World Geography · Unit 5 · Grades 6-8
People and Cultures
How many of us there are, where we live and why, and the languages, beliefs and customs we carry with us.
The United Nations projects that about 8.3 billion people will be living on Earth in 2026. They aren't spread out evenly. Some places are packed with towns and farms, and others have almost nobody. People also move: from farms to cities, and from one country to another. Wherever they go, they bring their culture, the languages they speak, the foods they cook, the holidays they keep and the beliefs they hold. On this page you'll learn how geographers measure population, why people live where they do, why they move, and how languages, religions and other parts of culture spread across the map.
How the World's Population Grew
In 1950 there were about 2.5 billion people in the world. By 2024 there were about 8.2 billion, more than three times as many (UN World Population Prospects 2024). The United Nations marked 15 November 2022 as the day the world reached 8 billion. Going from 7 billion to 8 billion took about 12 years.
Look at the shape of the line. It climbs steeply in the late 1900s, then begins to bend after 2024. Growth is slowing because families are having fewer children. In 2024, women around the world had an average of 2.3 children each, about one child fewer than in 1990 (UN, 2024). The UN projects that world population will peak at about 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s and then slowly fall, to about 10.2 billion by 2100. Some countries, including China, Germany, Japan and Russia, have already passed their peak and are shrinking (UN World Population Prospects 2024).
Where People Live, and Why
Geographers describe two things about where people live. Population distribution is the pattern of where people are spread across an area. Population density is how many people live in a given amount of space, usually counted as people per square kilometer (km²). Divide a country's population by its land area and you get its average density. For the whole world in 2024, it was about 63 people per km² (UN World Population Prospects 2024).
| Shade | People per km² | Examples (2024) |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10 | Under 10 | Mongolia 2.2, Australia 3.5, Canada 4.4, Russia 8.8 |
| 10 to 49 | 10 to 49 | United States 38, Brazil 25, Argentina 16 |
| 50 to 149 | 50 to 149 | China 148, Egypt 117, Mexico 67, France 121, Indonesia 148 |
| 150 to 399 | 150 to 399 | Nigeria 255, Germany 243, Pakistan 326, Japan 328, United Kingdom 285 |
| 400 or more | 400 or more | Bangladesh 1,333, India 488, South Korea 523, Netherlands 541 |
Why are some places crowded and others nearly empty? Geographers point to the land itself, along with history, jobs and other human choices.
- Water
- People need fresh water to drink and to grow food, so rivers, lakes and coasts draw people. Egypt is mostly desert, but about 95 percent of Egyptians live within a few miles of the Nile River, and canals carry its water to farms and cities (National Geographic, 2026).
- Climate
- Places that are very cold or very dry are hard places to farm, so few people live there. The cold north of Canada and Russia, the Sahara and the deserts of central Australia are thinly settled. Canada averaged about 4 people per km² and Australia about 3.5 in 2024 (UN World Population Prospects 2024).
- Landforms and soil
- Flat plains and river valleys with rich soil are easier to farm and to build on than steep mountains. Bangladesh sits almost entirely on the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, the world's largest delta. Deltas collect rich silt, so they are usually good farmland (National Geographic, 2026). Bangladesh had about 1,333 people per km² in 2024. Mongolia, a land of dry grassland, desert and mountains, had about 2 (UN World Population Prospects 2024).
- Human reasons
- Jobs, schools, roads, ports and history matter too. Once a city grows, it pulls in more people looking for work and opportunity (National Geographic Geography Standard 9).
The Most Populous Countries
For a long time, China had more people than any other country. That has changed. A UN report in April 2023 expected India to pass China that month. In the UN's newer 2024 data, India is ahead: about 1.45 billion people in 2024, compared with about 1.42 billion in China. China's population has started to shrink, while India's is still growing (UN World Population Prospects 2024).
| Rank | Country | Population, 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 1.45 billion |
| 2 | China | 1.42 billion |
| 3 | United States | 345.4 million |
| 4 | Indonesia | 283.5 million |
| 5 | Pakistan | 251.3 million |
| 6 | Nigeria | 232.7 million |
| 7 | Brazil | 212.0 million |
| 8 | Bangladesh | 173.6 million |
| 9 | Russia | 144.8 million |
| 10 | Ethiopia | 132.1 million |
In 2024, India and China together held about 35 percent of everyone on Earth. A big population does not always mean a crowded country. The United States has a huge population spread over a lot of land, so its average density is low. The Netherlands has far fewer people, but they live close together, so its density is high.
