Sources
Every number on this site traces back to one of these. Where a source is itself a compilation, the underlying datasets are named too.
- HYDE 3.3 — History Database of the Global Environment
Population inside modern borders, 0-1799.
- Gapminder population v7
Population, 1800-1949.
- Gapminder crude birth rate
Crude birth rate, 1800-1949.
https://github.com/open-numbers/ddf--gapminder--systema_globalis
- World Population Prospects 2024
Births, crude birth rate, fertility rate, population and life expectancy from 1950; abridged life tables used to derive the survivorship curves behind the pre-1800 model.
- Population (long-run)
Normalised join of HYDE, Gapminder and UN population onto consistent modern country codes.
- Estimates of Regional and Global Life Expectancy, 1800-2001
Regional life expectancy at 1800, the anchor the pre-1800 mortality assumption ramps onto.
- Natural Earth admin-0 boundaries (via world-atlas)
Country outlines. Modern borders, drawn for every year.
How the sources fit together
| Years | Population | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 0–1799 | HYDE v3.3 (2023), via Our World in Data | Stable-population model driven by life expectancy and measured population growth |
| 1800–1949 | Gapminder v7 (2022), via Our World in Data | Gapminder v11 crude birth rate x population |
| 1950–2023 | UN World Population Prospects 2024 | UN World Population Prospects 2024, annual births |
| 2024–2026 | UN World Population Prospects 2024, medium variant | UN World Population Prospects 2024, medium variant |
Reuse
The processed data this site serves is available directly:
meta.json (the year axis, country list, era
definitions and model parameters),
world.json (world and continental totals for
every stored year) and /data/series.bin (the per-country series;
its layout is described in meta.json under binary).
Please cite the original sources above rather than this site. Where our estimates differ from theirs, theirs are the ones with the evidence behind them — see the methodology.