

By contrast, the percentage of native- and foreign-born persons with college degrees is almost identical. In fact, foreign-born persons are slightly more likely to have college degrees. This reveals a dichotomy within the immigrant community: One group is highly skilled and college educated, and can expect to compete with native-born persons for well-paying jobs, while the other group consists largely of less educated migrant workers.

This dichotomy among the foreign-born is evident when we compare educational attainment among persons of Hispanic and Asian descent. More than 40 percent of Asians finished four years of college, compared with only 11 percent of Latinos. Hispanics are about twice as likely as blacks and three times more likely than whites to drop out of high school. (For more information, go to PRB's AmeriStat website www.AmeriStat.org.)

June 2001
Afghanistan's gender gaps in literacy. The gap in male-female literacy in Afghanistan offers a striking illustration of women's marginal status in that country. While the inequalities in education are significant within South Asia as a whole, the situation in Afghanistan is especially dramatic. Within South Asia, almost twice as many men as women can read and write. In Afghanistan, nearly three times as many men as women are literate. Some 46 percent of Afghan men and a tiny 16 percent of women can read and write, according to The State of the World's Children 2000, a report of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

In this largely rural, war-torn country of nearly 27 million people, men are expected to outlive women. The average girl born today in Afghanistan is expected to live to a meager 44 years, two years less than her male counterpart, according to PRB's 2001 World Population Data Sheet. This is one of only a few cases in which male longevity is greater than that of females.

In the meantime, the gap between male and female literacy has widened. The difference, which was 27 percentage points in the 1980s, grew to 32 percentage points in the 1990s.

Employment

May 2002
How does the average number of work years of US women compare with that of US men? Women's work life was little more than one-third that of men in 1950. By the late 1990s, however, the average work life of women had grown to 86 percent of men's, according to the Population Reference Bureau's Population Today. For men, the average work life fell from 39 years in 1950 to 37 years by the late 1990s. By contrast, women's average work life rose steadily and rapidly, from about 14 years in 1950 to nearly 32 years by the late 1990s. Higher levels of education were associated with longer work life.

October 2001
Are population pressures creating a fertile ground for conflict in the Middle East? As the campaign against terrorism focuses on extreme political and religious expression in many Middle Eastern countries, burgeoning populations and high unemployment, particularly among educated young men, are at least some of the factors gaining attention. For more, see Are population pressures creating a fertile ground for conflict in the Middle East?

August 2001
Is it common in the United States for mothers of preschoolers to be in the work force? Not only has the number of women in the U.S. labor force tripled over the last 40 years, the proportion of working mothers of young children has more than quadrupled. While American women were entering the labor force well before the turn of the last century, it is only during the last 30 years that the employment of mothers of preschoolers - including infants - has become common. Today, almost two-thirds of mothers of preschoolers and, even more strikingly, married mothers of children under age 1, are in the work force.

June 2001
How visible are women in the workforce globally? Around the world, women are entering the workforce as never before, both because they want to and because they need to earn independent incomes. In times of economic difficulty, women's economic contribution to the household budget and the family's well-being increases. The International Labour Organization (ILO) says that women's participation in paid work has increased significantly since the beginning of the 1980s. In fact, women are now more than 40 percent of the global workforce, even though they continue to be concentrated in low-paid, low-skilled jobs. (See PRB's report, Conveying Concerns: Women Report on Families in Transition, and the ILO's Decent Work for Women: An ILO Proposal to Accelerate the Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.)

March 2001
Women's labor force participation in the Middle East and North Africa. Despite the growing number of women seeking employment in the Middle East and North Africa, the labor force participation of women in this region still remains the lowest in the world. The women's share of the labor force increased from 22 percent in 1980 to 27 percent in 1997. Outside of this region, women comprise at least one third of the labor force. In the Middle East and North Africa, the employment of women is mostly concentrated in the services sector, as is the case with men.

As a result of its high level of fertility in the recent past, the working-age population is growing rapidly. Women are also staying in school longer and an increasing number of them go off to college. These women then compete for already scarce jobs. Women, particularly younger women, often experience more unemployment and for longer periods than men. According to the United Nations, the unemployment rate among women in North Africa is 24 percent, the highest for any region for both men and women. In a number of the region's countries, young women with college degrees face a higher rate of unemployment than women with high school or lower education. In Jordan in 1996, the unemployment rate among women graduated from two-year community college was as high as 38 percent.

Sources: United Nations, The World's Women 2000, Trends and Statistics; International Labour Organization, World Employment Report 2001: Life at Work in the Information Economy.

Environment

October 2003
Which world region consumes the most energy per person? Average energy use per person is still more than nine times greater in developed than in less developed regions. North Americans consume far more energy than any other region. In 1999, per capita energy use among Americans was nearly twice that of Europeans, nearly eight times that of Asians, and 15 times that of Africans. Read more (PDF: 280KB).

September 2002
Which is the world's most water-scarce region? Home to 6.3 percent of the world’s population, the Middle East and North Africa contains only 1.4 percent of the world’s renewable fresh water and is the most water-scare region. Rapid population growth has exacerbated the water scarcity the region faces, according to PRB's Finding the Balance: Population and Water Scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa.

August 2002
How vulnerable are the world's children to environmental hazards? Children are more vulnerable than adults to environmental hazards, which kill at least 3 million children under age 5 annually. These children breathe more air, drink more water, and eat more food in proportion to their body weight than adults, so they may experience higher rates of exposure to pathogens and pollutants. Behavior, such as putting objects in the mouth, also heightens the risks. Diarrheal infections, most of which are environment-related, killed nearly 2 million children under age 5 in 2001, says PRB's Children's Environmental Health: Risks and Remedies.

February 2002
What are some health effects of indoor pollution? Exposure to indoor pollution from traditional fuels such as wood and charcoal are linked to acute respiratory infections in children, chronic bronchitis and asthma, lung cancer, and pregnancy-related problems. Exposure to indoor pollutants kills more than two million people each year, mainly in less developed countries. See PRB's Women, Men, and Environmental Change: The Gender Dimensions of Environmental Policies and Programs.

June 2001
Does the relationship between population and the environment vary by world region? Yes. When most people link population growth and environmental degradation, they are usually referring to less developed countries, where most of the world's people live and where population growth is high. But environmental problems exist in all countries, regardless of the level of development.

Most of the environmental degradation in industrialized countries, where only 20 percent of the world's people live, is attributable to high consumption patterns, according to the Population Reference Bureau report, Human Population: Fundamentals of Growth and Change. Each individual in an industrialized country exerts more pressure on the environment than perhaps 20 to 30 people in the less developed world, notes the report. For example, consumption patterns in the United States are indicative of the industrialized world's disproportionate use of global resources. The United States has 5 percent of the world's population, uses an estimated 33 percent of the world's resources, and causes an estimated 33 percent of the world's pollution. According to one estimate, the average person living in the United States uses at least 30 times the amount of resources as a person living in India.

June 2001
How close is the coast? The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that about 60 percent of the world's population live within roughly 60 miles of the coastline. UNEP's Global State of the Environment Report 1997 says that more than 3 billion people rely on coastal and marine habitats for food, building sites, transportation, recreation, and waste disposal.

At the same time, says UNEP, about one-third of the world's coastal regions are at high risk of degradation, particularly from land-based sources of pollution and infrastructure development. European coasts are most affected, with some 80 percent at risk, followed by Asia and the Pacific, with 70 percent of the coast at risk. In Latin America, some 50 percent of the mangroves are affected by forestry and aquaculture activities. Oil spills are particular threats in West Asia and the Caribbean, while infrastructure development for the tourism industry puts stress on natural coastal areas around the world, particularly in small-island developing states.

