How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?

A famous fact says more people are alive today than have ever died. It is not true. This article explains the best available estimate of how many humans have ever lived, and why it is a rough one.

What is the estimate?

About 117 billion people. The Population Reference Bureau (PRB), a U.S. research group, puts the number of people ever born at 117,020,448,575 as of its 2022 update. World population in mid-2022 was about 7.96 billion. That means roughly 6.8% of all people ever born were alive then, and about 7% today.

By our own arithmetic, that is about 14 people who have died for each person now living.

How do demographers work it out?

They combine three things, according to the PRB: how long humans have existed, how large the population was at different times, and how many births happened per 1,000 people. The PRB’s newest version starts the count at 190,000 BCE. An earlier version started at 50,000 BCE. Extending the start date added about 8 billion births from the earliest period, a figure based on work by demographer Dudley Poston. The PRB also estimates that another 4 billion births by 2050 would bring the total to about 121 billion.

Why have so many more people died than are alive?

Because humans have been around for a very long time, and for most of that time the population was small and many people died young. The PRB notes that life expectancy in Iron Age France is estimated at only 10 to 12 years. Averages like that are driven by the deaths of children. See How Child Mortality Fell. Population then grew very fast after about 1800, which is why so many of the people ever born are still alive.

How reliable is the number?

Not very, and its authors say so. The PRB’s own text says the calculation is part science and part art. It says no demographic data exist for more than 99% of the time humans have lived. The authors suggest that if anything, their method may undercount births.

Others have questioned the result. A Scientific American article showed that older population inputs give about 93 billion. It argued that the public should be given a range, not a single figure. The safest way to say it is that the total is somewhere between about 90 and 120 billion, and that the living are a small share, well under 10%.

Where can I learn more?

See How Many People Die Each Year Worldwide, and From What?, When Did Humans Start Having Funerals?, and How the Life Expectancy of Americans Changed Over the Last Century.