Population and environment – what's the connection?

Activity 2

How many babies are born?

The global population is approximately 5.8 billion and the global birth rate is about 27 births per 1000 people per year.

  • Calculate how many babies have been born in the last 3 minutes.
  • Note that your figure does not represent the increase in the world’s population in that time. Why not?
  • What would you need to know to calculate the net increase that occurred in the last three minutes?

Teachers notes

  • Just over 890 babies would have been born in the last 3 minutes.
  • This doesn't include deaths in the world.
  • You would need to know the death rate or deaths per thousand and substract the total number of deaths from the total number of births to calculate the net increase in the world's population.
External sites are not endorsed by the Australian Academy of Science.
Posted April 2005.