June 2001
What percent of the world's people live in urban settings? The world has experienced unprecedented urban growth in recent decades. In 1900, some 14 percent of the world were urbanites, and 12 cities had 1 million or more inhabitants. By 2000, about 47 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas (about 2.8 billion), and there were more than 400 cities with more than 1 million people, according to the Population Reference Bureau report, Human Population: Fundamentals of Growth and Change. More developed nations were about 76 percent urban, while 40 percent of residents of less developed countries lived in urban areas.

Urbanization is occurring rapidly in many less developed countries, notes the report. It is expected that 60 percent of the world's population will be urban by 2030, and that most urban growth will occur in less developed countries.

An urban area may be defined by the number of residents, the population density, the percent of persons not dependent upon agriculture, or the provision of such public utilities and services as electricity and education. Some countries define any place with a population of 2,500 or more as urban, while others set a minimum of 20,000. There are no universal standards, and generally, each country develops its own set of criteria for distinguishing urban areas. The United States defines urban as a city, town, or village with a minimum population of 2,500 people. The classification of metropolitan includes both urban areas as well as rural areas that are socially and economically integrated with a particular city.

February 2001
Where is desertification most severe? Desertification is generally viewed as an advanced stage of land degradation. The United Nations defines desertification as a destruction of the biological potential of the land that can lead to desert-like conditions. Desertification is most severe in Africa. Some 45 percent of Africa's population lives in drylands that are susceptible to desertification, according to the UN Development Program's Office to Combat Desertification and drought (www.undp.org/seed/unso). In Kenya, a three-year drought has withered crops and killed livestock, leaving thousands of people without adequate food supplies. In neighboring Tanzania, widespread tree felling threatens to transform much of the country's forest into desert. Fire is a primary cause of desertification in the Sahel region of North Africa, where the degradation of drylands is especially pronounced. (For more information, see "Africa's Struggle with Desertification," on PRB's website.)

Family Planning

December 2003
What is the link between women’s education and family size? Educated women generally want smaller families and make better use of reproductive health and family planning information and services in achieving their desired family size. In Morocco, for instance, a woman with at least some secondary education had, on average, half as many children as women with no education. Read more.

April 2003
How extensive is contraceptive use in Latin America? In 2002, 70 percent of married women ages 15 to 44 used family planning in Latin America and the Caribbean — well above the world average of 61 percent and higher than the average for more developed countries (68 percent). Female sterilization and oral contraceptives account for almost two-thirds of all contraceptive use in this region. Read more. (PDF: 376KB)

March 2003
How does potential demand for contraceptives vary among regions? This demand is defined by adding total contraceptive use to total unmet need — the number of women who would prefer to avoid a pregnancy but do not use contraception. Demand in sub-Saharan Africa, where contraceptive use is lowest, averages 44 percent of married women, compared with 70 percent in other developing regions. Read more.

February 2003
How extensive is contraceptive use among Vietnamese married women? Roughly 74 percent of married women 15 to 49 years old in Vietnam use some form of contraception. Some 61 percent use modern methods, according to PRB's 2002 World Population Data Sheet. Read more.

July 2002
What percentage of married women in Africa use condoms? Approximately 1 percent, according to PRB's Family Planning Worldwide, which presents survey data for women who are either married or in informal unions. Condom use for these women worldwide is 5 percent, compared with 15 percent for those in more developed countries.

July 2002
Which is the most widely used contraceptive method worldwide? Approximately one out of four couples use sterilization as their family planning method, according to PRB's Family Planning Worldwide, which presents survey data for women who are either married or in informal unions. Roughly one-third of all married women in India and China, the world's two population billionaires, have been sterilized. In the industrialized world overall, female sterilization usage stands at 11 percent of couples and male sterilization at 4 percent.

June 2002
What factors have contributed to Iran's birth rate decline? The decline in the number of births per woman — from 5.6 in 1985 to 2.0 in 2000 — is mainly the result of increased contraceptive use by married women and changes in marriage patterns, says the PRB publication Iran's Family Planning Program: Responding to a Nation's Needs. Women's average age at first marriage rose from 19.7 in 1976 to 22.4 in 1996, and 74 percent of married women practiced family planning in 2000, up from 37 percent in 1976.

June 2001
How large is the "unmet need" for contraceptives? Experts estimate that between 100 million and 150 million women in the less developed world have an "unmet need" for contraceptive methods. These estimates, contained in the Population Reference Bureau report, New Population Policies: Advancing Women's Health and Rights, are based on surveys that include questions about women's reproductive intentions. Demographers define a woman as having an unmet need if she says she would prefer to avoid a pregnancy but is not using a contraceptive method. In some countries, more than one-quarter of married women of reproductive age have an unmet need for methods of family planning.

March 2001
The contraceptive revolution. Fifty-two percent of the world's married women now use modern contraceptive methods, according to the Population Reference Bureau. China's contraceptive prevalence rate - 83 percent - is the highest in the world. In Brazil and Thailand, 70 percent of married women use modern contraceptive methods. This high percentage has been achieved through increased information about reproductive health.

Other high-use countries include Germany (79 percent), Belgium (74 percent), Denmark (74 percent), the United States (71 percent), and the Netherlands (71 percent). More than 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have contraceptive prevalence rates below 10 percent. PRB's Population Bulletin, "World Population Beyond Six Billion," notes "Women's options improved immensely when the pill and the modern IUD became available after 1960. During the 1990s, about 20 percent of women worldwide relied on one of these two methods. New contraceptives, including injectables and implants, became available in many countries in the 1980s. They have become popular methods in some African countries. Female sterilization has been widely adopted in Asia and Latin America and is the most popular single method worldwide. An estimated 17 percent of married women ages 15 to 49 rely on female sterilization to prevent pregnancy."

Marriage/Family

Why do many people in the U.S. who want to adopt children look abroad? Adopting within the United States is legally complicated, slow, and costly, making it difficult to adopt children while they are still infants. Less than 2 percent of children adopted through the U.S. foster care system in 1998 were infants, compared with 46 percent of children adopted from abroad. Read more.

March 2002
How often are U.S. children the victims of homicide? Homicide is the 15th leading cause of death for U.S. infants, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC has found that infants face the greatest risk of homicide on their day of birth. The period with the second highest peak in risk for infants is the eighth week of life when their constant, daily crying is greatest. See: Risk of Homicide High Among U.S. Infants.

December 2001
Do many older Americans spend their "golden years" with kin? Only an estimated 20 percent of older Americans live with family members. In 1900, however, more than 70 percent of Americans 65 years or older lived with relatives, notes the Population Reference Bureau's American Families. In 1900, merely 15 percent of widows 65 years or older lived alone, compared with 70 percent today.

June 2001
Are more people in the United States choosing to be single? Over the past 30 years, the percentage of persons who have never been married has increased from about 22 percent to 28 percent, according to the US Census Bureau. The major increases in the never-married population have occurred among blacks. Between 1975 and 1999, the percentage of blacks who have never been married increased from 32 percent to 44 percent. And the percentage of blacks who are married declined from over 42 percent in 1975 to 32 percent in 1999. (For more information, go to PRB's AmeriStat website.)

June 2001
How is "the family" defined? No single definition of "the family" captures the many forms of family units around the world. The question of who lives with whom and how large the family unit is varies among and within societies, according to the Population Reference Bureau's Conveying Concerns: Women Report on Families in Transition. Furthermore, new economic and demographic trends are rapidly changing family lifestyles and composition across the globe, breaking down traditional notions of women's and men's roles in the home.

While marriage between a man and a woman is widely seen as the first step in family formation, many other types of unions exist, including cohabitation, visiting, consensual, and homosexual unions. The majority of families, however, comprise mother and father and children, a mother and her children, or a childless couple, with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other kin living either close by or far away. (See, for example, Marian F. Zeitlin, Ratna Megawangi, et al., Strengthening the Family: Implications for International Development, Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1995).

