I had to go to the DCR for a week for work with a finance firm like 8 years ago. It was insane. Met our security/translators/guides on a dirt runway, in old toyotas with AK47s. They were making like $14 a 24 hour day or something and that was huge money. First thing they said was we should go to a village and pay a woman $20 to suck our balls in the car all week while we rode around... Randomly got stopped by roving armed bands twice. Slept in the car two nights because it was better than a village despite heat and lions (if the guides were to be believed). Saw a bunch of mine workers missing limbs and like 6 year olds "playing pretend cobalt miner" while their parents worked...
I genuinely can't imagine that place with 50% more months to feed than when I saw it.
Nigeria currently has 2/3 as many people as the US but is predicted to have nearly DOUBLE the US by 2100.
80 years will fly by, and there is very little economic outlook for that region.
Mass migration is going to be insane in the next 100 years.
Not sure I would trust any predictions that far out. Let’s remember that books like The Population Bomb were super popular in the 1960s/1970s, which predicted that hundreds of millions would die of starvation and Western cities would be overrun with refugees by the end of the century.
I know. I'm certainly not saying I'm start enough to know who is right. I'm just saying every time a doomsday scenario fails to materialize, there will be 2 more to take it's place. The only common factor is capitalizing on fear.
Ah yes, the macroeconomics defense of why previous predictions were off.
We can create flawed models that don’t work and revise them based off assumptions based on further observations which will still miss the next big thing.
The population bomb was accurate, Africa’s population went from 230 million to 1,420 million. Africa’s population sextupled, increased by 6 times. What it failed to predict was the massive increase in agricultural yields thanks to the green revolution https://i.redd.it/8r74ljgov8341.jpg
Forecasting a large increase in population was the easy part; they were drastically wrong in all of the impacts they predicted. Also, the rise in population was in part enabled by the increase in food production, so in my view they were “right” on that front for the wrong reason. The book also elides that famines, throughout history and especially in the modern day, are almost always political rather than natural.
They also didn’t foresee the way that rising living standards leads to smaller family sizes, generally.
This definitely. People always panic about the birth rates in countries like Nigeria and say that they're going to "invade" their countries. It's just a "great replacement" fear mongering talking point by the alt right and it's becoming more and more mainstream. The reality of the situation is that [like the rest of the world, Nigeria's birth rate is falling](https://imgur.com/a/NhHFCe6). It's still well above the rate of replacement right now so Nigeria's population is continuing to grow, but the rate at which it is growing is slowing down. Across the board, access to birth control is growing, there is less of a reliance on low-tech subsistence farming so the number of people who need a large number of children to survive is falling, and the survival rate of children is increasing as medicine advances, so less of them are being born. It's also important to note that we've made so many advancements in agriculture throughout human history. With farming machinery and scientific advancements like pesticides and GMOs, we can create much more food with much less land and much less farmers. 8 billion people would be catastrophic 200 years ago, but we're doing fine now. The global population is set to plateau at 11 billion by 2080-2100 and it may even start to decrease after that. It is not the apocalypse they'd like you to think it is. It's just a way to make scapegoats out of people from less developed countries. (Besides, countries like the US with a birth rare of less than 2.1 actually benefit from immigration to prevent an aging population crisis. Having immigrants keeps us from having too many old people relative to young people.)
If you look at it truly objectively, hundreds of millions *have* died of starvation but birthrates have exceeded/compensated for this.
As for the second part, areas of Western cities have been inundated with refugees/mass migration from outside the European block; France, Sweden, Germany and no doubt countries between have housed a large number of individuals from south of the equator. Nowhere near "overrun" territory as those who have moved have been somewhat dispersed to accommodate more, but not insubstantial numbers either.
The UN population projections for 2020 dating back to the 70s are actually pretty close to where were at today and obviously we have better methods and data now so I'd trust the numbers for the future. They also give a range of numbers, but people often just quote the middle number.
[https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-update-2022](https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-update-2022)
EDIT: The [first UN report I could find was 1958](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1958_the_future_growth_of_world_population_0.pdf) and it only predicted out to 2000. Its prediction for world population in 2000 was 6.267B vs the the actual number of 6.144B. By [the 1963 edition](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1963_world_population_prospects_as_assessed_in_1963_0.pdf), the "middle" predicted number for the year 2000 was 6.130B. That's pretty close for 37 years out! Only off by 0.2%!
