Pre-industrial demographics

This report presents a collection of statistics on demographic trends and patterns in pre-industrial times. The global population has exploded from around one to eight billion people since the beginning of the 19^th century, due to a combination of factors such as advancements in healthcare (vaccination, anaesthesia, etc), the Second Agricultural Revolution, and improvements in infrastructure. Before this time, however, population growth was relatively slow, as high birth rates were cancelled out by high death rates, and life expectancy from birth was around 24 years due to high rates of infant and child mortality. As most of humanity depended on subsistence farming to survive, urbanization rates were incredibly low, before industrialization and the aforementioned advances swept across the world. However, these changes took places across different time periods depending on the country or region, which tends to correlate with modern interpretations of "developed", "developing", and the "least-developed" countries. This report includes chapters relating to popoulation, growth, fertility, mortality, migration, urbanization, and some of the major events that changed demographics throughout history.