People Projection: 6.2 Billion on Earth by Year 2000

By the year 2000, there will be 6.2 billion people on Earth, and an average of 4 1/2 people will be born every second, the Census Bureau estimated Sunday.

In a new profile of world population figures, the bureau said that from 1990 to 2000, developing countries will add 828 million people to the world’s population--more than three times the current U.S. population.

The population at the end of the millennium is expected to be 27% larger than in 1985.

Over the next 14 years, population will grow by more than the total number of people who inhabited the planet in 1850, and the vast majority of growth will occur in poorer nations, with developing countries “growing at a rate more than three times that of the developed countries at the end of the 20th Century,” the bureau said.

Developing nations--which now account for three-fourths of the world’s population--are expected to grow at least three times faster than developed nations.

Werner Fornos, head of the independent Population Institute, said the new projections “underscore the need to redouble population assistance for the Third World.”

The industrialized nations--primarily in North America and Europe--may add only 60 million people in the 1990s, and their growth rate is only one-tenth that of the developing nations.

West Germany, Denmark, Austria and Hungary have decreasing populations and if current trends continue, other European countries may also experience a decline in population.

World population stood at 4.9 billion in mid-1985 and gained another 79 million people through mid-1986--even though the growth rate dropped from 1.7% to 1.6% between 1975 and 1985. Almost half the people in the world now live in four countries--China, India, the Soviet Union and the United States. By the year 2035, Nigeria could climb to third place and India will likely top China as the most populous nation.

Half the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas by the year 2000, up from the current 42% and 29% in 1950.