June 2001
Husbands and wives and the U.S. workforce. The U.S. Census Bureau shows that the Ozzie and Harriet model, in which the husband works and the wife stays at home, does not represent the typical family in today's U.S. workplace. In a more accurate portrayal of American families, Harriet would enter the workforce and might even earn more money than her husband. In married-couple households in which both husband and wife are employed, over 25 percent of women earned more money in 1999 than their husbands did the previous year. And in dual-earner households in which both the husband and wife are working full-time this number increases to 31 percent. (For more information, go to PRB's AmeriStat website.)

June 2001
How does the international community view the family? The United Nations has long recognized the family as the basic unit of society and has advocated policies for the support and protection of family members. The world community went a step further in 1994 at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. The Programme of Action on population and development that governments adopted there recommends that nations create policies for housing, labor, health, social security, and education to support family life.

The Programme also recommends that governments and other relevant institutions develop the means to monitor the impact of social and economic decisions and actions on the well-being of families, on women's status within families, and on the ability of families to meet the basic needs of their members. (For more, see the Population Reference Bureau's Conveying Concerns: Women Report on Families in Transition.)

February 2001
Are more young Americans living with their parents today than they were in 1970? As a declining share of young adults in the United States choose married life, a greater share are living with parents or on their own, according to a Population Bulletin of the Population Reference Bureau. The Bulletin, "American Families", by Suzanne M. Bianchi and Lynne M. Casper, notes that the percentage of young men living in their parents' home was 57 percent in 2000, about the same as in 1970, while the percentage increased for young women, from 39 percent to 47 percent.

Fertility

March 2003
Which industrialized countries have above replacement level fertility? None. The United States was the only one where the average number of children born to women exceeded the 2.1 needed to replace the parents. But the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has revised the total fertility rates for 2000 and 2001 based on 2000 Census results. The 2001 rate, formerly 2.115, is 2.034. Compared to European countries, however, the United States is growing rapidly because of a higher birth rate and much higher immigration. The full report is available as a PDF on the NCHS website. Read more.

March 2001
Cuba's low fertility. Low fertility rates are usually linked to wealthy countries. But there are notable exceptions. Take the case of Cuba:
Cuba's average birth rate per woman (1.6) is the lowest in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Population Reference Bureau. It is also the same as that of the industrialized countries of Belgium and the Netherlands and falls below the 2.1 average in the United States.
A number of factors may contribute to this. For one thing, despite the country's battered economy, many indicators for Cuba compare favorably with those of wealthy countries. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) ranks Cuba 58th in the world in its 1999 human development index, a ranking of 174 countries, based on life expectancy, education, and income. In its gender empowerment measure, which focuses on women's opportunities, the UNDP ranks Cuba 21st in the world. Among developed nations, Japan is ranked 38th and France, 36th.
Life expectancy for Cuban boys and girls combined (75 years) is the same as that of more developed countries as a whole. Also, Cuba's literacy rate for women, ages 15 and over, is 95 percent. For every 100 males in secondary school, there are 105 females, according to PRB's 1998 Women of Our World.

March 2001
How does population growth differ between developed and developing countries? The birth rate in developing countries is more than double that of developed countries. This phenomenon will have untold economic, political and environmental ramifications in the years ahead. Virtually all population growth in the foreseeable future is expected to take place in developing countries, while some developed nations could lose population, according to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). A key measure is the total fertility rate (TFR), or the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime. A comparison between Niger, the country with the highest birth rate, 7.5 children per woman, and Bulgaria, with one of the lowest birth rates, 1.2 children per woman, illustrates the gap. (See PRB's 2001 World Population Data Sheet.)

March 2001
What caused Sweden's "roller-coaster fertility" between 1975 and 1998? Sweden's roller coaster fertility rates from 1975 to 1998 illustrate why demographic projections cannot be taken for granted. Sweden's total fertility rate (TFR) fell to 1.6 children per woman in 1978, one of the lowest TFRs of any modern state in Europe at the time, according to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The country's TFR seemed on a relatively stable track.

In 1983, however, the TFR began a highly unusual sharp rise that brought it above the replacement level fertility of 2.1 children per couple in 1990. Then the rate peaked and fertility made a precipitous drop to 1.5, the lowest in Swedish history. The difference between a TFR of 1.6 and a TFR of 2.1 or greater, it should be remembered, is the difference between adding population and losing population. What happened? Two factors seem to account for the roller-coaster fertility. Changes in maternity laws in the 1980s gave working women paid maternity leave. And if a woman had a second child within two years, she again received full salary during maternity leave. Many women cashed in on the liberal provision in the 1980s.

Not only did the two-year provision lift fertility, but it also absorbed future childbearing by couples who just wanted to replace themselves with two children. In the late 1980s, the Swedish economy fell into a decline, a factor that discouraged women from having children. The public sector was cut back, leaving many women unemployed. It is ironic that a sudden increase in Sweden's fertility that garnered considerable attention at the time has crashed so soon. (For more on fertility rates around the world, go to PRB's DataFinder.)

March 2001
Low fertility and aging labor markets. As many industrialized countries may be discovering, the consequences of declining birth rates are different for individuals than they are for society. Having fewer children and delaying childbearing may allow individuals more time and money to invest in each child's personal development. It may also mean having a better chance to attain a higher standard of living. For society, falling birth rates have led to aging populations and shrinking labor markets. In Europe, this imbalance has resulted in a natural decrease in the region's population, according to UN estimates. But other industrialized nations are looking to immigration to replenish the labor force. For example, the goal of Canada's current government is to increase immigration levels to about one percent of the population, or roughly 300,000 new immigrants a year.

Gender

October 2001
What conditions do Afghanistan's refugees face? For more than two decades, the Afghan population has been shouldering the burden of civil conflict, the brutal effects of which have been exacerbated by acute and prolonged drought, widespread starvation, and especially harsh winters. The result has been massive movements of people within the country and across its borders and a mounting catastrophe in which millions of people rely on humanitarian assistance for survival. For more, see Risks Mount for Afghan Women, Children.

June 2001
How visible are women in the workforce globally? Around the world, women are entering the workforce as never before, both because they want to and because they need to earn independent incomes. In times of economic difficulty, women's economic contribution to the household budget and the family's well-being increases. The International Labour Organization (ILO) says that women's participation in paid work has increased significantly since the beginning of the 1980s. In fact, women are now more than 40 percent of the global workforce, even though they continue to be concentrated in low-paid, low-skilled jobs. (See the Population Reference Bureau's report, Conveying Concerns: Women Report on Families in Transition, and the ILO's Decent Work for Women: An ILO Proposal to Accelerate the Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.)

In this largely rural, war-torn country of nearly 27 million people, men are expected to outlive women. The average girl born today in Afghanistan is expected to live to a meager 44 years, two years less than her male counterpart, according to the Population Reference Bureau's 2001 World Population Data Sheet. This is one of only a few cases in which male longevity is greater than that of females.

In the meantime, the gap between male and female literacy has widened. The difference, which was 27 percentage points in the 1980s, grew to 32 percentage points in the 1990s.

June 2001
Do gender differences affect women's health? The different roles that women and men play in society and the relative power they wield vary from one country to another. However, almost everywhere, women face disadvantages relative to men in the social, economic, and political spheres of life, according to the Population Reference Bureau report New Population Policies: Advancing Women's Health and Rights. Where men are viewed as the principal decisionmakers, women often hold a subordinate position in negotiations about limiting family size, contraceptive use, managing family resources, protecting family health, or seeking jobs. According to the report, gender differences affect women's health and well-being throughout the life cycle:

Before or at birth, parents who prefer boys may put girls at risk of sex-selective abortions (where technology is available to identify the sex) or infanticide.
Where food is scarce, girls often eat last, and usually less than boys do. Girls may be less likely than boys to receive health care when they are ill.
In some countries, mainly in Africa, girls are subjected to female genital cutting. Adolescent girls may be pressured into having sex at an early age-within an arranged marriage, by adolescent boys proving their virility, or by older men looking for partners not infected with STIs.
Married women may be pressured by husbands or families to have more children than they prefer, and women may be unable to seek or use contraception.
Married and unmarried women may be unable to deny sexual advances or persuade partners to use a condom, thereby exposing themselves to the risk of STIs.
In all societies, women are more likely than men are to experience domestic violence. Women may sustain injuries from physical abuse by male partners or family members, and the fear of abuse can make women less willing to resist the demands of their husbands or families.