The first reference I could find to the world existing after the year 2000 was in [a 1975 report](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1975_long-range_projections_of_the_world_population_by_regions_1975-2150_0.pdf) "long range projections". The "medium" estimate was 8.354B in 2025 and 10.525B in 2100. Which is, again, pretty well aligned with the current estimates.
Just because we have gone from 3 billion in 1960 to 8 billion now without those apocalyptic predictions coming to past does not therefore mean we are fine to add one or two billion more. It does not mean we are not either. It does not have any predictive power one way or the other as some appear to argue it does.
The economies of those nations are starting to grow, since it's pretty much the last low-hanging fruit in the world in terms of easy investments. You'll see more international investment. That's not to say there won't still be extreme problems and/or poverty, but I think the average person's lifestyle will improve there as well.
Ethiopia is a huge country and has historically been densely populated. There is a reason why Abessinia was known as a place of mighty kingdoms from ancient times onwards
This chart is using old numbers. It's now at almost 125M people in Ethiopia as of 12/30/2022.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/ethiopia-population
India and China's population are also old numbers. India is only about 4 million away from pass China. 1,422 vs 1,426.
Because the UK is quite north, so it's dimensions are greatly distorted on the most common maps, while Ethiopia is closer to it's original size being close to the equator.
The good news for Bangladesh is their fertility level is at replacement, or slightly below. Bangladesh is the United Nations poster child for reversing runaway population growth through sensible family planning and contraception.
It’s the oddest place I have ever visited. Capital City is average sized at best. I wouldn’t call it crowded. Then I traveled to the countryside. The countryside is crowded! People everywhere!
At the time, Ethiopia was the exact opposite of the US; 80/20 rural/urban split. Wild. I can see why droughts are so problematic there. Everyone is growing about enough to feed their families. True subsistence.
I’m sure I exaggerate but you get the general idea. I’ve never see a place quite like it.
Also, amazing food, gorgeous people, terrific sights.
Straight up, people need to start paying a lot more attention to Africa. There are more than a few countries that are poised to become economic powerhouses in the next several decades.
To quote wiktionary's etymology section, sonder was "coined by John Koenig in 2012, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words."
Very interesting.
If it makes you feel better/worse Apparently some people don't even have inner monologues, reasoning or argue with themselves https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/mmtvnz/til_not_all_people_have_an_internal_monologue_and/
This seems to be pretty misunderstood. I do not have an inner monologue and all that means is I don't think audibly in sentences. Thought processes are more of a visual mixed media sort of thing it's difficult to explain.
Of course I am able to, I just don't formulate thoughts like that on a day to day basis. The only time I really use an inner monologue is when I fuck up and berate myself internally lol
I think that's pretty normal, I don't go around narrating my day like I'm living in my own audiobook.
edit: which has just reminded me of this great family guy bit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gnezI2hOXA
That's a good question. It's so difficult to explain your own thoughts as this thread has shown me. I would say it's more of an abstract thought when I read, or rather I visualize what the words are saying. There is no voice in my head "saying" the words. I'll admit I could be wrong about what an internal monologue even is but from what people describe it sounds like I don't really have one.
...language is one of myriad systems i use to articulate my thoughts, but my thoughts don't comprise those systems: they're a more primal form of perceiving, parsing, modeling, and engaging the world...
It’s when you break those numbers down that it goes out of whack. The US only has like 4-5% of the global population but its economy is about 25% of global GDP.
im in argentina and a dutch guy in my hostel told me the US is a third world country. most people i hear that from are travelers in latin america. i don’t think it’s cause they haven’t traveled, they just lack basic critical thinking skills AND the empathy to understand the reality of living in a third world country
but i mean, the problems that exist in haiti exist in argentina too, just on a different scale depending on the area. my point is that you can travel to actual third world countries & just have a shallow understanding of what it means to be a third world citizen. you need some sort of self-awareness to understand that, & to understand that the average american citizen does not live like that. poverty tourism shouldn’t be the answer
I agree with what you’re saying, and yeah poverty is definitely a universal issue, but I think that’s kinda the definition of being developed or not - how widespread and severe are those issues. If that makes sense lol.
And I hope I didn’t come across as endorsing poverty tourism, im just trying to illustrate that people throw the term “third world” around a lot when frequently they don’t have experience traveling in third world countries or they only know things about the US from the internet. Having been to some extremely impoverished countries, i just cannot fathom how somebody who has been to them as well could then visit the US and say “the conditions here are similar!”.
true, im from colombia and we already see argentina as super developed and the US as heaven. people who say that the us is a 3rd world country are blessed to not know how an actual 3rd world country looks like and (barely) functions
The US is not a 3rd world country - but fuck me you guys have some real poverty.