Cities, Towns and Countryside
Urban areas are cities and towns. Rural areas are the countryside, with farms, forests and small villages. The movement of people from rural areas to cities is called urbanization.
Counting how many people are urban is trickier than it sounds. Every country uses its own definition. In 2025, the UN published a report that uses one rule for the whole world. A city has at least 50,000 people, with at least 1,500 people per km². A town has at least 5,000 people, with at least 300 people per km². Here is what the UN's World Urbanization Prospects 2025 found for that year:
- Cities
- 45 percent of the world's people lived in cities, up from 20 percent in 1950.
- Towns
- 36 percent lived in towns, down from 40 percent in 1950.
- Rural areas
- 19 percent lived in rural areas.
Numbers depend on definitions. The World Bank adds up each country's own count of urban people. Counted that way, about 58 percent of the world was urban in 2025. Neither number is wrong. The UN uses one rule for every country, and the World Bank uses each country's own rule, so the totals don't match.
Megacities
A megacity is a city with 10 million people or more. In 1975 there were 8 megacities. By 2025 there were 33, and 19 of them were in Asia. The UN expects 37 by 2050 (UN World Urbanization Prospects 2025).
| Rank | City | Country | People, 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jakarta | Indonesia | 41.9 million |
| 2 | Dhaka | Bangladesh | 36.6 million |
| 3 | Tokyo | Japan | 33.4 million |
| 4 | New Delhi | India | 30.2 million |
| 5 | Shanghai | China | 29.6 million |
| 6 | Guangzhou | China | 27.6 million |
| 7 | Cairo | Egypt | 25.6 million |
| 8 | Manila | Philippines | 24.7 million |
| 9 | Kolkata | India | 22.5 million |
| 10 | Seoul | South Korea | 22.5 million |
Cairo is the only city in the top ten outside Asia. Older lists put Tokyo first, but the UN's 2025 report measures each city by its whole built-up area, which moved Jakarta to the top. The UN expects Dhaka to become the largest city by 2050.
Migration: Push and Pull
Migration is moving from one place to live in another. Moving within your own country, such as from a farm to a city, is internal migration. Moving to a different country is international migration. The UN counts anyone who has changed their country of residence as an international migrant, whatever the reason. In 2024 there were about 304 million international migrants, about 3.7 percent of the world's people. In 1990 there were about 154 million (UN DESA, International Migrant Stock 2024).
Geographers sort the reasons people move into two groups.
- Push factors
- Problems that drive people away from where they live, such as war, a food shortage, a flood or drought, or losing a job.
- Pull factors
- Things that draw people to a new place, such as jobs, schools, safety, a milder climate, or family who already live there.
Push and pull factors come in four kinds. Economic factors are about jobs and money. Political factors are about war, safety, rights and government. Environmental factors are about climate, disasters, land and water. Social factors are about family, education and health care. Most people who move have more than one reason.
Some migration is voluntary. People choose to move. Some migration is forced. People must flee war, persecution or disaster. A refugee is a person forced to flee their country to escape war or persecution.
What Is Culture?
Culture is the way of life a group of people shares and passes on. It is learned, not something people are born with. You learn your culture from your family, friends, school and community. National Geographic's geography standards list many parts, or elements, of culture:
- Language
- The words people use to talk, write and pass on stories and knowledge
- Beliefs and religion
- Ideas about the world, right and wrong, and the sacred
- Customs and traditions
- Holidays, celebrations, greetings and the ways families mark important days
- Food
- What people eat, how they cook it and when they share meals
- Dress
- Everyday clothes and special clothing for ceremonies
- Arts and architecture
- Music, dance, stories, painting, crafts and the kinds of buildings people make, such as yurts in Mongolia or pueblos in the American Southwest
- Social structure and institutions
- How families and communities are organized, and the schools, governments and other groups that shape daily life
- Technology
- The tools and know-how people use, from farming methods to phones
A large area where people share many of these elements is called a culture region. Geographers study cultures to understand how and why they differ from place to place. They don't rank cultures as better or worse. Judging another group's way of life only by your own culture's standards is called ethnocentrism, and it gets in the way of understanding.
Languages of the World
Ethnologue, a reference that tracks the world's languages, counts 7,170 living languages in its 2026 edition. About 44 percent of them are endangered, many with fewer than 1,000 users left. Yet just 20 languages are the first language of more than 3.7 billion people (Ethnologue, 2026).