Sources: United Nations, The World's Women 2000, Trends and Statistics; International Labor Organization, World Employment Report 2001: Life at Work in the Information Economy.

Health

October 2003
What is a child's risk of death? A child's risk of death is nearly 15 times greater in the first month of life than at any other time during the first year of life. Almost 12,000 of the 350,000 babies born each day die within their first month, and 98 percent of those deaths occur in developing countries. More than 4 million newborns die each year, and an equal number are stillborn. Read more (PDF: 123KB).

April 2003
What percentage of newborn deaths occur in developing countries? Almost 12,000 of the 350,000 babies born each day die within the first month of life, and 98 percent of those deaths occur in developing countries. The interventions that save newborn lives depend on a functioning, sustainable health system, planning and resource allocation at the local level, and improved nutritional and other household practices. Read more (PDF: 268KB).

May 2002
How many countries achieved the World Summit for Children goal of a one-third reduction in the death rates of children under five? Between 1990 and 2000, some 63 countries actually achieved the one-third reduction in infant and under-five mortality rates, while more than 100 countries cut those deaths by one-fifth, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Consequently, there are now 3 million fewer deaths of children under age five than at the beginning of the 1990s. Nine of the 14 countries where child deaths have increased are in Africa, where the HIV/AIDS epidemic has sent rates soaring in some places.

March 2002
What percentage of births are attended by skilled personnel? Some 57 percent of births in the world take place in the presence of a health professional, such as a doctor, nurse, or midwife, says PRB's 2002 Women of Our World data sheet. In more developed countries, nearly all births (99 percent) take place with a skilled attendant present, compare with only 50 percent in less developed countries (excluding China).

March 2002
How many women die annually of maternal causes? The World Health Organization estimates that 515,000 women die every year from maternal causes, 99 percent of them in less developed countries. This makes maternal mortality the health measure that reveals the largest disparity between the less developed and more developed world.

December 2001
How does malaria affect pregnancy? Malaria threatens at least 24 million pregnancies each year in Africa, the continent most affected by this disease according to the World Health Organization (WHO). When a woman is pregnant, her immunity is reduced, making her more vulnerable to malaria, which can cause anemia and result in miscarriage and the delivery of premature and low birth weight babies.

December 2001
How much has HIV/AIDS reduced life expectancy in poor countries? The disease has cut life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole by 15 years - to only about 47 years. Life expectancy is lower in some parts of the region. A baby born either in Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, or Swaziland has a life expectancy of less than 40 years, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

December 2001
Which vaccine-preventable diseases cause the most deaths worldwide? Hepatitis B heads the list with an estimated 900,000 deaths annually, followed by measles, with 888,000 deaths, and tetanus, with 410,000, according to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

October 2001
Is there a relationship between malaria and resource-poor settings? A new study published by the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria describes an important connection between severe malaria transmission and poverty. Presented in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the study notes, for instance, that the growth of per capita income in malaria-ridden countries from 1965 to 1990 was only 0.4 percent annually, compared with 2.3 percent for countries with fewer malaria infections.

October 2001
How wide is the rich-poor "vaccine gap"? While children in less developed countries may have access to six or seven vaccines, those in more developed nations can expect to receive 11 or 12, according to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

June 2001
How serious is the global TB threat? The World Heath Organization (WHO) estimates that one-third of the world's population is now infected with tuberculosis and new infections are occurring at the rate of one every second. Further, WHO estimates that unless effective action is taken, 35 million people will die from the disease between the years 2000 and 2020. TB now kills 2 million people annually.

"The global epidemic is growing and becoming more dangerous. The breakdown in health services, the spread of HIV/AIDS, and the emergence of multi-drug-resistant TB are contributing to the worsening impact of the disease," WHO explains. (See www.who.int/inf-fs/en/fact104.html.)

June 2001
Can the world improve food security? To meet a projected world food gap in the year 2020, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) estimates that cereal production must be increased by 40 percent. More than 800 million people, mostly in the developing world, are already chronically undernourished and the world population is projected to increase by more than 70 million annually during the 1995-2020 period. At the same time, rising incomes in poor countries will stimulate demand. As a result, to close the gap between production and food demand, developing countries will have to double their cereal imports, roughly 60 percent of which is expected from the United States, says IFPRI.

Before or at birth, parents who prefer boys may put girls at risk of sex-selective abortions (where technology is available to identify the sex) or infanticide.
Where food is scarce, girls often eat last, and usually less than boys.
Girls may be less likely than boys to receive health care when they are ill. In some countries, mainly in Africa, girls are subjected to female genital cutting.
Adolescent girls may be pressured into having sex at an early age-within an arranged marriage, by adolescent boys proving their virility, or by older men looking for partners not infected with STIs.
Married women may be pressured by husbands or families to have more children than they prefer, and women may be unable to seek or use contraception.
Married and unmarried women may be unable to deny sexual advances or persuade partners to use a condom, thereby exposing themselves to the risk of STIs.
In all societies, women are more likely than men to experience domestic violence. Women may sustain injuries from physical abuse by male partners or family members, and the fear of abuse can make women less willing to resist the demands of their husbands or families.

June 2001
Another way to look at hunger. At roughly 826 million, the world's undernourished people outnumber the populations of every continent except Asia.

According to the State of Food Insecurity in the World 2000 published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 792 million people in 98 developing nations are not getting enough food to lead normal, healthy, and active lives. The FAO notes that in the world's industrialized nations and countries in transition (those in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union), an estimated 34 million children, women, and men are undernourished.

HIV/AIDS

September 2003
How prevalent is HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia? Though almost unheard of a decade ago, HIV/AIDS cases in Eastern Europe increased dramatically in the latter half of the 1990s. The UN estimates that 1.2 million people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia were living with HIV at the end of 2002. Intravenous drug use has been the main mode of transmission. Read more (PDF: 252KB).

May 2001
What is the impact of the AIDS epidemic on young people worldwide? The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) calculates that half of all new HIV infections around the world occur among youth between the ages of 15 and 24. When children under the age of 14 are added, the total increases to 60 percent of new infections. According to UNAIDS, the vast majority of these young people live in less developed countries where AIDS is concentrated.

The context within which young people live influences their exposure to HIV. Among the most vulnerable groups are those who live on the edges of society, including orphans, refugees, street children, those who grow up in urban slums, or those who face isolation because of their sexual orientation. These young people often have limited access to education, health information, and health services. Some may increase their risks by selling sex to survive; others may be abducted and sold into the sex trade. Many take up injecting drug use and expose themselves to high HIV risks by sharing needles.

Immunization

December 2002
How extensive is childhood immunization in Cambodia? Only 40 percent of children in Cambodia are fully immunized against the six standard vaccine preventable diseases — polio, diphtheria, whooping cough (pertussis), tetanus, measles, and tuberculosis. Children in urban areas and those whose mothers attended at least secondary school are most likely to be fully immunized. Read more.

June 2001
Immunization ... an ounce of prevention. Without immunization from the main vaccine-preventable childhood diseases, an average of three out of every 100 children born will die from measles, another will die from tetanus, another from whooping cough, and one of every 200 will be disabled by polio, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). (For more, see http://www.unicef.org/gavi/decade.htm.)

