is there more dead people on earth than alive?

Answer 1

According the the source below, the answer is yes. They say that the total number of humans born is over 105 billion and there are 6+ billion alive today. I remember hearing on the history channel (I do not recall the program) that there have been 75 billion born.

Either way, more dead than alive!

Answer 2

One reason the question keeps coming up is that somewhere, at some time back in the 1970s, a now-forgotten writer made the statement that 75 percent of the people who had ever been born were alive at that moment.

This factoid has had a long shelf life, even though a bit of reflection would show how unlikely it is. For this "estimate" to be true would mean either that births in the 20th century far, far outnumbered those in the past or that there were an extraordinary number of extremely old people living in the 1970s.

Number who have ever been born - 106,456,367,669
World population in mid-2002 - 6,215,000,000
Percent of those ever born who are living in 2002 - 5.8

Answer 3

Logically speaking, whichever way you turn it; more dead than alive.

People have been around for thousands of years, the current life span of a person is between 75 and 80 years old. At the dawning of humanity, it was half that. If you do the math (which I am frankly reluctant to do, because I'm tired and don't feel like calculating... ) you'll come to the conclusion that in the course of time, more people have died than there are alive today. I believe you'll have to know the basics of logarithms to calculate this...

Answer 4

The question is a good one, just why is it in astronomy and I think you wanted to word the question differently. Maybe "Have more people died, then are alive today?"
To answer the exact question we would have to consider the state of decay and what constitutes a "Dead Person" I would say that people who died three hundred years ago in a forest have been broken down so much that they are no longer a person. They are now scattered ash and bone. So, do you mean full bodies, skeletons, partial bodies, or people who have ever been born? Interesting to ponder.
B

Answer 5

Yes. Depending on your definition of 'human', there are approximately 10 dead people for every person alive today. Or at least, that was true when I was a kid. Back then, the population was about 3 billion. But people do die every day... never mind.

Answer 6

of coarse there is , if you think about ever since the first homo erectus ever walked the earth and from then on , all throught the ages of man from stone age right throgh to present day , and there are people dying now as we speak, then yes there are more people dead than alive today ( about 6 billion )....

Answer 7

No, most dead people are buried & therefore under the earth, not on it.

Answer 8

Of course!

Answer 9

that is a very interesting question... now do you mean dead as in like people who have died and are buried.. or people who have died and their spirits roam the earth?

i have no answer to your question sad to say... although it does amuse me at six am when my ambien fails me.

Answer 10

not sure there are more dead people under the earth though