Birth & Death Rate Clock Screensaver
The Birth & Death Rate Clock shows two rolling odometers side by side — births and deaths worldwide since your local midnight — with the net growth counter ticking between them, extrapolated from United Nations vital rates. It's free, runs fully offline in your browser, and ESC exits.
How the Birth & Death Rate Clock screensaver works
Embedded UN world vital rates — about 4.3 births and 2.0 deaths per second — are the same constants as this site's Population Clock, so the two savers always agree.
Each side multiplies its rate by the seconds elapsed since your local midnight, so the counters reset to zero as your day starts.
The digits are drawn as mechanical reels: the lowest digit rolls continuously so you can watch every single birth and death land.
Everything is computed on your device — no network, no API — and the on-screen footnote is honest that these are extrapolations, not measured counts.
A worked example
Open it at 6 p.m. and the green side reads about 278,600 births against 129,600 deaths on the slate side, the net strip near 149,000 and climbing 2.3 every second. Run it beside the Multi-view Population Clock to watch the flows and the running world total tick in perfect sync.
Settings & tips
- Deaths color — the right-hand side defaults to a muted slate; switch it to a soft red like
#ff8a7aif you want a starker contrast.
Frequently asked questions
- Are these real, live counts?
- They're honest extrapolations, not measurements — no one counts births in real time. The saver multiplies the UN's world vital rates by the seconds elapsed today, which is how demographic clocks everywhere work.
- How is this different from the Population Clock?
- The Population Clock shows one number: the running world total. This is the flows view — births and deaths separated into facing odometers with the day's net growth between them. Same UN rates underneath, so they never disagree.
- Does it work offline?
- Yes, completely. The rates are embedded in the saver and everything is computed on your device — it never touches the network.
- Does it need an API key?
- No. There's no feed and no key; the UN rates ship inside the saver itself.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser. ESC exits at any time.