Talk:List of countries by past and projected future population/Archive 1

Archive 1

Peak?

It looks as this article says that most countries, and therefore the world's population as well, will rise. Is there going to be a peak? It would be nice to add some more global-scale info to the article.

cleanup

i cleaned up the language and style of the introduction. i dont think i removed any vital information in the process. if anything is to be added back, be sure the language is neutral in tone, with no highlights unless absolutely necessary.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 21:43, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

About casual 2010 updates

The data for 2010 predictions is way out from what actually happened shouldn't we change this? It seems stupid to maintain figures that are actually wrong!!—Preceding comment added by Tsdek(talk) 16:38, 20 February 2010 (GMT)

It’s no way stupid to keep the article as it is now!

Official estimates may be more updated and/or more accurate than the population data supplied here. However, the US Census Bureau's IDB figures have a very important advantage: they are homogenous, as they come (and have been processed) from a single source. The original idea behind this article is to provide the “big picture” of world population evolution in a 100-year timespan, NOT to deliver the highest possible precision for 2010 (which you can partially see in the corresponding article, as it will be gradually updated throughout this year, automatically when it comes to countries with popclocks).

You have to bear in mind that an all estimates supplied by the IDB (the same happens with the UN figures) are mid-year ones, and that means that they are not fully comparable with some January-February 2000 ones appearing in the List of countries by population article, not to say anything about the UN mid-2009 estimates used there “by default”. So, when you say “actually happened”, you are wrong. You are also mistaken when you say that the predictions (in fact, projections or estimates) are “way out”. If you carefully compare your last edit with the IDB's data, they are not really that far off. As far as I know, the only truly relevant statistical discrepancy between the IDB's data and an official source happens in Spain's case, which only appears with some 40 million inhabitants according to the former source and with some 46 million according to the latter (and more accurate) one. This is basically related to the exceptionally immigration (especially from Latin America) that took place in Spain during this last decade.

Besides, the three major tables and the other 3 (sub)totalizing small ones have been created via a relatively complex set of OpenOffice.org Calc macros spreading through a some 1,100 lines of source code. Thus, if you change some figures, you somehow disrupt the automatically generated subtotals (in particular, the 2010 column). This convenient feature also allows me to massively update the six tables at once every two or three times a year, (ideally) as soon as the US Census Bureau updates its IDB database and releases it through its website.

If you want to see a comparison among the US Census Bureau's IDB (basically used by the The CIA World Factbook) estimates, the UN ones, and some current official census and projections, you can see the Spanish version of the List of countries by population article (The country names are similar in both languages, so you shouldn't have many problems reading it, even without a Google translation

I am the article’s original creator, and its main contributor by far (with some 99% of its contents), and I'm of the strong idea of keeping it “single source”, as it was born more than a year ago (By the way, I prefer the IDB figures to the UN ones because they allow full table automation, unlike the UN data). I would really appreciate it if you stood by my decision.

Greetings from Argentina :-)

MaxBech1975 (talk) 20:01, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Some Questions

Sorry if this has been stated before, but when were the population projections estimated?

Also, if you look at the UN estimates, Yemen has a population 102 mil by 2050, which is far off from the figure on this page...

cchow2 (talk) 18:14, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Unreliable estimates

It may have be mentioned before, but their arguments were weak. Look at for instance Sweden. Their population right now is 9.43 million people. The UN estimate is already wrong by about 300K people. Right now they have a net migration of 60K and natural change of 25K. Neither is going to decrease soon, because Sweden is one of the few countries where all parties except one small party agree about immigration, so they won't change their immigration policies anytime soon. Also the population in developing countries are increasing and with a larger foreign population more people will find wifes abroad. If the population increases by 80K per year, then the population will be 10.2 in 2020, 11.0 in 2030, 11.8 in 2040 and 12.6 in 2050. UN estimates that the population will be 9.07 in 2010, 9.2 in 2020, 9.3 in 2030, 9.2 in 2040, and 9.1 in 2050.

If they can get Sweden that wrong, then they can get every single country majorly wrong. They haven't taken into account immigration or politics/culture that may change the fertility rate. They have just correlated growth rates and fertility rates. That makes the data highly unreliable.