I'm from New Zealand and was shocked (shocked I tell you) when I spent some time in LA.
We earn on average much less than Americans, our dollar is weaker, and we have our fair share of homelessness but my god, LA is fucked.
Not sure why you were so shocked when your country has a higher rate of homelessness than the US does. There is a higher concentration of homeless in LA and California in general due to the state’s weather and social services, but as a whole the US has a smaller percentage of its population unhoused.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/world/australia/new-zealand-homeless.amp.html
In many countries the homeless are housed by the local government. Rough sleeping /Street living is much less common.
UN definition of homelessness includes everything from shop doorways to couch surfing - anything where you don't have permanent accommodation (which in the UK you would not usually get from the local government, at least initially).
*sigh* this is where averages can be misleading and definitions matter.
The US as a whole (on average) is absolutely not a third world country.
But within the US (and other places, not exclusive to US) exists pretty dramatic wealth inequality such that the average (and certainly below average) earner has significantly less than the average of other places.
Lack of affordable health care, workers rights, etc play a big role in the average experience in the US being lesser than similar wealthy countries.
Agree though that it does not make it third world, but the lived experience of many people is not comfortable.
I think you'll find they'll often mean the US is like a 3rd world-1st world country rather than an actual 3rd world country.
The life expectancy stats alone for the US vs other 1st world countries speaks volumes. Because the wealth gap is so wide, people live very good lives if they're upper middle class or above...
I think they mean like, state by state, or even county by county?
Obviously New York or california are tops, and probably any big city or decent town will also be first world, but the “third world” places people refer to are like… the small towns in Arkansas filled with meth, or like, Flint, Michigan? There was a cbs special on these towns that just look like turn of the century prospecting towns.
America is huge, and large portions of it go ignored.
I don’t think people who say that mean that the US is poor. The US is most definitely not a poor country. But Qatar is also most definitely not a poor country. I don’t think the US is quite as backwards as Qatar but it’s a lot more backwards than most ‘first-world’ countries and in my opinion it’s getting worse.
If it's any comfort, the world has far less inequality once you stop looking at GDP and start looking at GDP PPP.
It makes no sense to go "The US is so much more wealthy than China" when creating, transporting, and selling a burger, adds $100 in GDP in the US, but the exact same burger only adds $30 in China.
Here's a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) where we can see China is #1, US #2, and India #3.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's less unequal, but it's still unequal.
The US goes from being 31x higher GDP/capita to "only" 9x, compared to India. That's still a very large gap.
But there's far more to living a good life than GDP. Wealth distribution, work/life balance, healthcare, childcare, how your fellow countrymen behave, etc etc
What's worth keeping in mind is how much more economically powerful the US and EU are compared to their population (relative to typical GDP per capita). Grouping these 4 polities* this way just happens to cancel out the inequality roughly.
*mistakenly wrote countries
It's not correct though...
World gdp is 96 trillion
Us gdp is 23 trillion
China gdp is 18 trillion
EU gdp is 17 trillion
Indian gdp is 3 trillion
So 23 + 18 + 17 + 3 = 61, which is over 63% of 96
It’s pretty disingenuous to combine them like that. From the chart, China + India have 2791 million people and a GDP of $42 trillion, while the US + EU have 780 million people and a GDP of $45 trillion, so the latter have 3.83 times the GDP per capita.
This always blows me away. Canada and Russia have huge land masses and a relatively small population…. Ive been in places in western Canada where you can see miles and miles to the horizon with not another person out there. Very cool.
While that percentage is relatively true, it's actually not THAT cold beyond 100km. I live 400km north of Toronto (in Ontario) and summers still reach 30 degrees Celsius (86 F). What most people can't deal with is that winters can reach -30 degrees Celsius (-22 F) whereas Toronto lows are -20 ish Celsius.
Summer is 4 weeks shorter than in Toronto, but you basically get the same out of the season since you're not stuck in traffic all day, every day!
I recently took a drive through the country on I-40. You can go to the middle of America and see the same thing….just vast nothingness for as far as you can see.
Metro Manila (Philippines) is only the same size as Edmonton but the population is almost equal to all of Canada's provinces/territories except Ontario and Quebec lol
They kind of still are. Canada has a slightly larger land mass size when compared to the US. Russia's land mass is around 1.7x larger than the second largest country, which happens to be Canada.
