Is our little blue marble of a planet actually a lot more crowded than we thought? A new study suggests we've been significantly undercounting populations in rural areas, because of the grid-based method typically used to count people.

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.”(…)