Population Hoaxes

[aa5]

I think where Brazilians mainly live is in the Southeast of the country by Argentina. In this area there is plains for farming, and it looks to be heavily populated. Whereas most of the country is the amazon rainforest, where few people live.

America has near unbelievable amounts of arable land. And America is organized differently than other nations. In most nations 95%+ of the land is owned by either the aristocracy in the form of farms, and the rest is public lands, where there is not private ownership. Corporations like logging companies lease land from the state, but they can't really be settled without people being able to buy land and decide what to do with it. The UK is an example of this, 50% of the UK land area is farms, 47% of the area is Crown land like forests and 3% of the area is the towns & cities. In most countries you can't just buy farmland and then convert it to suburbs or condos or shopping malls. They have strict zoning laws which require the land to stay as farming. And only a tiny trickle of land each year is given zoning permission to change, which creates artificial shortages for land for like housing. Which drives up the price of housing, and creates a transfer of wealth from the main bulk of people to the aristocracy. For example if a large land owning family is granted permission to develop a strip mall in most other countries, they can rest assured no other permission for a mall will be granted any time soon and thus charge monopolist rents.

In the UK there is 40,000 families which own that 47% of the land area(which is over 90% of the area where private ownership is allowed). But in America, especially in the Eastern States, like >90% of the land is privately owned. And instead of just a relative few families owning the land, there is millions of land owners. Yet another difference is in the USA, planning permission is granted mainly by counties. Whereas in other countries regional or even the national government are involved in restricting development. Many counties in America do restrict development for various reasons, but Americans have simply migrated to other counties where there is more open opportunities. And this continues to this day, as Americans move to States like Texas and Florida where the land is cheap.

The net effect of this gives America tremendous advantage. A country where wages are high, yet land and the cost of living cheap(compared to other countries).

I don't know about in Brazil specifically, but I do know in the Spanish Latin America, land ownership is even more heavily concentrated than in the UK. With these families having been given massive land grants centuries ago.

[pov603]

I am noticing there is comparisons between Brazil & India. They both are sort of their own worlds, which don't interact much with other countries. They have their own media, cinema and so forth. Both countries are geographically very large, and both obviously have large populations. With large geography providing many resources and large populations creating internal markets of sufficient scale to have industrial enterprises, they simply don't need to interact with other countries much.

That´s pretty much my own impression.

I suppose the invention of the BRICS concept has helped promote the notion that Brazil and India have a lot in common.

Assuming the figures 320 million (US) and 205 million (Brazil) are correct, the population density would be around 40/sq.km in the contiguous US and around 24/sq.km in Brazil.

The curious thing is that when you travel in the countryside of Brazil you see people (or signs of human activity) everywhere. It´s been decades since I was last in the US, but I remember seeing nothing but empty expanses of desert, mountains or woodlands as soon as I left the strictly urban zone.

America seems to have unlimited urban space for avenues, parking lots, gardens, freeways, schools, mega-stores. Brazilian towns and cities are like crowded anthills. Every inch is precious and hotly disputed. Traffic is less congested in the Netherlands (413/sq.km) than in Brazil. Also, real estate is surprisingly expensive, as if there wasn´t enough room for everybody!

Maybe it´s just a question of culture, customs, priorities, public administration ... dunno.

That is a very interesting concept to contemplate Flabbergasted.
You could be right too aa5 in that BRIC/BRICS has 'conveniently' come to people's attention over the last 5-10 years or so and does tend to unsettle 'Joe Public's' perception of where he actually stands [metaphorically] in the world.

[aa5]

In Joe Public's mind if he is in Europe, and having the 'knowledge' he does of various demographic numbers.. it is a reasonable fear that his country could be totally overwhelmed by Africans, Middle Eastern peoples and South Asian peoples.

According to the official numbers, not only does Africa's population of 1.2 billion people tower above the 400 million people in the European Union, but Africans are allegedly all having 6 children each, whereas Europeans maybe have 1.6 children on average.

If my estimates are more correct, that Africa has more like 250 million people, and the rate of fertility is more like 3 children per woman and falling fast, then this scenario of being overwhelmed is far less of a crisis.