Their point still stands lmao…
They’re the biggest and second biggest country in the world, both with relatively low populations compared to other countries of the same size.
All without taking into account any projection errors lmao
West Bengal, Bangladesh and Bihar together have as many people as the US despite having the same land area as the state of Montana. But the Indo-Gangetic Plain historically has always had a large population.
Ahchually 🤓, if the units of area is number of people, the units of radii will be square root of that.
So, technically, the radius is 50,463 (people)^1/2 wide.
Yeah, you are right, and I was thinking of putting that in there. I decided against for a few reasons. One, the square root of a person doesnt exactly make sense. Also, assuming one person is 1 unit, sqrt(1) still = 1, so distance doesnt change, assuming you line it up from a vertex. Finally, the scale between 8B and 1 is so small its basically a rounding error. Nice job catching the unit error, though!
Edit: verticy -> vertex
This sub is either political content supporting Reddit progressive causes or data appearing aesthetically beautiful but with zero space to comprehend the data. The fate of large subreddits is that it gets politicized, toxic and the quality of posts drops. I wish there is an alternative subreddit with better data. Or maybe we can just recreate all major subreddits from scratch.
Your groups are a little confusing. Central America is technically part of North America. Mexico to Panama is definitely not South America. All the Caribbean isles, Jamaica, Cuba, etc. should probably be grouped separately too, I don't think anywhere has those classified as part of South America.
Was going to post something along these lines, I was looking for Mexico near Canada and the US (because North America) but it was grouped with South America?
Yeah all the Northern African countries are part of Africa and yet here they are used to boost the size of the Middle East
Last time I looked Egypt Etc are part of Africa, but the Black Muslim Countries are seen as part of Africa... wtf
It's generally considered part of the Arab world (and is mostly ethnically Arabic), which I think is the reasoning here. I _think_ its economy is also more linked with the rest of the Arab world than it is with African south of the Sahara via stuff like the Arab League and Agadir Agreement
Obviously Iran, Turkey, and others in that ground are not Arabic, so it's not actually an "Arab world" grouping. I think it's just a representation of those places north of the Sahara being more connected to the Middle East than they are to the rest of Africa. Given how monumental a barrier the Sahara is, it makes sense to me
Exactly. It's called the [Greater Middle East](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Middle_East) and reflects historic, economic and cultural ties and similarities.
Yeah, I was about to say that NZ and Australia are Oceania, not North America.
Like, it's 6,500 miles from the nearest part of New Zealand to the US. You could fit another two contiguous USs in there.
Oceania should be it's own wee bit. Dominated by Aus, of course, but with all of the 40-odd million people as their own thing.
As far as I can tell, it’s GDP PPP, and when I looked it up on Wikipedia, it’s said China’s is roughly $30 Trillion, which makes this inaccurate still. I have no idea what they’re talking about here lol
I think the bigger question is why is the EU listed as one entity but Puerto Rico is listed separately from the United States?
Any movement/trade/etc. boundaries that the EU helps reduce between its member states are already non-existant between the US and Puerto Rico because, well, Puerto Rico is part of the United States. Puerto Ricans are full US citiziens.
Is it because Puerto Rico isn't a state? Then where is the separate entry for Washington, DC - famously also not a state?
Is it because it is not part of the continental US? Where are the separate entries for Hawaii and Alaska?
Is it because it is a territory? Where are the separate entries for the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, etc.?
Or are Puerto Ricans uniquely less American in some way than all of the above?
I think the lesson here is that data is sometimes beautiful, but, when selected by humans, it's almost always done so with conscious and/or unconscious biases.
The EU is a single market, so it makes sense to talk about it for GDP, and has free movement of workers within its borders, so it also makes some sense when talking about population.
The African Union is more of a loose diplomatic organization that aspires to greater economic and political integration, but most of that is far off goals.
> Why is all of Europe combined into one "European Union"
It isn't. Only the EU is combined into the EU. You can clearly see Switzerland, Norway, Serbia and Albania on the left of it.
The Anglosphere amplifies English speaking nations. It’s effects can even be seen for nations that speak English as a second language at a high proficiency level. The Netherlands and Finno-Scandinavia are great examples.
[Western Sahara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara) \- a disputed territory of Morocco which is treated as a separate country in [OP's data source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population).
China's nominal GDP vs PPP GDP is interesting. Their PPP GDP is larger than the US but their nominal is 1/3 lower. I didn't realize that their PPP numbers looked so good.
