They could underestimate how many people live on the ground. But what is the real number?

The rural population Researchers regularly underestimated at least half, which can have a huge impact on the global population and the planning of public services. However, demographers dispute the results and say such underestimates are unlikely to change the national or global population.

No stimulus of resettlement due to dam construction

Josias Flame Ritter and his colleagues at Aalto University in Finland worked to understand the extent to which dam construction projects are causing the resettlement of people, but they received significantly different numbers of official statistics when estimating populations.

For the study, 35 countries, including China, Brazil, Australia and Poland, were used by 307 dam construction projects: each of the structures was completed between 1980 and 2010 and the number of people announced in some cases was considered a pre-deployment population in the area. Subsequently, these numbers were compared with five main population data sets that divide the areas into a square grid and estimate the number of people living in each square to receive the aggregate data – Write the New Scientist.

Flame Ritter and his colleagues were published in Nature Communications In their study They claim to have found clear differences. While the UN official estimates that the world’s population is around 8.2 billion, the new analysis shows that this number is likely to be much higher. According to Finnish calculations, the most accurate estimates estimate the actual population by an average of 53 percent, while the worst are 84 percent less people in rural regions. « We were very surprised at how great this underrepresentation is. We can say that nowadays population estimates are probably conservative calculations, and we have a reason to assume that we are much more than these 8 billion people, » the researcher said.

According to the team, these counting errors occur because the census data in rural areas are often incomplete or unreliable, and population estimation methods have been historically designed to achieve the highest possible accuracy in urban areas. According to the researchers, correcting these systematic distortions is important for rural communities to avoid inequalities. This could be achieved by improving census in such areas and by reclaiming population models.

Effects can be huge

Flame-Ritter believes that if the estimates of the rural population are far false, it can have serious consequences for providing government services and planning. « The effects can be great, as these data sets are used for a variety of measures, » he explained. This includes the planning of transport infrastructure, the construction of health facilities, and the efforts to reduce the risk of natural disasters and epidemics.

However, the new estimates did not convince everyone. “The study suggests that the regional population countswhich show where people live within countries were incorrectly estimated, although it is less clear that this would necessarily mean that national estimates are incorrect, ”says Martin Kolk expert at Stockholm University. Stuart Gietel-Basten, a major From China And it comes from other parts of Asia and may not be globally applicable. « I think it would be a great jump to say based on one or two data points that there is a significant underpass in places such as Finland, Australia, Sweden, etc. and other very sophisticated registration systems. »

Gietel-Basten agrees at one point with a flame-Ritter. « I definitely agree with the conclusions that we should invest more in the collection of data in rural areas and the more innovative ways to account for people, » he admitted. But he does not find the idea that the world’s official population should grow by a few billion – Write the New Scientist.