Some progress has been made in the global immunization efforts over the last couple decades. For example, while only 20 percent of children in sub-Saharan Africa were immunized in the early 1980s, roughly half had received vaccines by the early 1990s. In the Middle East and North Africa, immunization campaigns doubled coverage against the six main vaccine-preventable diseases, from 42 percent in the early 1980s to 84 percent a decade later. In South Asia, by the early 1980s, 28 percent of children were immunized against vaccine-preventable diseases. By the early 1990s, the immunization rate had almost tripled to 85 percent.

May 2001
How close is the world to eradicating polio? Although polio is now history in more developed countries, the condition still devastates children's lives in some less developed nations. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says that in 2000 alone, polio paralyzed around 3,500 children in 20 countries and infected hundreds of thousands more.

UNICEF says that a massive global campaign to eradicate polio may, however, succeed in its goal in the next couple years.

More than two thirds of the world's children under 5 years old-450 million-were immunized against polio in 1998 alone. UNICEF's State of the World's Children 2000 notes that in India that year, health workers and volunteers vaccinated 134 million children during national immunization days.

Even countries fighting wars have honored their commitment to immunize children. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, national immunization days, which have been held since 1998, have reached 96 percent of the children in more than two-thirds of the country.

Income/Poverty

October 2002
What percentage of U.S. Virgin Islands children live in poverty? While the national economy grew at a record pace during the 1990s, contributing to the lowest child poverty rate in 20 years, the economic situation for children and families in the U.S. Virgin Islands deteriorated. Between 1989 and 1999, the percentage of children in families with incomes below the poverty line grew from 37 percent to 42 percent, notes the KIDS COUNT/PRB report, A First Look at Children in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

September 2002
How does income distribution affect health in the Americas? In the mid-1990s, the average life expectancy in low-income countries with small disparities in income levels was one year greater than in wealthier countries with greater disparities, says the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Also, the difference in life expectancy between the least unequal populations and the most unequal was 8.2 years. PAHO concludes that for countries with the same income level, the more equal populations receive more than double the gain in life expectancy from reduced cardiovascular disease, as do less equal populations. And the risk of dying a violent death in less equal populations is double that of more equal populations, in both rich and poor countries.

July 2002
What percentage of the U.S. population lives in poverty? In 2000, 11 percent of the population was officially poor, according to the poverty income guidelines of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. In 2000, a single mother with two children needed $13,874 to avoid being counted as poor; a two-parent, two-child family needed just $17,463. In contrast, the 2000 median income for U.S. families was $50,891, notes PRB's Poverty in America: Beyond Welfare Reform.

June 2001

Education highs and lows among the foreign-born in the United States. Public policy initiatives often stress education as a means of guaranteeing a well-paid, productive population. In general, a person with a college degree earns more money and has more employment opportunities than a person with only a high school degree or less. This is of particular concern to immigrant communities. U.S. Census Bureau figures for 1998 show that persons born in the United States are more than twice as likely to have completed high school compared with the foreign-born.

March 2001
How much does it cost in the United States to raise a child to age 17? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, a family with a child born in 1999 can expect to spend about US$160,140 (US$237,000 when adjusted for inflation) for food, shelter, and other necessities to raise that child over the next 17 years.

Migration

September 2002
How many U.S. residents were born in Iraq? Just under 90,000 people born in Iraq were resident in the United States on April 1, 2000, newly released data from the U.S. Census show. Answers to a separate Census 2000 question about residents' ancestry or ethnic origin show 33,000 people claiming only Iraqi ancestry. A further 82,000 people were were reported as "Assyrian/Chaldean/Syraic," descendants of the indigenous, mainly Christian people of the area that includes what is now Iraq. Of those reporting Iraqi ancestry, 29 percent live in Michigan. Of those reporting Assyrian, Chaldean, or Syriac ancestry, 42 percent live in Michigan.

August 2002
Which U.S. states appeal most to native-born and foreign-born migrants? The states that drew the most domestic migrants in the 1990s were in the south and west of the country, including Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona. These states attracted residents from congested and more expensive coastal states — including California, New York, and New Jersey — and from midwestern states, such as Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio. Most foreign-born migrants still go to California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey, according to PRB's Population Today.

April 2002
How diverse is the U.S. black population? Immigration has made the black population in the United States more heterogeneous. Between 1970 and 2000, the share of foreign-born people in the black population rose from 1.3 percent to 7.8 percent. Growth was highest in Florida, where foreign-born blacks increased from 1.1 percent to 22 percent. The immigrants come from many countries in the Caribbean and Africa, with the largest percentages from Haiti (18 percent); Jamaica (15 percent); the Dominican Republic (7 percent); and Trinidad and Tobago (4 percent).

March 2002
What proportion of the world's immigrants are in industrialized countries? Of the 160 million-plus immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, and authorized and unauthorized migrant workers living outside of their home countries, an estimated 45 percent — some 70 million — are in industrialized countries. See: International Migration: Facing the Challenge.

January 2002
How many people in the world live outside their countries? The United Nations and the International Organization for Migration estimate that some 150 million people, or 2.5 percent of the world's population, live either temporarily or permanently outside their countries of origin. Some 80 million to 97 million of these are estimated to be migrant workers and family members. Another 12 million are refugees outside their countries.

January 2001
How much has the immigrant population increased in the United States over the last 100 years? A dramatic increase in the U.S. foreign-born population took place between 1970 and 1998 as a result of legislation passed in 1965 that relaxed immigration barriers. The foreign-born population increased from 9.6 million to 24.4 million. About a third of the current foreign-born population has arrived in the United States since 1990. Despite the recent rise, however, the percentage of the population that was born outside of the United States was lower in 1998 (9 percent) than at the turn of the century (14 percent).

January 2001
Where are Palestinian refugees living? There are 3.8 million Palestinians registered as refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) (www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/me.html). Jordan has the largest share of the Palestinian refugees living within its borders: 1.6 million. The Gaza Strip holds the second largest Palestinian refugee population, with more than 825,000 people registered as refugees. Only one-third of the Palestinian refugee population lives in refugee camps. The Gaza Strip has the largest number living in camps: close to half a million.

January 2001
Replacement migration. Falling fertility rates are forcing European countries to consider substantial replacement migration to revitalize their aging workforces. UN experts reckon that if Europe wishes to maintain its present (1995) ratio of older citizens to active workers, the European Union would need 135 million immigrants by 2025. Europe's population is expected to decline from 731 million in 2010 to 718 million in 2025. By contrast, Africa's population is projected to jump from 979 million to 1,290 million over the same period.

Compared with Europe, the United States maintains a more balanced age structure through immigration, which accounts for about 30 percent of the nation's annual population increase.

October 2000
Immigration - A big contributor to recent Australian population growth. Australia's population has been expanding slowly since the late 1970s, with average annual growth of around 1.2 percent. Current trends indicate that, were it not for immigration, it would take more than a century for Australia to double its population. Much of the recent growth resulted from immigration, with newcomers contributing a substantial 41 percent of population growth from 1993 through 1998, according to Australian Demographic Statistics (September 1999).

Mortality

March 2001
Japanese girls in the lead. Baby girls born in Japan today have a life expectancy of 84 years — the highest in the world. Life expectancy is considered a rough measure of a nation's health and economic environment. Girls in Switzerland and San Marino are right behind girls in Japan, with life expectancies of 83 years. Girls in Australia, France, Iceland, Martinique, Spain, and Sweden have life expectancies of 82 years. Boys in Japan, Iceland, Sweden, and Switzerland can expect to live to about 77 — more years of life than any other males.

March 2001
Counting the years: What a difference a century makes! Living to a golden old age in the early 1800s meant reaching your mid-twenties. Babies born in India in 1881, for example, could expect to live a mere 25 years, according to official Indian figures for that year. Life expectancy in the world's second most populous nation has risen about 60 percent in more than a century.