The only way to provide relaible estimates is to investigate each country and get independent researchers to estimate future population growth. We need to include that these estimates are more unreliable than other available estimates that come from independant research because it is only a simple mathematical formula and not estimates based on the fertility rate and immigration and the politics/culture/geography that will affect the immigration and fertility rate. 84.208.158.34 (talk) 10:25, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

About choice of source

There seems to be a lot of concern expressed over the numbers presented here. usually the thing to do along the way to consolidating on a proper set of estimates to use is to pluralize the measure .. ie, look at the GDP numbers: there are three numbers side by side, from 3 different groups.

do any other nations offer projections? I can only find UN numbers for regional estimates - there are substantial differences but I hesitate to just add data to regional blocks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.66.15.17 (talk) 23:42, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Sources

Where on earth do these numbers come from? The Norwegian population is already far greater than the 2015 estimate of the article. According to the article, the population will continue to increase until it reaches 5 million and then drop to just below 5 million in 2050. However, according to Statistics Norway, the low estimate for 2050 is closer to 6 million and the high estimate is 8 million (9 million in 2060). The middle estimate is 6,5 million in 2050 and 7 million in 2060. Source: http://ssb.no/emner/02/03/folkfram/fig-2011-06-16-01.gif 85.166.240.109 (talk) 21:26, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Nigeria, USA

Update needed for Nigeria, USA and others. Thank you. Mightymights (talk) 18:57, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Cote d'Ivoire

Where is it? --Uxejn (talk) 20:36, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Solved :-) (In fact, it was missing because of a bug present in the original database used as source in this article) MaxBech1975 (talk) 00:01, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Missing percentages

Is it just me or are the percentage figures for 1980-1985 and 2015-2020 missing? 89.0.51.172 (talk) 18:43, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Solved :-) MaxBech1975 (talk) 14:19, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

European Union

Hello everybody, I was looking for some aggregate information on the European Union. Is it possible to add them? It does not make much sense to have "Eastern Europe" and "Western Europe" in the statistics...

Thanks Pietro — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.164.216.213 (talk) 22:09, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

United Arab Emirates

in the article United Arab Emirates, the current population there was listed around 8 million. then why in this article does it say that the population of the UAE will be at 6 million by 2020 and 8 million by 2050??? The population of the UAE is currently increasing. Jawadreventon (talk) 18:42, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

First of all, this article is not based on national data but on the USCB’s International Data Base, for data coherence reasons. As the article says in its preliminary notes, it is difficult to predict how a certain population will evolve in the long term. And that's why censuses need to be conducted every 10 years or so.

On the other hand, the economically burgeoing United Arab Emirates are a very special case from a demograpic point of view. Although the UAE had a population of only some 4 million in 2005 according to its census, it doubled to some 8 million in only five years. Just imagine if some major countries like India or the USA could duplicate their respective populations in only half a decade! In fact, the main reason behind that great (relative and absolute) growth is immigration, as it can be clearly seen in the official PDF with the 8 million estimate for 2010. In particular, that source says that some 850,000, almost 1.15 million and nearly 1.8 million people emigrated to the UAE in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively (which are really huge numbers for a not so populous country), before coming to a virtual halt in 2008. So it is reasonable to expect that the number of expats, and therefore the UAE's population in general, will not continue growing at such amazing (much more artificial than natural) demographic rate during the next years and the decades to come.

Regards.

MaxBech1975 (talk) 22:35, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Croatia

I think the population of Croatia in 1950 should be 4,000 and not 4. This would be more coherent with the figures about the following years. Probably an error? Cheers, --151.42.24.65 (talk) 14:08, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

EU

EU past and future population should be in the list too, it is alot more relevant than eastern and western europe for example. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.105.223.174 (talk) 18:24, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Australia

The figure given for Australia in the 2020-2050 timeframe does not compute with credible real-world trends. Australia has a fairly robust birth rate, but also experiences significant growth via immigration. I understand the issue with census numbers, but frankly Australia should not be on the list then, if immigration rates can not be included in a credible way in growth figures. Current low-end estimates project around 35 million people by 2050, that assumes immigration slowing down in a credible fashion. Any figure below that number assumes immigration effectively coming to a halt, which is completely unrealistic, except for some of the current mouthpieces of the Liberal-Conservative coalition. 101.168.170.169 (talk) 10:43, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

