How many people are born every second?

Approximately 4.3 humans are born every second worldwide. That figure is the current global average from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, drawn from the World Population Prospects 2024 revision.

Broken down across larger units of time, the global birth rate works out to:

• About 258 births per minute
• About 15,500 births per hour
• About 372,000 births per day
• About 2.6 million births per week
• Roughly 385 million births per year

Why the rate is not constant

The 4.3 per second figure is a global average. Real births do not arrive at a steady tick — they cluster by time zone, season, and population distribution. The figure also reflects a long-running decline in the global total fertility rate, which has fallen from about 5 children per woman in 1960 to about 2.3 today. Birth rates remain highest in sub-Saharan Africa and lowest in East Asia and parts of Europe.

How this feeds the counter

Memento uses 4.3 births per second as the multiplier applied to elapsed time since the baseline. Every second that passes, the cumulative “ever born” figure increases by 4.3. Over an hour of keeping the page open, the counter will climb by roughly 15,500. Over a day, by about 372,000 — a small town's worth of new humans, every 24 hours.

See the methodology page for the full baseline values, or return to the live counter to watch the number climb.