Language families
A language family is a group of languages that grew from the same older language, the way branches grow from one trunk. Ethnologue counts 143 families (2026). The six largest, by how many languages they include, are listed below. Niger-Congo and Austronesian each have more than 1,000 languages. By number of speakers, Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan are the largest, with more than 4.8 billion speakers between them (Ethnologue, 2026).
| Family | Main home regions | Example languages |
|---|---|---|
| Niger-Congo | Africa south of the Sahara | Swahili, Yoruba |
| Austronesian | Islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and Madagascar | Indonesian |
| Trans-New Guinea | New Guinea | Enga, in Papua New Guinea |
| Sino-Tibetan | East Asia, the Himalaya and parts of Southeast Asia | Mandarin Chinese |
| Indo-European | Europe, Iran and South Asia; carried to the Americas and beyond | English, Spanish, Hindi |
| Afro-Asiatic | North Africa, the Horn of Africa and Southwest Asia | Standard Arabic |
The most-spoken languages
There are two ways to count speakers, and they give different answers. Native speakers learned the language as their first language, usually as young children. Total speakers also include people who learned it as a second or later language.
| Rank | Language | Total speakers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | 1.5 billion |
| 2 | Mandarin Chinese | 1.2 billion |
| 3 | Hindi | 611 million |
| 4 | Spanish | 561 million |
| 5 | Standard Arabic | 335 million |
| 6 | French | 334 million |
| 7 | Bengali | 274 million |
| 8 | Portuguese | 269 million |
| 9 | Indonesian | 255 million |
| 10 | Urdu | 246 million |
Native speakers only: Ethnologue's 2026 ranking puts Mandarin Chinese first, followed by Spanish, English and Hindi. English moves to first place in the total-speakers list because so many people learn it as a second language. Ethnologue reports that English is used in 188 countries.
World Religions
A religion is a set of beliefs and practices, often about God or gods, the sacred, and how to live. Religion is part of culture for billions of people, and many people practice no religion. The Pew Research Center studied more than 2,700 censuses, surveys and population registers covering 201 countries and territories. In 2020, 75.8 percent of the world's people identified with a religion. These were the shares of the world's population in 2020 (Pew Research Center, published 2025):
| Group | Share, 2020 | Where most followers live |
|---|---|---|
| Christians | 28.8% (about 2.3 billion) | Spread across many regions: about 31% in sub-Saharan Africa, 24% in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 22% in Europe |
| Muslims | 25.6% | About 59% in the Asia-Pacific region; nearly 4 in 10 in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa combined |
| Religiously unaffiliated | 24.2% (about 1.9 billion) | About 78% in the Asia-Pacific region |
| Hindus | 14.9% (about 1.2 billion) | 99% in the Asia-Pacific region; India is home to 95% of the world's Hindus |
| Buddhists | 4.1% (about 324 million) | 98% in the Asia-Pacific region |
| Other religions | 2.2% | About 65% in the Asia-Pacific region |
| Jews | about 0.2% (about 14.8 million) | About 46% in Israel and 41% in North America |
Pew counts people by how they describe themselves. The shares don't measure how strongly anyone believes or practices. "Religiously unaffiliated" means people who do not identify with any religion. "Other religions" groups many smaller faiths together. It includes Baha'is, Daoists, Jains, Shintoists, Sikhs and Zoroastrians. It also includes followers of folk or traditional religions.
Where the major religions began
The place where an idea or custom begins is called its hearth. Five of the world's largest religions began in two hearths in Asia.
| On the map | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Marker 1 | Judaism and Christianity began in the Middle East, also called Southwest Asia. Judaism is based on the Torah and the teachings around it. Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Most Jews today live in Israel or North America (Pew, 2020 data). |
| Marker 2 | Islam began with the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad in the early 600s CE. This was in what is now Saudi Arabia, on the Arabian Peninsula. |
| Marker 3 | Hinduism and Buddhism began in South Asia. Hinduism has no single founder. Its important early texts are the Vedas, and it is often called the oldest religion still practiced. Buddhism began about 2,500 years ago with the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, who was born in Nepal. Most Hindus still live in South Asia: 95% live in India (Pew, 2020 data). |
| Solid purple arrow | Christianity spread into Europe and Africa. |
| Dashed green arrow | Islam spread west across North Africa and east to South and Southeast Asia, carried by trade, migration and conquest. |
| Dotted orange arrow | Buddhism spread across Asia, to East Asia and Southeast Asia. |
How Culture Spreads
The spread of an idea, custom, invention or belief from its hearth to other places is called cultural diffusion. It happens in two main ways.
- Relocation diffusion
- People move and bring their culture with them. When people migrate, they bring foods, holidays, clothing and religion to their new home.
- Expansion diffusion
- An idea spreads from person to person and place to place, while staying strong where it began. Jazz started in the southern United States and spread north, largely to cities along the Mississippi River.
