ABSTRACT
The world’s population, distributed across six of its seven continents, as well as numerous large and small islands, is roughly six billion. The total area of the planet is 197 million square miles, with land masses accounting for about 30 percent of that. Most of the planet’s land area is in the northern hemisphere, largely in the tropical and temperate zones. Following World War II, the global economy underwent a roughly 30-year period of sustained growth. Since the 1970s, the various regions of the world have experienced varying economic growth rates. While much of the developed and developing world went through sustained recession for 20 years, the Middle East and the Far East experienced rapid economic growth. In the 1990s, as the developed world appears to be coming out of recession, East Asia appears to be sinking into it. Still, in the past 50 years, the combination of overall economic growth, decolonization, and improved agricultural and health care practices have allowed the population to skyrocket, as death rates fell dramatically in comparison to slowly declining birth rates.
