This is the world we live in.

You are one of about 6 billion people on the planet. The projected human population of the world in 2050 is 9 billion. In 1850, the population was 1 billion.

There are 3 billion people worldwide living on less than $2 a day. The newstand price of a copy of the Sunday New York Times is $2.50.

41% of children under 14 in Africa are employed at least part-time and 22% in Asia. The number is 0.8% for the United States.

The press run of the first edition of Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire was 3 million copies. There are 1 billion people who can neither read nor write.

There are 1.3 billion people in the world who don't have access to safe water. There are 11 million children under the age of 5 who die each year of easily preventable disease such as diarrhea, malaria and measles.

66% of school-age children who are girls in developing countries have no access to education.

There have been 18.8 million people worldwide who have died of AIDS. There are 34.3 million people more who are presently living with HIV/AIDS.

35.8% of the people in Botswana are infected with HIV.

There are 14 million phone lines in the entire African continent. In every ten Filipinos, at least one has a cellular phone.

20% of the entire world population has access to a telephone. 2% are connected to the Internet. Over 1.5 billion e-mail messages cross international borders everyday.

There are 320 million World Wide Web pages (including this one) on the Internet.

80% of all websites are in English. 10% of the world population understands English. 20% of the world's population live in South Asia. Of all Internet users, 1% live in South Asia.

25 industrial countries hold 97% of all the patents in the world.

(unless stated otherwise, all data are compiled by Kevin Walter and Phillip Tomlinson for the State of The World Forum five years ago)