The world welcomes its 7 billionth person tomorrow. As US Global Investors recently noted, it took 123 years for the world to add its second billion people. Since then, we’ve added 5 billion more in just 84 years:
“On October 31, the world symbolically welcomes its 7 billionth. The real date the world hits that number is up for debate, but it has been symbolically chosen by the United Nations as a way to emphasize the effects a growing population will have on the globe.
Over the past half of a century, the world has rapidly accelerated in population growth. In 1800, the Earth had about 1 billion people, 2 billion by 1927 and 3 billion in 1959. A little more than 40 years later, our population doubled.”
I can’t even begin to fathom all of the ways this phenomenal population growth is impacting the world. While more people will obviously lead to even greater productivity and innovation we also can’t ignore the fact that this explosion in population growth is going to put enormous strains on our real resources. I’d be interested in hearing reader thoughts on this enormous trend. The good, the bad?
Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their finances.
He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction.
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