• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 16, 2006

To keep everyone up to date on the vast opportunities in the U.S. market,  the resident population of the United States, projected to 01/10/06 at 15:24 GMT (EST+5) is 297,880,995 according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census. And, since it's not a static number, here's how to stay current:

• Add one birth every 8 seconds
• Subtract one death every 12 seconds
• Add one international migrant every 31 seconds
• Or, just round to a net gain of one person every 14 seconds

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division

The world population clock displays estimates produced by the bureau's International Programs Center. As of January 1, the world population stood at 6,488,578,564, a figure rising by 6.3 million a month.

Cheryl Russell, editorial director, New Strategist Publications, writes that at this rate the U.S. population will surpass 300 million on December 20, 2006.

Russell reports that for a developed country, the United States birthrate is high. In the world as a whole, the average woman has 2.60 children during her lifetime, according to data published by the CIA. From the highest fertility rate to the lowest, the United States ranks 131 out of 226 countries. Niger was number 1, with 7.55 children born per woman. In the United States, the average woman has 2.08 children. The U.S. fertility rate is higher than the rate in 42 percent of the world's countries, including Chile, Turkey, Vietnam, and Brazil. Hong Kong has the lowest fertility rate, with the average woman having only 0.93 children in her lifetime.

In 2004, the United States recorded 4.1 million births, rivaling the numbers during the peak of the baby boom, says Russell. While the higher fertility rate of the nation's Hispanics (2.82 children) sometimes gets the credit (or blame) for this, in fact the fertility rate of non-Hispanic white women (1.85 children) is higher than the fertility rate of 31 percent of the world's countries including most of Western Europe and Canada. The fertility rate of non-Hispanic white women is higher than the fertility rate of women in Cuba, Puerto Rico, China, and Iran.

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