Asia is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometers, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Its 4.7 billion people constitute roughly 60% of the world's population.
India is the most populous country in the world with one-sixth of the world's population. According to UN estimates, India overtook China in having the largest population in the world with a population of 1,425,775,850 at the end of April 2023.
The economy of Indonesia is a mixed economy with dirigiste characteristics, and it is one of the emerging market economies in the world and the largest in Southeast Asia. As an upper-middle income country and member of the G20, Indonesia is classified as a newly industrialized country. Estimated at over 21 quadrillion rupiah in 2023, it is the 16th largest economy in the world by nominal GDP and the 7th largest in terms of GDP (PPP). Indonesia's internet economy reached US$77 billion in 2022, and is expected to cross the US$130 billion mark by 2025. Indonesia depends on the domestic market and government budget spending and its ownership of state-owned enterprises. The administration of prices of a range of basic goods also plays a significant role in Indonesia's market economy. However, since the 1990s, the majority of the economy has been controlled by individual Indonesians and foreign companies.
The economy of Vietnam is a developing mixed socialist-oriented market economy incorporating industrial policies and strategic five-year plans, which is the 35th-largest in the world as measured by nominal gross domestic product (GDP) and 26th-largest in the world as measured by purchasing power parity (PPP) in 2022. It is a lower-middle income country with a low cost of living. Vietnam is a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the World Trade Organization.
The Four Asian Tigers are the developed East Asian economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Between the early 1950s and 1990s, they underwent rapid industrialization and maintained exceptionally high growth rates of more than 7 percent a year.
The category of newly industrialized country (NIC), newly industrialized economy (NIE) or middle income country is a socioeconomic classification applied to several countries around the world by political scientists and economists. They represent a subset of developing countries whose economic growth is much higher than that of other developing countries; and where the social consequences of industrialization, such as urbanization, are reorganizing society.
The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of a population is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime if:
- they were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) through their lifetime
- and they were to live from birth until the end of their reproductive life.
The economy of Asia comprises about 4.7 billion people living in 50 different nations. Asia is the fastest growing economic region, as well as the largest continental economy by both GDP Nominal and PPP in the world. Moreover, Asia is the site of some of the world's longest modern economic booms.
BRIC is a term describing the foreign investment strategies grouping acronym that stands for Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The separate BRICS organisation would go on to become a political and economic organization largely based on such grouping.
The Asian Century is the projected 21st-century dominance of Asian politics and culture, assuming certain demographic and economic trends persist. The concept of Asian Century parallels the characterisation of the 19th century as Britain's Imperial Century, and the 20th century as the American Century.
Asia is the largest and most populous continent and the birthplace of many religions including Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism and Zoroastrianism. All major religious traditions are practiced in the region and new forms are constantly emerging. Asia is noted for its diversity of culture.
This article lists current estimates of the world population in history. In summary, estimates for the progression of world population since the Late Middle Ages are in the following ranges:
The economy of East Asia comprises 1.6 billion people living in six different countries and regions. The region includes several of the world's largest and most prosperous economies: Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Macau. It is home to some of the most economically dynamic places in the world, being the site of some of the world's most extended modern economic booms, including the Taiwan miracle (1950–present) in Taiwan, Miracle on the Han River (1974–present) in South Korea, Japanese economic miracle (1950–1990) and the Chinese economic miracle (1983–2010) in China.
The ancestral population of modern Asian people has its origins in the two primary prehistoric settlement centres – greater Southwest Asia and from the Mongolian plateau towards Northern China.
South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethnic-cultural terms. As commonly conceptualized, the modern states of South Asia include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. South Asia borders East Asia to the northeast, Central Asia to the northwest, West Asia to the west and Southeast Asia to the east. Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian subcontinent and is bounded by the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Pamir Mountains in the north.
The East Asian model, pioneered by Japan, is a plan for economic growth whereby the government invests in certain sectors of the economy in order to stimulate the growth of specific industries in the private sector. It generally refers to the model of development pursued in East Asian economies such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It has also been used by some to describe the contemporary economic system in Mainland China after Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms during the late 1970s and the current economic system of Vietnam after its Đổi Mới policy was implemented in 1986. Generally, as a country becomes more developed, the most common employment industry transitions from agriculture to manufacturing, and then to services.
Christian population growth is the population growth of the global Christian community. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, there were more than 2.2 billion Christians around the world in 2010, more than three times as many as the 600 million recorded in 1910. However, this rate of growth is slower than the overall population growth over the same time period. In 2020, Pew estimated the number of Christians worldwide to be around 2.38 billion. According to various scholars and sources, high birth rates and conversions in the Global South were cited as the reasons for the Christian population growth. In 2023, it was reported: "There will be over 2.6 billion Christians worldwide by the middle of 2023 and around 3.3 billion by 2050, according to a report published in early January by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary."
Earth has a human population of over 8 billion as of 2024, with an overall population density of 50 people per km2. Nearly 60% of the world's population lives in Asia, with almost 2.8 billion in the countries of China and India combined. The percentage shares of China, India and rest of South Asia of the world population have remained at similar levels for the last few thousand years of recorded history. The world's literacy rate has increased dramatically in the last 40 years, from 66.7% in 1979 to 86.3% today. Lower literacy levels are mostly attributable to poverty. Lower literacy rates are found mostly in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
The economy of South Asia comprises 2 billion people living in eight countries. The Indian subcontinent was historically one of the richest regions in the world, comprising 25% of world GDP as recently as 1700, but experienced significant de-industrialisation and a doubling of extreme poverty during the colonial era of the late 18th to mid-20th century. In the post-colonial era, South Asia has grown significantly, with India advancing because of economic liberalisation from the 1980s onwards, and extreme poverty now below 15% in the region. South Asia has been the fastest-growing region of the world since 2014.