EU - Romania

In the wiki page for Romania the population is indicated as 2011 census 19,043,767, so at the present time (2013) it is less than 19 million. However, in the data on this page, the population of Romania reaches 18 million in 2050 not 2013. This puts into question the validity of the data presented on this page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.201.80.240 (talk) 12:47, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

the future population is by CIA and is a joke

its clearly influenced by their agenda, how can USA as g7 country except to be in the same category as ghana and other third world countries in 2050 when it comes to population growth, their growth is 0.79 while mexicos is 0.28, i mean usa might be an immigration country but if mexico has lower population growth this list cant be serious since where should the immigration come then, it should be noted since there is clearly pro us bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karesu12340 (talk • contribs) 20:58, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Where are these morons coming from? It's not a contest. If anything, high population growth countries are those that have people that are most ignorant, least educated, most impoverished, working the most menial jobs, most brainwashed by their backward religions, most self-centered and least caring about the fate of the world or environment. A country with a sharply declining population is something to be proud of. And the US population continues to rapidly increase because, though native "White" person levels of reproduction are roughly similar to those of Canadians or Britons, there is also an enormous amount of immigration to the United States- much more than to any other country in the world. Once again, that's not something to be proud of, it's just a fact. And projecting population growth into the future beyond a few years is notoriously difficult, so it's not even disputed that these figures are all going to be pretty inaccurate (I mean what's up with Kiribati increasing in population through 2050 when it's supposed to be uninhabitable by then?). It's just the best guess we can make at this time. Calm down, jingoistic retards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.51.185.62 (talk) 08:19, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Not What It Says

This is not a list of countries "by population". It's an alphabetical list of countries showing population data.

Would be far, far more useful if it actually was what it purported to be. For example, give a table for, say, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, ... etc., and list the countries in order of population, from largest to smallest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 18:56, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

UN sources?

The United Nations has incredibly detailed spreadsheets covering their projections. You can get the different variants, the age groups, fertility rates, life expectancy, etc, for each year until 2100. The spreadsheet "WPP2012_POP_F01_1_TOTAL_POPULATION_BOTH_SEXES" is basically everything you need to give the UN figures here. I'd like to see a table with the UN data here, above the USCB data, with country, 2015, 2025, 2050, and 2100 data in high/medium/low variants. 71.241.254.221 (talk) 23:54, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

This list is a joke

I can see that its written by a Britain, British decline first in 2050? And the German population is 73 millions and 100 million people in Japan and Russia in 2050. What a joke. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.1.1.101 (talk) 17:21, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

All those three countries have decreasing populations, although probably not in a sharp way, as suggested the US Census Bureau's IDB (International Data Base). In Germany's particular case, its official statistics office released a document some years ago stating that it “only” expected some 75 million inhabitants for 2050. With relation to Russia, its “semi official” population clock (popclock) suggests a sustained annual decrease of some 220,000 inhabitants, thus suggesting some cumulative 8,8 million fewer inh. in 40 years (that is, more or less 135 million for 2050). And Japan's population may well continue over the 110-120 million, instead of falling below the 100 million mark.

MaxBech1975 (talk) 20:01, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I think you will find Britain's population has been increasing rather rapidly over the last decade. Immigration don't you know. Incidentally the implication that the world's population dropped during the 'great demographic bleeding' during world war 2 is nonsense. World population rose by around 200 million during the years 1940-45, despite the 55 million war deaths. 81.107.245.123 (talk) 02:10, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Portugal

Is this a joke or just a mistake/bad research? I hope is the second! Why is Portugal missing from all the figures???? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mario21jorge (talk • contribs) 13:51, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Bug already fixed. Portugal was missing from the three tables because of a minor programmming error (I had used the code PRT insted of POR. :-) Regards from the Argentinian city of Bahía Blanca ("White Bay").

MaxBech1975 (talk) 16:41, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Requested move 28 November 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page to any particular title in the current discussion; no bias against reintroducing a new option at any time, such as List of countries by population over time or the List of countries by past and projected population suggested by an IP below. Dekimasuよ! 19:20, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

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List of countries by past and future population → List of countries by past and projected future population – The current title raises WP:CRYSTALBALL concerns. Theurgist (talk) 19:59, 28 November 2018 (UTC)--Relisted. –Ammarpad (talk) 23:41, 5 December 2018 (UTC)--Relisting. SITH (talk) 14:30, 15 December 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. SITH (talk) 16:18, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose per conciseness concerns, that proviso can be explained in the lede, chance of confusion seems low. Would have no complaints about updating the opening sentence to include "projected" though. SnowFire (talk) 00:33, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• Support any number of titles that are not the current one. A pretty obvious violation of WP:CRYSTALBALL. Primergrey (talk) 04:26, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support – cherkash (talk) 16:23, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• Alternative, I am all for conciseness, but "projected future" seems tautological: List of countries by past and projected population would seem enough. There seems little chance that people would infer things to be projected into the past. 94.21.219.19 (talk) 10:28, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. I think this is unnecessary. Of course future population estimates are projections. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:41, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

