Ciekawostka: If we had the same mortality rate now as in 1900, more than half the people in the world today would not be alive

Evidence: 34 • authority: 72

Human life expectancy is a statistical measure of the estimate of the average remaining years of life at a given age. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth (LEB, in demographic notation e0, where ex denotes the average life remaining at age x). This can be defined in two ways. Cohort LEB is the mean length of life of a birth cohort (in this case, all individuals born in a given year) and can be computed only for cohorts born so long ago that all their members have died. Period LEB is the mean length of life of a hypothetical cohort assumed to be exposed, from birth through death, to the mortality rates observed at a given year. National LEB figures reported by national…

Evidence: 32 • authority: 88

Brief Review of World Demographic Trends - Explaining Population Trends: Fertility and Infant Mortality Rate. In the present report, we continue to look how fertility rates and infant mortality rates may help explain global population trends. In summary, fertility rates in Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean have been declining by quite a lot, which explains the decline in births in those regions. On the other hand, fertility rates increased recently in North America and Europe, which explains the increases in births there. Finally, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest fertility rate, and consequently the highest number of births. However, the fertility rates in Sub-Saharan Africa have…

Evidence: 32 • authority: 72

The total fertility rate (TFR) of a population is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime, if they were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) through their lifetime, and they were to live from birth until the end of their reproductive life. As of 2023, the total fertility rate varied widely across the world, from 0.7 in South Korea, to 6.1 in Niger. Among sovereign countries that were not city states or microstates, in 2025 the following countries had a TFR of 1.0 or lower: China, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Ukraine; the following countries had a TFR of 1.2 or lower: Argentina, Belarus, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Esto…

Evidence: 32 • authority: 92

Diphtheria: a serious asphyctic disease that reappears occasionally. Description of the disease in Northeastern Italy from the 16<sup>th</sup> century onwards.. Diphtheria is a serious and potentially fatal infection caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae , which, before the introduction of universal vaccination, was the leading cause of illness and death among children and young adults, but which now causes sporadic but worrying outbreaks worldwide and not only among unvaccinated people. We narrate the first descriptions of the disease until the introduction of seroprophylaxis and vaccination as well as the spread, clinical expression and treatment of diphtheria in Ferrara, and…

Evidence: 27 • authority: 72

Earth has a human population of over 8.2 billion as of 2025, with an overall population density of 50 people per km2 (130 per sq. mile). Nearly 60% of the world's population lives in Asia, with more than 2.8 billion in the countries of India and China combined. The percentage shares of China, India and rest of South Asia of the world population have remained at similar levels for the last few thousand years of recorded history. The world's population is predominantly urban and suburban, and there has been significant migration toward cities and urban centers. The urban population jumped from 29% in 1950 to 55.3% in 2018. Interpolating from the United Nations prediction that the world will b…

Evidence: 25 • authority: 72

Demographic transition is a phenomenon and theory in the social sciences (especially demography) referring to the historical shift from high to low rates of birth and death, as societies attain several attributes: more technology, education (especially for women), and economic development. The demographic transition has occurred in most of the world over the past two centuries, bringing the unprecedented population growth of the post-Malthusian period, and then reducing birth rates and population growth significantly in all regions of the world. The demographic transition strengthens the economic growth process through three changes: reduced dilution of capital and land stock; increased inv…

Evidence: 25 • authority: 72

Health in Norway, with its early history of poverty and infectious diseases along with famines and epidemics, was poor for most of the population at least into the 1800s. The country eventually changed from a peasant society to an industrial one and established a public health system in 1860. Due to the high life expectancy at birth, the low Child mortality rate and the fertility rate in Norway, it is fair to say that the overall health status in the country is generally good.

Evidence: — • authority: 35