Babies born in the South Asian nation today could expect to live to 60 years, a little below the world average of 64 years, according to UN estimates. This sharp increase in life expectancy - much faster than it ever was in the western nations - is what actually caused the population "explosion" of the latter half of the 20th century.

December 2000
Where is the healthiest place to live in the United States? The healthiest place to live, judging from death rates that take into account the age distribution of the population, is the state of Hawaii. Minnesota comes in second, followed by Utah, North Dakota, and Colorado. The District of Columbia has far higher mortality than any state, followed by Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee. In part, these geographic variations reflect the variation in the proportion of people of different races living in each state. Hawaii has by far the largest proportion of Asian Americans, who have the lowest mortality rates among American racial and ethnic groups, and the District has a high proportion of African Americans, who have the highest mortality rates.

Older Population

April 2003
How many U.S. centenarians did Census 2000 record? Some 50,000 Americans were reported as having crossed the century mark. Centenarians account for less than 0.2 percent of the 35 million people 65 years or older, and this is widely believed to be an overestimate because of chronic overreporting at older ages. Read more.

June 2002
How quickly is the U.S. population aging? As a result of declining birth rates and increasing longevity, the percentage of those 65 years or older in the United States rose from 8.2 percent in 1950 to 12.6 percent today. By 2030, some 20 percent of Americans will by over the age of 65, according to the PRB publication, Government Spending in an Older America.

January 2002
According to the United Nations, one out of every 10 persons is now 60 years or older; by 2050, one out of five will be 60 years or older; and by 2150, one out of three persons will be 60 years or older. There were an estimated three women for every two men age 65 or older in 2000, according to "Elderly Americans," a new publication of the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The sex ratio is even more skewed among the oldest-old. At ages 85 and older, the ratio is 41 men per 100 women, says the new Population Bulletin. The preponderance of women among the elderly reflects the higher death rates for men than women at every age.

June 2001
The age-dependency ratio. The demographer's age-dependency ratio-also called the dependency ratio-offers a quick, rough measure of a nation's social obligations and probable population trends. The age-dependency ratio is the ratio of persons in the so-called economically dependent ages (under age 15 and over age 64) to the population's "economically productive ages" (ages 15 to 64). In the developed world, 18 percent of the population is under 15 years and 14 percent is 65 years or older, according to the 2001 World Population Data Sheet, published by the Population Reference Bureau. By contrast, in the developing world (excluding China), 36 percent of the population is under age 15, and 4 percent is ages 65 or older.

In Nigeria, for example, 44 percent of the population is under 15 years old and 3 percent is 65 years or older, according to PRB. The populous sub-Saharan nation needs schools, teachers, maternal health care, job creation, and the like to build a stable future. And when the pre-teen group reaches its childbearing years, the nation's population growth will receive still more momentum. Italy's population, on the other hand, is only 14 percent children and 18 percent older adults. The European nation must focus on supporting its retired population and on finding ways to maintain work-force strength as its demographic structure ages.

February 2000
Low fertility and aging labor markets. As many industrialized countries may be discovering, the consequences of declining birth rates are different for individuals than they are for society. Having fewer children and delaying childbearing may allow individuals more time and money to invest in each child's personal development. It may also mean having a better chance to attain a higher standard of living.

For society, falling birth rates have led to aging populations and shrinking labor markets. In Europe, this imbalance has resulted in a natural decrease in the region's population, according to UN estimates. But other industrialized nations are looking to immigration to replenish the labor force. For example, the goal of Canada's current government is to increase immigration levels to about one percent of the population, or roughly 300,000 new immigrants a year. (The country accepted some 170,000 new immigrants last year.)

Policy

February 2002
To what extent are U.S. states promoting access to contraceptives? Seventeen states require employers to provide insurance coverage for prescription contraceptives when they cover preventive drugs, in line with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruling. Twelve of these states include in their laws clauses that allow employers and insurers to refuse contraceptives coverage on religious or moral grounds, says the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL).

June 2001
Which policies are most effective in reducing population growth? A range of policies and programs can work together to bring about lower population growth rates. At recent world conferences, governments reviewed national experiences and developed consensus agreements about the most effective approaches to stabilize populations. Among the most influential of these conferences was the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, which called for making family planning and reproductive health care universally available and recommended a range of measures to improve women's status.

Research studies have found that organized programs that make family planning information and services widely available have had a direct effect on lowering the number of children women bear. Less developed countries that have implemented successful programs have made a strong political commitment to culturally sensitive, conveniently located programs that offer users a variety of family planning methods. In some countries, programs in which female family planning workers visit women in their homes have brought about an increase in the use of contraception. In traditional societies, family planning programs are more successful when community leaders who have a strong influence on a group's decisionmaking and on individual attitudes, support them.

Social and economic advances have also been associated with lower population growth. In poor, agrarian societies, children may represent a family's future security, since many people depend on their children for household and agricultural work and for support in old age. As countries modernize and become more urban, couples tend to prefer smaller families. Making family planning services readily available can help translate ideas about smaller family size into reality.

Increasing the status of women is also associated with lower fertility. Many women, especially in less developed countries, have few choices in life outside of marriage and children and tend to have large families. Investing in women, by providing education, health, and other services, helps to widen their opportunities and reduce their dependence on children for status and support.

June 2001
How easy is it to turn development policy into action? Recent world conferences have produced an array of recommendations for governments and private organizations. The Programme of Action from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo includes 16 chapters with 243 proposed actions that cover many aspects of population, health, gender equality, other areas of social policy, socioeconomic development, and the environment. Most governments set national priorities that reflect the needs they perceive to be most critical. And, given resource limitations in less developed countries, most governments can afford only limited actions. The poorest countries need support from donor agencies to make any progress at all.

The world is far from meeting the resource needs outlined in the Cairo Programme of Action. In 1994, the UN projected that in less developed countries and countries in transition to a market economy (such as in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union), population and reproductive health programs would cost nearly $17 billion annually by 2000 and $22 billion by 2015, in 1993 dollars. The cost estimate for 2000 included $10.2 billion for family planning programs (about double the amount spent in 1990), $6.3 billion for other reproductive health care (such as prenatal and delivery care as well as the prevention of HIV and other STIs), and another $0.5 billion for research and policy activities.

The Cairo Programme of Action called for one-third of the proposed spending to come from international donors, about the same proportion as in earlier programs. Generally, governments in less developed countries pay for most of the local costs of providing services; donors typically help pay for contraceptives and other supplies and technical services. Under the Cairo guidelines, the donor/ developing country breakdown would have translated to $5.7 billion and $11.3 billion, respectively, in 2000. In fact, UN estimates of 1997 spending showed that donor countries were providing only about $1.9 billion to $2.0 billion annually - one-third of the amount called for - and the less developed countries were spending about $7.7 billion from domestic resources. (See the Population Reference Bureau's Population Bulletin, "New Population Policies: Advancing Women's Health and Rights.")

Population Trends

July 2003
What countries are ranked first and 20th in population size in 2003, and what countries will be ranked first and 20th in 2050? In 2003, China is ranked first, with almost 1.3 billion people; France is ranked 20th, with 60 million people. In 2050, India will be first, with just over 1.6 billion people (China will be second, with almost 1.4 billion); Uganda will be 20th, with 82 million people (France’s population is projected to rise to 64 million). Read more.

December 2002
How young is the U.S. population? More than one-fifth of the U.S. population was under age 15 in 2002, compared with less than one-seventh of Japan's population. While some African and Latin American countries have much younger profiles — many with more than one-third of the population under age 15 — continued U.S. growth is expected. By 2050, the population is projected to grow by nearly 140 million to a total of 420 million. Read more.

November 2002
What percentage of people ever born are living today? With absolutely no demographic data available for 99 percent of humans' presence on Earth, such an estimate would involve speculating about prehistoric populations. One semi-scientific approach estimates roughly 106 billion births since the dawn of the human race, which means 5.8 percent of all people ever born are alive today. Read more.

