Researchers at North Carolina State University report (“Mayday 23: World Population Becomes More Urban Than Rural”) that May 23, 2007 is the date when the population of the world will be more urban than rural.

Working with United Nations estimates that predict the world will be 51.3 percent urban by 2010, the researchers projected the May 23, 2007, transition day based on the average daily rural and urban population increases from 2005 to 2010. On that day, a predicted global urban population of 3,303,992,253 will exceed that of 3,303,866,404 rural people.

Interestingly they compare the population statistics for the world to the United States urban-rural divide and not to Britain, which achieved a majority urban population first among Western industrialized nations.

In the United States, the tipping point from a majority rural to a majority urban population came early in the late 1910s, the researchers say. Today, 21 percent of our country is rural although some states — Maine, Mississippi, Vermont, and West Virginia — are still majority rural. In North Carolina, a rural majority held until the late 1980s.