Demographics

Population Boom: Charting How We Got to Nearly 8 Billion People

Published

2 years ago

November 29, 2021

Our World in Data

Featured Creator

Article/Editing:

Jeff Desjardins

Today, the global population is estimated to sit at 7.91 billion people.

By the end of 2022 or within the first months of 2023, that number is expected to officially cross the 8 billion mark. Incredibly, each new billion people has come faster than the previous—it was roughly only a decade ago that we crossed the 7 billion threshold.

How did we get here, and what has global population growth looked like historically?

In this series of six charts from Our World in Data, we’ll break down how the global population got to its current point, as well as some big picture trends behind the data.

#1: Mapping the Population Over 5,000 Years

New York, São Paulo, and Jakarta were not always bustling metropolises. In fact, for long parts of the history of civilization, it was unusual to find humans congregating in many of the present-day city locations we now think of as population centers.

The human population has always moved around, seeking out new opportunity and freedoms.

As of 3,000 BC, humans could be mainly found in Central America, the Mediterranean, the Fertile Crescent, and parts of India, Japan, and China. It’s no coincidence that that agriculture was independently discovered in many of these same places during the Neolithic Revolution.

#2: The Hockey Stick Curve

For even more context, let’s zoom way out by using a timeline that goes back to when woolly mammoths still roamed the Earth:

From this 10,000-foot view, it’s clear that human population growth started going exponential around the time of the Second Agricultural Revolution, which started in the 17th century in Britain. This is when new technologies and farming conventions took root, making it possible to grow the food supply at an unprecedented pace.

Soon these discoveries spread around the world, enabling population booms everywhere.

#3: The Time to Add 1 Billion

The data and projections in this chart are a few years old, but the concept remains the same:

It took all of human history until 1803 to reach the first billion in population. The next billion took 124 years, and the next 33 years. More recent billions have come every dozen or so.

So why then, are future billion people additions projected to take longer and longer to achieve?

#4: The Growth Rate is Shrinking

Because of demographics and falling fertility rates, the growth rate of the global population has actually been on a downward trend for some time.

As this growth rate gets closer to zero, the population curve has become less exponential like we saw in the first graphs. Population growth is leveling out, and it may even go negative at some point in the future.

#5: The Regional Breakdown

Although the rate of population growth is expected to slow down, there are still parts of the world that are adding new people fast, as you can see on this interactive regional breakdown:

Since 1973, Asia has doubled its population from 2.3 billion to 4.6 billion people.

Comparatively, over the same time frame, Europe has gone from 670 million to 748 million, equal to just an 11% increase.

#6: The Present and Future of Population Growth

Population projections by groups like the United Nations see the global population peaking at around 10.9 billion people in 2100.

That said, there isn’t a consensus around this peak.

Organizations like the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) have a different perspective, and they have recently modeled that the global population will top out at 9.7 billion people by the year 2064.

As we climb to surpass the 8 billion mark in the coming months, it will be interesting to see what path humanity ends up following.

This article was published as a part of Visual Capitalist's Creator Program, which features data-driven visuals from some of our favorite Creators around the world.

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Countries

Charted: The World’s Biggest Oil Producers in 2022

Just three countries—the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia—make up the lion’s share of global oil supply. Here are the biggest oil producers in 2022.

Published

6 hours ago

September 21, 2023

Pallavi Rao

A cropped chart with the per day production by the biggest oil producers in 2022.

Charted: The World’s Biggest Oil Producers in 2022

In 2022 oil prices peaked at more than $100 per barrel, hitting an eight-year high, after a full year of turmoil in the energy markets in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Oil companies doubled their profits and the economies of the biggest oil producers in the world got a major boost.

But which countries are responsible for most of the world’s oil supply? Using data from the Statistical Review of World Energy by the Energy Institute, we’ve visualized and ranked the world’s biggest oil producers.

Ranked: Oil Production By Country, in 2022

The U.S. has been the world’s biggest oil producer since 2018 and continued its dominance in 2022 by producing close to 18 million barrels per day (B/D). This accounted for nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

Almost three-fourths of the country’s oil production is centered around five states: Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Alaska, and Colorado.

We rank the other major oil producers in the world below.

