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Population 1960

Map No. 10

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The world population in 1960 was 3 039 million. As is the case today, the populations of China and India are (independently) more than twice as big as that of the next largest territory.

South America has increased its proportion of the world's population living there, since 1900. The Western European proportion of the world population began to decline in 1900 when it was 15%, to 11% in 1960 and then 6% in 2000.

"May the day come soon, when the people of the world will rouse themselves, and together effectively stamp out any threat to peace in whatever quarter of the world it may be found." Albert Lutuli, 1961

This map shows the 1960 distribution of the world's population.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page