April 2002
How young is the population of the West Bank and Gaza? A full 45 percent of the population in the West Bank and 50 percent of the Gaza population are children below the age of 15, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

January 2002
How quickly is the proportion of the world's older population growing? According to the United Nations, one out of every 10 persons is now 60 years or older; by 2050, one out of five will be 60 years or older; and by 2150, one out of three persons will be 60 years or older.

December 2001
How much has HIV/AIDS reduced life expectancy in poor countries? The disease has cut life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole by 15 years — to only about 47 years. Life expectancy is lower in some parts of the region. A baby born either in Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, or Swaziland has a life expectancy of less than 40 years, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

June 2001
The age-dependency ratio. The demographer's age-dependency ratio-also called the dependency ratio-offers a quick, rough measure of a nation's social obligations and probable population trends. The age-dependency ratio is the ratio of persons in the so-called economically dependent ages (under age 15 and over age 64) to the population's "economically productive ages" (ages 15 to 64). In the developed world, 18 percent of the population is under 15 years and 14 percent is 65 years or older, according to the 2001 World Population Data Sheet, published by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). By contrast, in the developing world (excluding China), 36 percent of the population is under age 15, and 4 percent is ages 65 or older.

May 2001
How bilingual are Canadians? Canada's two official languages, English and French, are not spoken in equal numbers of homes, according to Statistics Canada. About 19.6 million Canadians (69 percent of the population) generally speak English at home, including 530,000 who speak another language. By comparison, 6.5 million Canadians (23 percent of the population) speak French at home, including nearly 200,000 who also speak another language. Just 134,000 Canadians speak both official languages at home. Of the Canadians who speak French at home, 90 percent (5.9 million) live in Quebec. (Statistics Canada, accessed at http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb, March, 2001)

May 2001
What languages are spoken in Canadian and U.S. homes? In both the United States and Canada, a noticeable minority of residents does not speak the official language of their country. The 1990 U.S. Census found that 31.9 million Americans ages 5 and over (14 percent of the population) spoke a language other than English at home. In Canada, which has two official languages, a smaller percentage of the population speaks a different language at home. Statistics Canada shows that nearly 2.6 million persons (9 percent of the population) primarily speak languages other than English and French at home.

March 2001
Population aging. Worldwide trends toward lower fertility and greater life expectancy have contributed to the phenomenon of "population aging." While the trend has been mainly associated with the industrialized countries of Europe and North America, less developed nations are certainly catching up.

Uruguay is an example. This South American country, where 91 percent of the population lives in urban areas, has a higher percentage of people 60 years and over than Canada and the United States, according a joint publication of the Pan American Health Organization, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the National Institute on Aging. "Aging in the Americas into the XXI Century" notes that 17.3 percent of the Uruguayan population fall into the 60 years and older category, compared with 16.5 percent in the U.S., and 16.3 percent in Canada.

March 2001
Asia's multimillions. Only one world region has more than one country of over 100 million people. Asia can count China, with 1.2 billion people, India, with 1 billion people, and four other nations. Indonesia, Pakistan, Japan, and Bangladesh have all crossed the 100 million-mark, according to the Population Reference Bureau.

With the exception of the Middle East, every other major world region has just one country of this size. Europe has Russia, North America has the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean has Brazil, and Africa has Nigeria.

March 2001
How quickly is Yemen's population growing? The United Nations projects that the total population of Yemen a country with one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world — will increase from 18 million in 2000 to more than 100 million by 2050. The UN projects that by mid-century, the country's population will still be growing at more than two-and-a-half percent a year, faster than any other country's projected growth rate. Yemen currently has one of the world's highest birth rates - an average of about 6 children per woman. While the birth rate is expected to drop by half in the next 50 years, Yemen's population will continue to increase rapidly way into the 21st century because the number of women of childbearing years will still be growing. The number of Yemeni women of reproductive age will increase from 3.3 million in 1995 to 9.5 million in 2025. (Sources: UN World Population Prospects: 1998 and 2000 Revisions)

March 2001
How does population growth differ between developed and developing countries? The birth rate in developing countries is more than double that of developed countries. This phenomenon will have untold economic, political and environmental ramifications in the years ahead. Virtually all population growth in the foreseeable future is expected to take place in developing countries, while some developed nations could lose population. A key measure is the total fertility rate (TFR), or the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime. A comparison between Niger, the country with the highest birth rate, 7.5 children per woman, and Bulgaria, with one of the lowest birth rates, 1.1 children per woman, illustrates the gap.

March 2001
How quickly has Egypt's population grown over the last 30 years? With 68 million people, Egypt has about twice the number of inhabitants it did 30 years ago. By the year 2025, Egypt's population is projected to reach 95 million, according to the UN World Population Prospects: 2000 Revision. This high rate of population growth is due to a rapid decline in mortality (particularly infant and child mortality) and a slow decline in fertility. The total fertility rate in Egypt was 5.3 children per woman in 1980, and 3.4 in 1998, according to the 1998 Demographic and Health Surveys. Despite this fertility decline, the population is expected to grow because an increasing number of young women are entering their childbearing years.

Race/Ethnicity

June 2001
Education highs and lows among the foreign-born in the United States. Public policy initiatives often stress education as a means of guaranteeing a well-paid, productive population. In general, a person with a college degree earns more money and has more employment opportunities than a person with only a high school degree or less.
This is of particular concern to immigrant communities. U.S. Census Bureau figures for 1998 show that persons born in the United States are more than twice as likely to have completed high school compared with the foreign-born.

March 2001
What percent of the U.S. population is multiracial? The 2000 Census was the first that allowed people to mark more than one race. The Census Bureau added this option because of increasing rates of interracial marriage and the growing population-especially children and minorities-that identifies with more than one race. Of the 281.4 million people counted in the census, about 6.8 million (2.4 percent) identified with two or more races. About 4 percent of children were identified as multiracial, compared with 2 percent of adults. The most common multiracial combinations in the 2000 Census were white and American Indian and Alaska Native (1 million); white and Asian (868,000); white and black (785,000); and black and American Indian and Alaska Native (182,000). The multiracial population also included 3.2 million people-primarily Hispanic/Latino respondents-who reported "some other race" in combination with one or more other races.

March 2001
How many "Cablinasians" are there in the United States? In 1997, after his 1997 Masters Tournament win, Tiger Woods coined the term "Cablinasian" to describe his white, black, Thai, Chinese, and American Indian background. The 2000 Census was the first that allowed people like Tiger to select multiple races, and results show that he is not alone. There were 10,672 people who reported a combination of white, black, Asian, and American Indian races. This may sound like a sizeable group, but it is only a small fraction (0.2 percent) of the total people who marked more than one race (6.8 million). And in the United States as a whole, only 1 person in every 26,370 reported this rare combination.

Reproductive Health

January 2003
At what ages do Zimbabwean young people begin sexual activity? A UNICEF study conducted in 2001 in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city, shows that 80 percent of in-school youth had their first sexual encounter between ages 11 and 15. Read more.

October 2002
When do Brazilian adolescents become sexually active? A survey by the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning of the Ministry of Health shows that among young people ages 16 to 19, some 61 percent had already engaged in sexual relations. Among those, 40 percent said their first time was before age 15. Boys had sex earlier than girls and blacks earlier than whites. Adolescents who lived with their parents and had formal education tended to initiate sexual activities later.

September 2002
How widespread are disabilities related to maternal causes? Roughly half of the nearly 120 million women who give birth around the world each year experience complications during pregnancy. Also, between 15 million and 20 million develop disabilities such as severe anemia, chronic pain, incontinence, damage to the reproductive organs or nervous system, and infertility, according to PRB's Hidden Suffering: Disabilities from Pregnancy and Childbirth in Less Developed Countries.