[Flabbergasted]

If my estimates are more correct, that Africa has more like 250 million people, and the rate of fertility is more like 3 children per woman and falling fast, then this scenario of being overwhelmed is far less of a crisis.

How did you arrive at those figures?

[aa5]

Over time, I found some numbers that measure other things in societies that I think are accurate, like arable land under cultivation, real nominal GDP per capita, electrical production.

Then I have a few measures which are not fact based, but more on what a reasonable man would think.

-Number of Metro areas with more than 1 million people
-me looking at pictures online of those metro areas to 'double check' that the estimates are reasonable.

So to take Brazil, the country has a large area of arable land under cultivation in the plains area of the Southeast of the country - 800,000 square kilometers under cultivation. And Brazilian farmers are fairly good at crop yield per acre, they yield 3,800 kg/acre as an average.

There is 247 acres per square kilometer. So 800,000 sq/km * 3,800 kg/acre * 247 acre/km and we get a weight of the crop production: 750 billion kg of crop production.

Since Brazil is said to have ~207 million people and Nigeria is said to have ~182 million people, one would expect their crop production to be fairly similar.

Nigeria has 415,000 sq/km under cultivation * 1,600 kg/acre * 247 acre/km: 165 billion kg of crop production.

Looking at Nigeria's cities I estimated using my 'guessing' the population at ~30 million. Dividing Nigeria's crop production by Brazil's crop production 165/750 * 205 million = 45 million people. In fairness I also think Brazil's population is overstated, possibly they have 150 million.

But lets use Nigeria as a template and go with the 45 million people number. The 'official' population of Nigeria is 182 million. The 'official' population of Africa is 1.2 billion. So 45/182 * 1.2 billion = 295 million.

[Odunie]

I want to thank the posters in this thread, especially aa5.

First off, Bangladesh. Everyone knows that some countries have a greater population density than others. Population density is simply the number of people living in the country divided by the size of the land in the country. India, for example, is generally known to be a rather densely populated country, with 1,342 million people in the size of 3,287,000 km squared. This gives a population density of 408.4 people per km2. Another country known to be densely populated is Japan - a series of islands featuring two of the world's largest megacities. There are 126 million people in Japan in the size of 377,000 km squared. This gives a population density of 333.4 people per km2.

Now let's look at Bangladesh. According to the official statistics, Bangladesh has a population of 164 million in the size of 147,570 km squared. This gives a population denisty of 1,111 people per km2. Nearly triple the density of India.

Diving in to some stats from 2011 provided by Wikipedia, we can see the area, population, and given density of the eight different divisions of Bangladesh. Something is fishy here. If you simply divide population by area, the result does not match the density figure provided by the table. Most of the differences are rather minor, except for the most populous division, Dhaka. In the table information, they state density of 1,751. However, pop/area of 46,729,000/20,593.74 gives 2,269 - a huge difference. Strange. Also, the sum of the population column manually gives 155,440,260, however the total provided in the table is 149,772,364.

Moving on to a different set of stats from 2011 on Wikipedia and taken from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, we find a population total of 146,457,000 and a total area of 148,023 - giving a density of 989.

Looking at cities of Bangladesh on Wikipedia, with 2011 data, we can see that there are a total of 17,366,030 people living in cities. With an approximate 2011 population of 150,000,000 people, that means the country has 11.6% people living in cities and 88.4% people living rurally. Using WorldPopulationReview data from 2017, there is a total city population of 25,149,982 people in 98 cities. The 2017 estimated population is 164,827,718. That gives a city population of 15% and a rural population of 85%. So, from these two pieces of data, it seems safe to say that the vast majority of the country's population is located outside of the cities. The data source stated is "World Population Prospects - Global demographic estimates and projections by the United Nations".

Interestingly, this table gives both population and density, but not land area. When we divide the population figure by the density figure, we are provided with an area of 130,000 km sq. This is a huge 13.3% deviation from all the other land area figures given at 147,000 km sq. Why would the UN get this wrong in their figures? This change in area causes the density to go up, for example in 2017 it changes it from 1117 to 1266, and in 2005 from 969 to 1098.

