en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
2 corrections found
For the 14 years prior the book's appearance, the world population had been growing at accelerating rates, but immediately after the book's publication, the world population growth rate coincidentally began a continuing downward trend, from its 1968 peak of 2.09% to 1.09% in 2018.
This sentence gets the timing of the population-growth peak wrong. Authoritative datasets do not place the world's annual population-growth peak in 1968 at 2.09%; 1968 was already below the peak in both UN-derived and World Bank series.
Full reasoning
The specific claim that world population growth reached its peak in 1968 at 2.09% is contradicted by multiple authoritative datasets.
- Our World in Data's UN-based series says: "global population growth peaked in 1963 at an annual growth rate of 2.3%" and adds that the rate "has been falling since the 1960s." That directly contradicts the statement that the peak was in 1968 and that the decline began only after the book appeared.
- World Bank's world indicator
SP.POP.GROWalso contradicts the article's numbers. In the World Bank API series for the world, the value for 1968 is 2.05013360629479, not 2.09, and the series contains higher values in other years, including 1963 = 2.11676704326362 and 1971 = 2.0977123565674. So even in that series, 1968 is not the peak.
Different reputable datasets estimate the exact peak year somewhat differently because they use different methods and source series. But they agree on the key point needed here: 1968 was not the peak year at 2.09%, so the sentence as written is incorrect.
2 sources
- How has world population growth changed over time? | Our World in Data
The global population growth rate peaked long ago. The next chart shows that global population growth peaked in 1963 at an annual growth rate of 2.3%; however, since then, world population growth has halved. ... the growth rate has been falling since the 1960s.
- World Bank API: Population growth (annual %) for the world (SP.POP.GROW)
World Bank series values for the world include: 1963 = 2.11676704326362; 1968 = 2.05013360629479; 1971 = 2.0977123565674. This shows 1968 was neither 2.09% nor the peak year in this series.
the percentage of the world's population who qualify as "undernourished" has fallen by more than half, from 33 percent to about 16 percent, since the Ehrlichs published The Population Bomb.
This mixes up global and developing-country statistics. The FAO figures behind the 33% and 16% numbers refer to developing countries, not the world's population as a whole.
Full reasoning
The sentence misstates what the FAO percentages apply to.
- In FAO's 2010 food-insecurity report, the 16% figure is explicitly the prevalence of undernourishment in developing countries: "Developing countries account for 98 percent of the world's undernourished people and have a prevalence of undernourishment of 16 percent."
- The older FAO tables that give a 33% figure are likewise labeled developing countries, not the entire world population.
So the article is wrong to describe this as "the percentage of the world's population." It is a developing-country comparison that has been misapplied to the whole world.
2 sources
- Undernourishment around the world in 2010 (FAO, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2010)
Developing countries account for 98 percent of the world’s undernourished people and have a prevalence of undernourishment of 16 percent.
- FAO technical paper with historical undernourishment table
Proportion of undernourished in total population (percent) ... Developing countries ... 33 ...