Population and Society

Environment a Growing Driver in Displacement of People

Product Number: 
VST118

The number of people who are on the move involuntarily worldwide may be as high as 184 million-roughly equivalent to the entire population of Brazil, or one out of every 36 persons on Earth.

Included Trends: 
People Forcibly Displaced, 2007;International Refugees and Internally Displaced People, 1951-2007

Child Mortality

Product Number: 
VST117

In 2006, the latest year with data available, the world's child mortality rate-the number of children who die before the age of five per 1,000 live births-dropped to 72, a 20-percent decline since

Notes: 
  1. United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), The State of the World's Children 2008 (New York: 2007), p. 6.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Diane Alarcón and Marcos Robles, "The Challenges of Measuring Child Mortality when Birth Registra­tion Is Incomplete," UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Global Forum on Gender Statistics, Rome, 10-12 December 2007.
  4. UNICEF, Progress for Children: A World Fit for Children-Statistical Review (New York: 2007), p. 19.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Ibid.
  7. Ibid.
  8. Ibid., p. 18.
  9. Ibid.
  10. UNICEF, op. cit. note 1, p. 6.
  11. Ibid., p. 150.
  12. U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, The Millennium Development Goals: A Latin American and Caribbean Perspective (Santiago, Chile: 2005), p. 140.
  13. Ibid.
  14. UNICEF, op. cit. note 1, p. 7.
  15. Ibid.
  16. UNICEF, Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition (New York: 2006).
  17. U.N. Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision (New York: 2007).
  18. UNICEF, "Child Deaths Fall below 10 Million for First Time," press release (New York: 13 September 2007).
  19. UNICEF, op. cit. note 1, p. 7.
  20. Ibid.
  21. U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 17.
  22. UNICEF, op. cit. note 1, p. 7.
  23. Robert E. Black, Saul S. Morris, and Jennifer Bryce, "Where and Why Are 10 Million Children Dying Every Year?" Lancet, 28 June 2003, pp. 226-34; World Health Organization (WHO), The World Health Report 2005 (Geneva: 2005), Annex Table, pp. 190-91.
  24. UNICEF, Progress for Children: A Report Card on Water and Sanitation (New York: 2006), p. 3.
  25. UNICEF, op. cit. note 1, p. 15.
  26. UNICEF, op. cit. note 4, p. 22.
  27. Ibid.
  28. Ibid., p. 24.
  29. WHO, op. cit. note 23, p. 9.
  30. Ibid., p. 10.
  31. Ibid., p. 83.
  32. UNICEF, op. cit. note 4, p. 25.
  33. UNICEF, op. cit. note 16; UNICEF, op. cit. note 4, p. 19.
  34. UNICEF, op. cit. note 1.
  35. Countdown Coverage Writing Group, "Countdown to 2015 for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Survival: The 2008 Report on Tracking Coverage of Interventions," The Lancet, 12 April 2008, pp. 1247-58.
  36. M. Claeson et al., "Reducing Child Mortality in India in the New Millennium," Bulletin of the World Health Organization, October 2000, pp. 1192-99.
  37. UNICEF, op. cit. note 1, p. 20.
  38. Pan American Health Organization, Exclusion in Health in Latin America and the Caribbean (Washington, DC: 2004).
  39. UNICEF, op. cit. note 1, p. 20.
  40. U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 17.
  41. UNICEF, Africa's Orphaned and Vulnerable Generation: Children Affected by AIDS (New York: 2006).
  42. UNICEF, op. cit. note 4, p. 19.
  43. UNICEF, Progress for Children: A Child Survival Report Card (New York: 2004).
  44. UNICEF, op. cit. note 18.
  45. UNICEF, op. cit. note 4, pp. 19, 21.
  46. UNICEF, op. cit. note 1, p. 1.

Fertility Falls, Population Rises, Future Uncertain

Product Number: 
VST106
Notes: 

  1. Unless otherwise noted, all demographic data are from Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision (New York: United Nations, 2008).

  2. Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and World Health Organization, AIDS Epidemic Update 2007 (Geneva: 2007).

  3. Ibid.

  4. Population Division, Trends in Total Migrant Stock, The 2005 Revision (New York: United Nations, 2006).

  5. U.N. Population Division director Hania Zlotnik, quoted in U.N. Department of Public Information, Press Conference on International Migration and Development, press release (New York: 4 April 2006).

