Rural regions account for 43 percent of the world’s population – estimated to be just over 8 billion, at the last count – and if the calculations in this new study are correct then the number of unaccounted-for people could potentially stretch into the billions.(…)
“We were surprised to find that the actual population living in rural areas is much higher than the global population data indicates – depending on the dataset, rural populations have been underestimated by between 53 percent to 84 percent over the period studied.”(…)
ad: “Not everyone is convinced. Scientists who weren’t involved in the study told Chris Stokel-Walker at New Scientist that improvements in satellite imagery and the quality of data collecting in some countries would make these discrepancies smaller.”(…)
I personally know of ~400 people who are absolutely not counted on any census and I’d be willing to bet not included in any population stats. Whole town up in the mountains. I’d imagine if that can happen in the us, it’s not unlikely to happen elsewhere, so sure… But when they do the whole earth population calculations, I always assumed they just checked in a few extra people to account for, like, uncounted towns and shit
I’d bet that in many countries, the “census” cares more about its status as a gov’t official, than it does about accurate-counting, too…
While I’d been unconsciously assuming that the world population-count was somehow accurate,
my KNOWING of how rural people work to evade being counted contradicts my own assumption,
& your identifying that entire villages that aren’t counted… damn, damn, damn, have I ever been being ignorant/naive…
Thank you for pointing this obvious-in-hindsight behavior out, for us!
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so malthusianism is even more bullshit than we thought.
Yeah, you nailed it. Obvious in hindsight, but until this I had just assumed it was accurate, like, even if everyone wasn’t counted, I guess had I been pressed, I would have assumed there was some formula or something to account for the uncounted or some shit. Kinda wild
Also, village isn’t a word we really use in the US, but now that you say it, I guess that’s kind or exactly what it is. A little village of insane, isolated, meth makin’ hillbillies up in the woods that aren’t accessible by road.