Rank	Country	2022 Production (Thousand B/D)	YoY Change	Share of World Supply
1	🇺🇸 U.S.	17,770	+6.5%	18.9%
2	🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia	12,136	+10.8%	12.9%
3	🇷🇺 Russia	11,202	+1.8%	11.9%
4	🇨🇦 Canada	5,576	+3.0%	5.9%
5	🇮🇶 Iraq	4,520	+10.2%	4.8%
6	🇨🇳 China	4,111	+2.9%	4.4%
7	🇦🇪 UAE	4,020	+10.4%	4.3%
8	🇮🇷 Iran	3,822	+4.6%	4.1%
9	🇧🇷 Brazil	3,107	+3.9%	3.3%
10	🇰🇼 Kuwait	3,028	+12.0%	3.2%
11	🇲🇽 Mexico	1,944	+0.9%	2.1%
12	🇳🇴 Norway	1,901	-6.3%	2.0%
13	🇰🇿 Kazakhstan	1,769	-2.0%	1.9%
14	🇶🇦 Qatar	1,768	+1.8%	1.9%
15	🇩🇿 Algeria	1,474	+8.9%	1.6%
16	🇳🇬 Nigeria	1,450	-11.2%	1.5%
17	🇦🇴 Angola	1,190	+1.1%	1.3%
18	🇱🇾 Libya	1,088	-14.3%	1.2%
19	🇴🇲 Oman	1,064	+9.6%	1.1%
20	🇬🇧 UK	778	-11.0%	0.8%
21	🇨🇴 Colombia	754	+2.4%	0.8%
22	🇮🇳 India	737	-3.8%	0.8%
23	🇻🇪 Venezuela	731	+8.1%	0.8%
24	🇦🇷 Argentina	706	+12.4%	0.8%
25	🇦🇿 Azerbaijan	685	-5.6%	0.7%
26	🇮🇩 Indonesia	644	-6.9%	0.7%
27	🇪🇬 Egypt	613	+0.8%	0.7%
28	🇲🇾 Malaysia	567	-1.7%	0.6%
29	🇪🇨 Ecuador	481	+1.7%	0.5%
30	🇦🇺 Australia	420	-5.2%	0.4%
31	🇹🇭 Thailand	331	-17.5%	0.4%
32	🇨🇩 Congo	269	-1.7%	0.3%
33	🇹🇲 Turkmenistan	244	+1.0%	0.3%
34	🇻🇳 Vietnam	194	-1.2%	0.2%
35	🇬🇦 Gabon	191	+5.4%	0.2%
36	🇸🇸 South Sudan	141	-7.6%	0.2%
37	🇵🇪 Peru	128	+0.5%	0.1%
38	🇹🇩 Chad	124	+6.2%	0.1%
39	🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea	119	-9.2%	0.1%
40	🇸🇾 Syria	93	-2.7%	0.1%
41	🇮🇹 Italy	92	-7.9%	0.1%
42	🇧🇳 Brunei	92	-13.8%	0.1%
43	🇾🇪 Yemen	81	-2.4%	0.1%
44	🇹🇹 Trinidad & Tobago	74	-3.6%	0.1%
45	🇷🇴 Romania	65	-6.2%	0.1%
46	🇩🇰 Denmark	65	-1.6%	0.1%
47	🇺🇿 Uzbekistan	63	-0.9%	0.1%
48	🇸🇩 Sudan	62	-3.3%	0.1%
49	🇹🇳 Tunisia	40	-12.9%	0.0%
50	Other CIS	43	+4.4%	0.0%
51	Other Middle East	210	+1.2%	0.2%
52	Other Africa	283	-3.4%	0.3%
53	Other Europe	230	-20.5%	0.2%
54	Other Asia Pacific	177	-10.6%	0.2%
55	Other S. & Cent. America	381	+68.5%	0.4%
	Total World	93,848	+4.2%	100.0%

Behind America’s considerable lead in oil production, Saudi Arabia (ranked 2nd) produced 12 million B/D, accounting for about 13% of global supply.

Russia came in third with 11 million B/D in 2022. Together, these top three oil producing behemoths, along with Canada (4th) and Iraq (5th), make up more than half of the entire world’s oil supply.

Meanwhile, the top 10 oil producers, including those ranked 6th to 10th—China, UAE, Iran, Brazil, and Kuwait—are responsible for more than 70% of the world’s oil production.

Notably, all top 10 oil giants increased their production between 2021–2022, and as a result, global output rose 4.2% year-on-year.

Major Oil Producing Regions in 2022

The Middle East accounts for one-third of global oil production and North America makes up almost another one-third of production. The Commonwealth of Independent States—an organization of post-Soviet Union countries—is another major regional producer of oil, with a 15% share of world production.

Region	2022 Production (Thousand B/D)	YoY Change	Share of World Supply
Middle East	30,743	+9.2%	32.8%
North America	25,290	+5.3%	27.0%
CIS	14,006	+0.9%	14.9%
Africa	7,043	-3.5%	7.5%
Asia Pacific	7,273	-1.4%	7.8%
South & Central America	6,361	7.2%	6.8%
Europe	3,131	-8.6%	3.3%

What’s starkly apparent in the data however is Europe’s declining share of oil production, now at 3% of the world’s supply. In the last 20 years the EU’s oil output has dropped by more than 50% due to a variety of factors, including stricter environmental regulations and a shift to natural gas.

Another lens to look at regional production is through OPEC members, which control about 35% of the world’s oil output and about 70% of the world’s oil reserves.

A pictogram of the regional per day production by the biggest oil producers in 2022.

When taking into account the group of 10 oil exporting countries OPEC has relationships with, known as OPEC+, the share of oil production increases to more than half of the world’s supply.

Oil’s Big Balancing Act

Since it’s the very lifeblood of the modern economy, the countries that control significant amounts of oil production also reap immense political and economic benefits. Entire regions have been catapulted into prosperity and wars have been fought over the control of the resource.

At the same time, the ongoing effort to pivot to renewable energy is pushing many major oil exporters to diversify their economies. A notable example is Saudi Arabia, whose sovereign wealth fund has invested in companies like Uber and WeWork.

However, the world still needs oil, as it supplies nearly one-third of global energy demand.