  6. Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Urbanization Prospects 2007 (New York: United Nations, 2008).

  7. Population size from U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. POPClock Projection, available at www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html, viewed 29 January 2008; fertility rate from Population Division, op. cit. note 1.

  8. Brady E. Hamilton, Joyce A. Martin, and Stephanie Ventura, "Births: Preliminary Data for 2006," National Vital Statistics Reports, 5 December 2007, pp. 1-18.

  9. Susheela Singh et al., Adding It Up: The Benefits of Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health Care (New York: Alan Guttmacher Institute, 2003).

  10. J. Joseph Speidel, "Population Donor Landscape Analysis for Review of Packard Foundation International Grantmaking in Population, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights," Presented at task force of The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, 6 September 2006.

  11. Ricardo Hausmann, Laura D. Tyson, and Saadia Zahidi, The WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2007 (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2007).

  12. Ibid.

Included Trends: 

World Fertility Rates, 1950-2007; World Population, 1950-2007; Correlation Between Status of Women and National Fertility Rates

World Is Soon Half Urban

Product Number: 
VST015

The United Nations projects that sometime
in 2008 more people will live in cities than in
rural areas.1 Over the past half-century, the
world’s urban population has increased nearly

Notes: 
1. U.N. Population Division, World Urbanization
Prospects 2005 (New York: 2006), also available
online at esa.un.org/unup. This Vital Sign is based
on Kai N. Lee, “An Urbanizing World,” in Worldwatch
Institute, State of the World 2007 (New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), pp. 3–21. Molly
O’Meara Sheehan also contributed to this research.
2. Figure 1 from ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Megacities from ibid.; National Research Council
(NRC), Cities Transformed: Demographic Change and
Its Implications in the Developing World (Washington,
DC: National Academies Press, 2003), pp. 95–99.
9. Africa and Figure 2 from U.N. Population Division,
op. cit. note 1.
10. NRC, op. cit. note 8, pp. 99–102.
11. Ibid.
12. UN-HABITAT, State of the World’s Cities 2006/7 (London:
Earthscan, 2006), p. 16.
13. U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 1.
14. NRC, op. cit. note 8, pp. 102–06; polluted cities in
China from World Bank, cited in “A Great Wall of
Waste—China’s Environment,” The Economist, 21
August 2004.
15. India’s urban poverty from UN-HABITAT, op. cit.
note 12, p. 11.
16. U.N. Population Division, op. cit. note 1, viewed
August 2006.
17. Figure 3 and share of total from ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. NRC, op. cit. note 8, p. 107.
20. UN-HABITAT, op. cit. note 12.
21. For analysis of this trend, see Gordon McGranahan
et al., The Citizens at Risk: From Urban Sanitation to
Sustainable Cities (Sterling, VA: Earthscan, for Stockholm
Environment Institute, 2001), chapter 4.
22. Kirk R. Smith and Majid Ezzati, “How Environmental
Health Risks Change with Development: The
Epidemiologic and Environmental Risk Transitions
Revisited,” Annual Review of Environment and
Resources, November 2005, pp. 291–333.
23. Xuemei Bai and Hidefumi Imura, “A Comparative
Study of Urban Environment in East Asia: Stage
Model of Urban Environmental Evolution,” International
Review for Environmental Strategies, summer
2000, pp. 135–58; McGranahan et al., op. cit.
note 21.
24. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, “Summary for
Decision-Makers,” in Ecosystems and Human Well-
Being: Synthesis (Washington, DC: Island Press,
2005), p. 1; McGranahan et al., op. cit. note 21.
25. Herbert Girardet, Cities People Planet (Chichester,
U.K.: John Wiley & Sons, 2004), pp. 123–25; Herbert
Girardet, The Gaia Atlas of Cities (London: Gaia
Books, 1992), pp. 22–23.
26. Ken Yeang, Bioclimatic Skyscrapers (London: Ellipsis
London Press, 2000).
Included Trends: 
World Urban Population, 1950-2005; Urban Population by Region, 1950, 1990, and 2005; Population of 14 Largest Cities, 1950, 1990, and 2005
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