"Estimated" does not currently appear in the title. Primergrey (talk) 13:17, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

• Relisting note: more discussion is needed to gain consensus on alternative titles if a move is to occur. SITH (talk) 16:18, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose It's obvious that we cannot predict or control the future, so we don't have to state the obvious._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 17:47, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

We can predict the future. The current title implies that we have successfully predicted it. Not so obvious, obviously. Primergrey (talk) 20:07, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Demography of Bangladesh

It looks like it is something incorrect about the Bangladesh' demography, for the period 2015 to 2020. According to the figure, the population will increase with about 12 mill per five year in the decade before 2015, and only one million in the period 2015 to 2020, for then to start increasing with about 12 mill per five year again. The average annual growth, listed to 1.12 percent for the period 2015 to 2020, is for sure not correct. Grrahnbahr (talk) 20:44, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Old article on UN population projections - where did it go?

A few years ago Wikipedia had an article of future projected populations going to 2100 with low, medium and high-growth variants, along with a no-immigration variant of the medium growth projections. I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but does anyone know where that article or those statistics could be found? Thank you in advance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.198.163.31 (talk) 05:34, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

That article, along with several others, has been deleted due to copyright concerns urging to use the source. The critique of the article was triggered after it was cited by the shooter of the Christchurch mosque shootings.

Here the discussion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of countries by future population (United Nations, medium fertility variant) Nsae Comp (talk) 00:39, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Propaganda? Or in which way is this objective data?

Why is this page on Wikipedia? The first sentence adds it all up. Only one source is used and that one could not be called objective, even if you would try very, very hard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.179.83.102 (talk) 17:56, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Population totals 2020-2050 do not add up

I compared the row "World" [World population] with totals for the 227 individual countries and found significant differences from 2020 on:

2020: "World" 7,643,403,000; sum of country populations: 7,666,512,000; difference 23,109,000

2030: "World" 8,340,607,000; sum of country populations: 8,376,722,000; difference 36,115,000

2040: "World" 8,925,950,000; sum of country populations: 8,979,574,000; difference 53,624,000

2050: "World" 9,408,412,000; sum of country populations: 9,550,948,000; difference 142,806,000

Has anyone a clue as how to explain this?

The earlier "World" totals, 1950-2015, are grosso modo correct; though, strangely, all countries' sum totals are systematically 100,000-130,000 larger than the "World" data, which may be due to rounding upwards rather than 'normal' rounding (?). (Note that when the data for all 227 countries have an average rounding error of half a unit of the last digit, this yields a total error of 113.5 units, or 113,500 people.) .

It is as if in the "World" totals 2020-2050 a few countries have been erroneously left out of the summation. Or are the "World" totals 2020-2050 from a different source than the country data? 11:35, 19 May 2021 (UTC) 19:41, 18 May 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hans van Deukeren (talk • contribs)

Another source of information needs to be found.

These estimates are laughable. I'll use the example I know best, comparing Canada and the U.S. Never, not once, has Canada failed to grow faster in population than the U.S. This is intuitive. They are similar countries founded on immigration, one of which is almost precisely a century older than the other. The more established, much higher population country would be expected to grow slower. This is even before you factor in immigration rates. Again, Canada targets much higher levels of immigration per capita than the U.S. historically (literally its entire history since confederation). In addition, the politics of the two countries on this topic are heading in precisely opposite directions, with Canada recognizing that it needs increased immigration, and the U.S. devolving into Trumpism/neo-fascism. Look at the historical rates shown for these two and compare. Then look at the predictions for the two and tell me someone involved in this list doesn't have their head completely up their own backside. They are predicting only a 5 million increase for Canada by 2050. If we posit a historically low, and implausible immigration level of 100k/year for the next 29 years, that alone produces a 2.9 million increase. No births over deaths included, no increased life expectancy. No children from any of those immigrants over the next 29 years. I could paint a human face on a baboon's butt, give it a pencil, and get a better prediction 9 times out of 10. Get better data, or trim the article to exclude the partial data and simply reference it. Wikipedia shouldn't be shilling for any one source of biased information. If the information doesn't exist, well then it doesn't. That doesn't justify amplifying garbage.