Roughly how many people were alive on Earth in the year 1800?
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🏛️ History · people
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Answer
About 1 billion people
It had taken all of human history to reach that number. The most recent billion was added in only about 12 years.
How to estimate it
Work backwards from better known figures. The world held about 1.6 billion people in 1900. Before modern medicine, the population grew slowly, about 0.5 percent a year during the 1800s. Over a century that compounds to 1.005^100 = 1.65. So the population in 1800 was about 1.6 / 1.65 = 0.97 billion. Historical demographers put it at about 1 billion people.
Source: United Nations; Our World in Data
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