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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