Global Demographics
As of 2012, the global sex ratio is approximately 1.01 males to 1 female – the greater number of men is possibly due to the significant gender imbalances evident in the Indian and Chinese populations. Approximately 26.3% of the global population is aged under 15, while 65.9% is aged 15–64 and 7.9% is aged 65 or over. At the beginning of 2012, 50.5% of the world's population was under 30; as of the end of 2012, the median age of the human race is about 30 years. The global average life expectancy is 67.07 years, with women living an average of 69 years and men approximately 65 years. In 2010, the global fertility rate was estimated at 2.52 children per woman. 83% of the world's over-15s are considered literate. In June 2012, British researchers calculated the total weight of Earth's human population as 287 million tonnes, with the average person weighing 62 kilograms (140 lb).
The nominal 2011 gross world product was estimated at US$69.11 trillion, giving an annual global per capita figure of around US$9,900. Around 1.29 billion people (18.4% of the world population) live in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than US$1.25 per day; approximately 925 million people (13.2%) are malnourished. In December 2011, there were around 2.26 billion global Internet users, constituting 32.7% of the world population.
The Han Chinese are the world's largest single ethnic group, constituting over 19% of the global population, while the second-largest single ethnicity, the Bengali people, account for around 4.8%. The world's most-spoken first languages are Mandarin Chinese (spoken by 12.44% of the world's population), Spanish (4.85%), English (4.83%), Arabic (3.25%) and Hindi-Urdu (2.68%). The world's largest religion is Christianity, whose adherents account for 33.35% of the global population; Islam is the second-largest religion, accounting for 22.43%, and Hinduism the third, accounting for 13.78%. In 2005, around 16% of the global population were reported to be non-religious.
Read more about this topic: World Population
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“Much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still “globaloney.” Mr. Wallace’s warp of sense and his woof of nonsense is very tricky cloth out of which to cut the pattern of a post-war world.”
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987)