The final analysis is from data provided by citypopulation.de. At the bottom of the table, it is stated "The tabulated census results are not adjusted for underenumeration. For adjustment, the population figures of city corporations have to be increased by 7.67% (2001) and 3.857% (2011), of municipalities by 5.81% (2001) and 5.256% (2011) and of suburban areas by 3.73% (2001) and 4.073% (2011), respectively." What exactly this means is not clear to me, but it seems like numerical inflation. And again, the total population of the cities is 26.6 million, indicating that the vast majority of the people in the country are living outside of the cities. These non-urbal dwellers would certainly be much more difficult to count.

[hoi.polloi]

At least one (probably very late) historical precedent for population "confusion" and obfuscation. But nevertheless, one I just stumbled on in personal readings. From Politics in Africa: The Former British Territories by J. F. Maitland-Jones (W. W. Norton & Company Inc., New York, 1973)

In chapter 3: "Constitutions of East and West Africa: The Breaking-down" within a section on Nigeria's constitutional dissolution.

The balance of power in the Federal Assembly depended upon regional population figures, on which representation was based, and the 1962 census gave the figures as 21.4 million in the north and 23.7 million in the south; these figures were rejected in the 1963 recount, which restored the superiority of the north by reckoning its population as 29.7 million and that of the south as 25.6 million. This restored the 54:46 ratio on which northern representation came to 174, and that of the south 138, in the assembly; and was inherently unbelievable, for it argued a 1962 population of over 55 million compared with 30.4 million when the census was last taken in 1953. The widespread realization of the falsity of these figures which rendered it impossible to abolish the power of the north, coupled with the unrest caused by the first Nigerian general strike which took place in 1964, greatly contributed to the sense of grievance and impending political disaster which dominated the political scene.

It's noted at the time of the writing (1973 to be clear) that the violence and power struggles, including "Ibos" (now known as Igbo peoples — an ethnicity with a strong identity that has been separatist) apparently wanting out of the whole mess, was still not resolved ten years later. So population isn't always just a joke, it can be serious stuff to be lying about.

[aa5]

Good points. One way I look at it, is at the end of each year, every agency, ever department, etc.. is screaming for why they need more money. And they have to scream louder than all the other agencies who are making their plea. As there are central authorities like national governments who decide who to allocate money to, and since the pot of money is only so large, if they choose to say give a generous increase to military, they then have less money to give to say foreign aid.

So from all these agencies desperate pleas it seems that everything is in a crisis all the time. We can't just have issues with overpopulation in some regions, that we will take steps over time to deal with. It has to be an urgent crisis. This urgency imo is a manifestation of each person's desire for more money in the present.

Take each agencies argument at year end of all the reasons they desperately need more money. And you can ask yourself, what is that agency asking for, from the central government? And the answer every time is 'more money'. I have fun when someone shows me a news article about a crisis, of taking the first line of the article.. 'The health agency of so and so..' And the last line of the article, 'and that is why we need more money'.

[Firestarter]

When I look at how incredibly large the world population is estimated, the last time I checked more than 7 billion - I tend to focus on Asia.

Communist China introduced a strict one-child policy in 1979, which began to be formally phased out in 2015. During this period - officially - the population of China increased with some 40%!
In 1982 1.01 billion
In 2010 1.34 billion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy


The reported population growth in India is also impressive.
In 1951 – 361 million
In 2011 – 1.21 billion

That’s an increase of 225% in 60 years.

During 1975–2019 the population reportedly doubled to 1.2 billion.
Never mind that the “independent" Wikipedia lists India’s population in 2016 at ”1,324,171,354”.

India is expected to be the world's most populous country by 2024: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India


See a graph of the most populous countries in the world, including China and India from 1955-2010.



Even more impressive than the population growth in one-child China and India is the 5 time increase of the population in the Philippines from 1950 to 2012 - from 20 to 100 million…



I’m no expert at demographics, but am convinced that the reported population growths for China, India and the Philippines are impossible...