Trade has carried culture from place to place for a very long time. The Silk Road and other ancient trade routes linked Asia, Africa and Europe. Merchants, pilgrims and diplomats traveled these routes. Along with goods, they swapped languages, religions and inventions, such as papermaking and the compass. Islam also spread along trade routes, carried by merchants, scholars and travelers. Migration and conquest spread it too. Source: National Geographic.
Today, culture spreads faster than ever. Air travel, television, films, phones and the internet carry music, foods and words around the world in days or even minutes. When people adopt something from another culture, they often change it to fit their own: a sushi bar at a U.S. truck stop, or African drumming patterns in American music (National Geographic Geography Standard 10).
Game: Push or Pull?
Each round tells a short story about someone who moves. The people are made up, but their reasons are real ones. Decide whether the story shows a push factor or a pull factor, and what kind it is. A right answer on your first try is worth 2 points, and on your second try, 1. There are 10 rounds, so a perfect game is 20.
Pick an answer with the buttons below, or press the number keys 1 to 4. Use Tab to move between buttons and Enter to press one.
Get ready…
Round 1 of 10 · Score 0 · Best 0
…
How scoring works
Every game includes one story for each of the eight kinds of factor, plus two more, in a random order. Each round offers four choices, and one of them is always the opposite of the right answer (push instead of pull, or pull instead of push). A right answer earns 2 points on the first try and 1 point on the second. After two wrong tries the answer is shown and the round is worth 0. Your best score is saved only in this browser, as soon as a game ends.
Quiz: People and Cultures
Ten questions. Choose one answer for each, then check your score. You can try as many times as you like.
Talk About It
- Look at the density map. Pick one crowded area and one nearly empty area. Using water, climate and landforms, explain the difference.
- Think of a time your family, or someone you know, moved. What were the push factors and the pull factors? Was there more than one reason?
- Name something in your daily life, such as a food, a word, a song or a game, that began in another culture. How do you think it reached you?
- English is first in total speakers, but Mandarin Chinese is first in native speakers. Why do you think so many people learn English as a second language?
- About 44 percent of the world's languages are endangered. What could a community do to keep its language alive?
Sources
- United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), Population Division, World Population Prospects 2024 and its Summary of Results (world population 1950 to 2100, the projected peak, countries that have peaked, country populations and densities for 2024; the data behind the chart and the density map).
- United Nations, Day of Eight Billion and Global Issues: Population (8 billion on 15 November 2022, 12 years from 7 to 8 billion, the 2024 fertility rate).
- UN DESA, Policy Brief No. 153: India overtakes China as the world's most populous country (April 2023).
- UN DESA, Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects 2025: Summary of Results and press release (city, town and rural shares, definitions, megacities, the ten largest cities in 2025).
- World Bank, Urban population (% of total population) (about 58 percent in 2025, using national definitions).
- United Nations, Global Issues: Migration and UN DESA, International Migrant Stock 2024 (304 million international migrants in 2024, 154 million in 1990, the definition of an international migrant).
- National Geographic Education, Introduction to Human Migration, Population Density, Urbanization and Geography Standard 9 (push and pull factors, voluntary and forced migration, refugees, population density and why people settle where they do).
- National Geographic Education, Nile River (95 percent of Egyptians live within a few miles of the Nile) and Delta (the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta and Bangladesh).
- National Geographic Education, Geography Standard 10 (the elements of culture, culture change and diffusion, jazz, sushi at a truck stop, African drumming in U.S. music, yurts and pueblos) and Ideas on the Move: Silk Road (trade routes, papermaking and the compass).
- Ethnologue (SIL), 2026, 29th edition: How many languages are there in the world?, What are the largest language families?, What is the most spoken language? and Ethnologue 200 (7,170 languages, endangered languages, 143 families, native and total speaker rankings; the family of each example language comes from its Ethnologue language page).
- Pew Research Center, How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020, 9 June 2025 (shares of the world's population by religious group in 2020, and where each group's followers live).
- National Geographic Education, Region, Ancient Civilizations: India, Buddhism and Expansion of Islam (where Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism began, and how Buddhism and Islam spread).
- Natural Earth, 1:110m Cultural Vectors: Admin 0 Countries (public-domain country shapes used for the density map and the hearth map).
Credits
Written by Marco for Jugami's World Geography course. The population density map, the population chart and the map of religious hearths are original SVG illustrations made for this page. The density map and chart are drawn from the UN's World Population Prospects 2024, using public-domain country shapes from Natural Earth. The maps are simplified.