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The average human is 31
Who he is
He is male because there are slightly more men than women. He used to be from China, but its population was overtaken by India's in 2023, so he moved countries on paper while keeping his Mandarin. He stands 165 cm tall, weighs 62 kg, and has black hair and brown eyes.
What he eats and earns
Put all the food humans eat into one big buffet and divide it evenly, and he gets around 3,000 calories a day. Around 40% of that comes from grains like rice, and almost 8% comes from sugar, which works out to around 26 sugar cubes.
He earns a little over $22 a day, or around $660 a month. He owns a smartphone, like 60% of humanity, but no car, since only one in five people has one.
How he changes
He keeps changing. Longer life expectancies and declining birth rates will make him 6 years older by 2050 and 42 by 2100. Women are set to narrowly overtake men in number, so by the end of the century the average person will probably be a woman.
Why did India overtake China in population?
China's fertility rate fell steeply after its one-child policy began around 1980, and urbanization and rising incomes pushed it lower still. India's fertility rate also fell, but more slowly, so its population kept growing while China's flattened. China's national statistics bureau reported that its population began shrinking in 2022. The United Nations estimated that India passed China in 2023.
Why are there slightly more men than women?
Around 105 boys are born for every 100 girls, a ratio that holds across most countries. Women live longer on average, so the balance tips toward women in older age groups. Those two effects nearly cancel out, which leaves men with a small edge of roughly 101 for every 100 women, according to United Nations estimates.
Why is the world getting older so fast?
Global life expectancy rose from roughly 47 years in 1950 to over 70 in recent United Nations estimates, mainly because fewer children die young and infectious diseases are better controlled. Over the same period the average number of births per woman fell from around five to a little over two. Fewer babies and longer lives together shift the population toward older ages. The United Nations Population Division tracks these trends in its World Population Prospects reports.
Why do more people own phones than cars?
A basic smartphone costs a small fraction of a car, and it needs no roads, fuel, or insurance. Many countries skipped landlines entirely and built mobile networks instead, because cell towers are cheaper to build than copper wire. The GSMA, the mobile industry's trade body, reports that billions of people now connect to the internet mainly through a phone.