Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated
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Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated
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Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated
#2Well, is it a few million, or a billion?
It doesn't really say in the article.
Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated
#3The article doesn’t really give much scientific information. But wouldn’t areas flooded by dams be much higher in population than other areas? They would be by rivers and within valleys. Protected land with a fresh water supply. What relative population increase did they assume for these regions?
Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated
#4>"When dams are built, large areas are flooded and people need to be relocated," Láng-Ritter said in a press statement. "The relocated population is usually counted precisely because dam companies pay compensation to those affected."
Sure, "we've been systematically undercounting population for decades" is a more plausible explanation than "large infrastructure projects in rural areas of underdeveloped countries are a bonanza of corruption".
Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated
#5The original paper is discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43398308
Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated
#6I've typically heard it rumored that populations get overestimated, as corrupt local officials in developing countries want to get more resources/power allocated to their district
Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated
#7Well, is it a few million, or a billion? It doesn't really say in the article.
If the paper is accurate and not falling prey to false assumptions or some other error we are talking about billions. If we just generalize the deviations claimed by the paper out to the entire world there are about another 3-5 billion humans. If the paper is accurate but doesn't generalize to other countries we are still talking about a billion people.
Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated
#8>"When dams are built, large areas are flooded and people need to be relocated," Láng-Ritter said in a press statement. "The relocated population is usually counted precisely because dam companies pay compensation to those affected." Sure, "we've been systematically undercounting population for decades" is a more plausible explanation than "large infrastructure projects in rural areas of underdeveloped countries are…
Concerningly, they acknowledge accuracy of the numbers reported by the dam projects under limitations... by only highlighting the opposite, that it could be under-reported by them. I feel like I'm missing a lot for this to have been published but I'd expect such a paper about limitations of existing studies to be especially heavy on what the limitations of this new method might be.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56906-7#:~:text=L...
Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated
#9Well, is it a few million, or a billion? It doesn't really say in the article.
I had the same question.
I thought reading the paper in Nature would give some more insight, but no.
I was looking for at least an estimate of what they thought world population should be, but that doesn't seem to be included in any of the text...
Re: Population much more than 8.2B, rural areas underestimated
#10>"When dams are built, large areas are flooded and people need to be relocated," Láng-Ritter said in a press statement. "The relocated population is usually counted precisely because dam companies pay compensation to those affected." Sure, "we've been systematically undercounting population for decades" is a more plausible explanation than "large infrastructure projects in rural areas of underdeveloped countries are…
Concerningly, they acknowledge accuracy of the numbers reported by the dam projects under limitations... by only highlighting the opposite, that it could be under-reported by them. I feel like I'm missing a lot for this to have been published but I'd expect such a paper about limitations of existing studies to be especially heavy on what the limitations of this new method might be. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41…
I’ve actually looked into this for a few developing countries, and dam resettlement figures are very likely to be inflated.
There’s no actual combination of outsiders going around to every household in every village for even a dozen days of the year to plausibly provide a third party confirmation of claimed residence for each individual.
It’s effectively villagers certifying each other that they really live there as a primary residence.