Do the living now outnumber the dead?

[Jackie]

If the world's population had always grown at its present rate, the answer would be yes. But there have been long periods where there've been many deaths but virtually no increase in population.

Since 40,000 BC - the dawn of modern man - an estimated 58 billion people have died, according to a study by the Netherlands-based International Statistics Institute. The current world population now stands at less than six billion, so the dead outnumber the living by about ten to one.

Just for those inquiring minds though, !

[Manny]

Wow, I was thinking that more and more people are continuously occupying the remaining lands on earth, considering that more and more people suffer from being homeless because they can't find a place to build their niche. Only to find out that we're far behind the number of deaths, this is awesome!

[Almanac]

This is rather kinda confusing figure. I haven't realized that we have reached that number in the history of mankind. At any rate, still awesome huh? Imagine the world if those people are still alive, where could we have been headed too, Mars? Venus?

[Jackie]

That was funny Almanac! Of course, humans could never survive a longer period of time. In fact, studies show that life expectancy in human at this modern day world is only 67. This is due to many reasons. If humans never die, Almanac is right. Where could we ever be?

[ABOTadmin]

Of course the number of dead outnumber the living because it's accumulative. A better way to put it would be that the number of people who lived is 58 billion.