How many houses are there in the world?
The countable thing is households rather than houses, and there are roughly 2.4 billion of them. Average household size varies enormously — about 2.5 people in Europe and North America, over 6 in parts of West Africa and the Middle East — so the same population produces very different housing counts in different places. Household size has been falling almost everywhere for a century, which means the number of homes needed grows faster than the population does. That single fact drives more housing policy than population growth.
How the figure is arrived at
Population divided by average household size, both taken from national censuses. Censuses define a household as people sharing living quarters and meals, which is why the count captures shared flats and multi-generational homes as one household each, and does not correspond to buildings.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 2,200,000,000
- High estimate
- 2,600,000,000
- Spread
- 1.2× between the bounds
Other things people built counts
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many books have ever been published? about 130 million as of 2010 — probably over 200 million now
- How many airports are there in the world? about 45,000 with runways — but only around 4,000 with scheduled airline service
- How many ATMs are there in the world? about 3 million
- How many cities are there in the world? about 10,000 with over 50,000 people; 33 megacities over 10 million
- How many buildings are there in the world? somewhere between 1.5 and 4 billion
- How many computers are there in the world? roughly 2 billion personal computers in use
Common questions
- How many houses are there in the world?
- about 2.4 billion households
- How is that estimated?
- Population divided by average household size, both taken from national censuses. Censuses define a household as people sharing living quarters and meals, which is why the count captures shared flats and multi-generational homes as one household each, and does not correspond to buildings.
Related pages
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many people are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? Living things and the natural world
- How many ants are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many trees are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
Sources
- World Population Prospects — United Nations