U.S. Population Grew by more than 2 Million People in 2016

The U.S. Census Bureau celebrated the new year by posting its estimates of the population of the U.S. and the world as a whole. As I noted a few days ago, population growth has been slowing in this country, but we still added more than 2 million people during the year, increasing the total to more than 324 million. The world's population rose to almost 7.4 billion after adding nearly 78 million during the year.

In January 2017, the United States is expected to experience one birth every 8 seconds and one death every 11 seconds. Meanwhile, net international migration is expected to add one person to the U.S. population every 33 seconds. The combination of births, deaths and net international migration will increase the U.S. population by one person every 17 seconds.

During January 2017, 4.3 births and 1.8 deaths are expected worldwide every second.

These continual increases in population are, of course, the reason we have global climate change, and why the number of people being forced out of their homes is so large. Even when percentages of things stay the same, as the population base grows, the use of earth's resources increases and the competition for those resources increases.