How many women die annually of maternal causes? The World Health Organization estimates that 515,000 women die every year from maternal causes, 99 percent of them in less developed countries. This makes maternal mortality the health measure that reveals the largest disparity between the less developed and more developed world.

August 2001
What are the largest health burdens for women in their reproductive years? Pregnancy and childbirth, including unsafe abortion, account for the largest health burden for women in their reproductive years. In addition to maternal causes, sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, are a major cause of disability and death among women worldwide.

June 2001
How common is adolescent childbearing? Of the 15 million young women ages 15 to 19 who give birth every year, 13 million live in less developed countries, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute's publication, Into a New World: Young Women's Sexual and Reproductive Lives. Thirty-three percent of women in less developed countries give birth before the age of 20, ranging from a low of 8 percent in East Asia to 55 percent in West Africa. In more developed countries, about 10 percent of women give birth by age 20. However, in the United States, the level of teen childbearing is significantly higher, at 19 percent. Significant differences also exist between countries in the same region. For example, in Senegal, 43 percent of women ages 20 to 24 gave birth by age 20, compared with 70 percent in Mali.

Early pregnancy and childbearing are typically associated with less education and lower future income for young mothers.

June 2001
How does contraceptive use vary among regions? Contraceptive use varies substantially by region and country. Only 13 percent of married adolescents ages 15 to 19 use contraception in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with 55 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 11 percent of married adolescents in Haiti use contraception, compared with 51 percent in Colombia. Turning to Asia, 7 percent of married adolescents use contraception in India, compared with 42 percent in Indonesia.

Urbanization

June 2003
How urban is Latin America? Three-quarters of Latin Americans lived in urban areas in 2000. Largely because of massive migration from rural areas, the urban population swelled from about 65 million people in 1950 to 380 million people in 2000. Read more. (PDF: 376KB)

March 2001
Judging a country by its cities. Since employment opportunities and access to education and health care are often limited in rural areas, the degree of urbanization within countries could help explain some inequalities across the region.

There is evidence of this in the Pacific. With its large forest cover, Papua New Guinea is one of the least urbanized territories in the world. A mere 15 percent of the population live in areas considered urban, according to the New Caledonia-based Secretariat of the Pacific Community, a regional grouping of 26 countries and territories. The Solomon Islands are even more rural. Only 13 percent of the population live in urban centers. In Australia and New Zealand, by comparison, 85 percent of the population lives in cities.

Gaps in life expectancy - one important measure of a population's health - reflect the region's rich-poor disparities. Girls born in Papua New Guinea today have a life expectancy of 57 years. On the other hand, girls born in Australia and New Zealand have life expectancies of 82 years and 80 years, respectively, according to the Population Reference Bureau. In this measure, the two countries are ahead of even some of their wealthier partners around the world.

U.S. Census 2000

November 2002
Which U.S. congressional district has the highest percentage of poor children? New York's 16th District (which includes much of the South Bronx) has the highest percentage of children in poverty in the nation: 52 percent. José Serrano will be serving that district, which is also one of the three districts with the youngest populations; over a third of the residents are under age 18. Read more.

March 2001
What percent of the U.S. population is multiracial? The 2000 Census was the first that allowed people to mark more than one race. The Census Bureau added this option because of increasing rates of interracial marriage and the growing population-especially among children and minorities-that identifies with more than one race. Of the 281.4 million people counted in the census, about 6.8 million (2.4 percent) identified with two or more races. About 4 percent of children were identified as multiracial, compared with 2 percent of adults. The most common multiracial combinations in the 2000 Census were white and American Indian and Alaska Native (1 million); white and Asian (868,000); white and black (785,000); and black and American Indian and Alaska Native (182,000). The multiracial population also included 3.2 million people-primarily Hispanic/Latino respondents-who reported "some other race" in combination with one or more other races.

March 2001
How many "Cablinasians" are there in the United States? In 1997, after his 1997 Masters Tournament win, Tiger Woods coined the term "Cablinasian" to describe his white, black, Thai, Chinese, and American Indian background. The 2000 Census was the first that allowed people like Tiger to select multiple races, and results show that he is not alone. There were 10,672 people who reported a combination of white, black, Asian, and American Indian races. This may sound like a sizeable group, but it is only a small fraction (0.2 percent) of the total number of people who marked more than one race (6.8 million). And in the United States as a whole, only one person in every 26,370 reported this rare combination.

Youth

June 2003
How old are U.S. foreign-born residents? Nearly 20 percent of foreign-born residents who arrived during the 1990s were ages 18 to 24 in 2000, about twice the percentage of U.S.-born residents in the same age range. Most people migrate to another country for economic opportunities, usually when they are young adults. Read more. (PDF: 559KB)

February 2003
What percentage of India's population is under age 15? Some 36 percent, compared with 4 percent in the 65 years and older category, according to PRB's 2002 World Population Data Sheet. Read more.

June 2001
How many young people are there in the world? At the turn of this century, 1.7 billion people-more than a quarter of the world's 6 billion people-were between the ages of 10 and 24, making this group the largest ever to enter adulthood. The World's Youth 2000, a publication of the Population Reference Bureau, shows that 86 percent of 10-to-24-year-olds live in less developed countries.

June 2001
How many children are at war? Children are on the front lines of conflicts in less developed countries. According to the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 300,000 young people under the age of 18 are soldiers. Some of these children are as young as seven or eight years old. In the last decade, an estimated two million children were killed in combat, six million were wounded, and one million orphaned. Of the 50 million people uprooted by conflict worldwide, about half are children, says UNHCR.

The international community has taken some steps to protect children from armed conflict. The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court considers it a war crime to conscript or enlist children under the age of 15 into national armed forces and to use them in hostilities. Also, in 1999, the International Labour Organization approved Convention No. 182 on the Prohibition and Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, which includes a ban on the recruitment of children for armed conflict.

June 2001
What are the prospects for today's young people? Overall, young people's health and educational prospects are improving, and marriage and childbearing are occurring at later, more mature stages in life, compared with previous generations, according to The World's Youth 2000, a publication of the Population Reference Bureau. Nevertheless, some concerns remain. For example:

Despite increasing attention given worldwide to education, secondary school enrollments are still low in many parts of the world, and girls' school enrollments still lag behind boys'.
Complications of pregnancy, childbirth, and unsafe abortions are the major causes of death for women ages 15 to 19.
Young people ages 15 to 24 have the highest infection rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS.
Statistics on rape suggest that between one-third and two-thirds of rape victims worldwide are 15 years old or younger.

June 2001
How does contraceptive use vary among regions? Contraceptive use varies substantially by region and country. Only 13 percent of married adolescents ages 15 to 19 use contraception in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with 55 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 11 percent of married adolescents in Haiti use contraception, compared with 51 percent in Colombia. Turning to Asia, 7 percent use contraception in India, compared with 42 percent in Indonesia.

June 2001
How common is adolescent childbearing? Of the 15 million young women ages 15 to 19 who give birth every year, 13 million live in less developed countries, according to The Alan Guttmacher Institute's publication, Into a New World: Young Women's Sexual and Reproductive Lives. Thirty-three percent of women in less developed countries give birth before the age of 20, ranging from a low of 8 percent in East Asia to 55 percent in West Africa. In more developed countries, about 10 percent of women give birth by age 20. However, in the United States, the level of teen childbearing is significantly higher, at 19 percent. Significant differences also exist between countries in the same region. For example, in Senegal, 43 percent of women ages 20 to 24 gave birth by age 20, compared with 70 percent in Mali.

Early pregnancy and childbearing are typically associated with less education and lower future income for young mothers.

Young people are especially vulnerable to exposure to HIV and infection because of physical, psychological, and social factors. For one thing, while youth is a time of exploring and discovering feelings and behaviors, young people often lack the social skills, services, and information necessary to avoid the risks associated with such high-risk activities as unprotected sex and illicit drug use.