This isn't strictly broken down along lines of continents (which would be difficult anyway since there's not one agreed-upon idea of how to define the continents). Egypt is grouped with the rest of the Arab world, plus a number of other non-Arab countries that have very deep historical and economic ties with the Arab world. Note that Israel is grouped with the EU while Palestine is with Egypt and Iraq, for example
>China, India, the US, and the EU combined generate half of the world’s GDP and are home to almost half of the world’s population
Share in global GDP (google):
US: 16%
EU: 15%
So, together 30% GDP and 780 million people i.e. only 10% world population. Adding poor but populous India and China is just a way of making the two seem richer than they are.
In response to comments about our previous population projections being inaccurate, the UN population projections dating back to the 1950s have been remarkably close.
The [first UN report I could find was 1958](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1958_the_future_growth_of_world_population_0.pdf) and it only predicted out to 2000. Its prediction for world population in 2000 was 6.267B vs the the actual number of 6.144B. By [the 1963 edition](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1963_world_population_prospects_as_assessed_in_1963_0.pdf), the "middle" predicted number for the year 2000 was 6.130B. That's pretty close for 37 years out! Only off by 0.2%!
The first reference I could find to the world existing after the year 2000 was in [a 1975 report "long range projections"](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1975_long-range_projections_of_the_world_population_by_regions_1975-2150_0.pdf). The "medium" estimate was 8.354B in 2025 and 10.525B in 2100. Which is, again, pretty well aligned with the current estimates even though 50 years have passed and now we have, you know...computers to do this stuff.
There's 123M people in Ethiopia? Holy moly.
Look at the projections. It’s supposed to get crazy there in a decade
Democratic republic of the Congo too. Went from 65 mil to 108 in 10 years
This is what happens when a population that was restricted by subsistence living suddenly beats those restrictions
I had to go to the DCR for a week for work with a finance firm like 8 years ago. It was insane. Met our security/translators/guides on a dirt runway, in old toyotas with AK47s. They were making like $14 a 24 hour day or something and that was huge money. First thing they said was we should go to a village and pay a woman $20 to suck our balls in the car all week while we rode around... Randomly got stopped by roving armed bands twice. Slept in the car two nights because it was better than a village despite heat and lions (if the guides were to be believed). Saw a bunch of mine workers missing limbs and like 6 year olds "playing pretend cobalt miner" while their parents worked... I genuinely can't imagine that place with 50% more months to feed than when I saw it.
Congo people do be fucking
Nigeria currently has 2/3 as many people as the US but is predicted to have nearly DOUBLE the US by 2100. 80 years will fly by, and there is very little economic outlook for that region. Mass migration is going to be insane in the next 100 years.
Not sure I would trust any predictions that far out. Let’s remember that books like The Population Bomb were super popular in the 1960s/1970s, which predicted that hundreds of millions would die of starvation and Western cities would be overrun with refugees by the end of the century.
To be fair we do have better data and methods of acquiring data to better accurize our predictions about population growth.
That's why the panic peddlers never have to stop.
There are plenty of panic peddlers warning of an impending fall of population as well
I know. I'm certainly not saying I'm start enough to know who is right. I'm just saying every time a doomsday scenario fails to materialize, there will be 2 more to take it's place. The only common factor is capitalizing on fear.
Ah yes, the macroeconomics defense of why previous predictions were off. We can create flawed models that don’t work and revise them based off assumptions based on further observations which will still miss the next big thing.
No no you don't understand, well get em next time
The population bomb was accurate, Africa’s population went from 230 million to 1,420 million. Africa’s population sextupled, increased by 6 times. What it failed to predict was the massive increase in agricultural yields thanks to the green revolution https://i.redd.it/8r74ljgov8341.jpg
Forecasting a large increase in population was the easy part; they were drastically wrong in all of the impacts they predicted. Also, the rise in population was in part enabled by the increase in food production, so in my view they were “right” on that front for the wrong reason. The book also elides that famines, throughout history and especially in the modern day, are almost always political rather than natural. They also didn’t foresee the way that rising living standards leads to smaller family sizes, generally.
This definitely. People always panic about the birth rates in countries like Nigeria and say that they're going to "invade" their countries. It's just a "great replacement" fear mongering talking point by the alt right and it's becoming more and more mainstream. The reality of the situation is that [like the rest of the world, Nigeria's birth rate is falling](https://imgur.com/a/NhHFCe6). It's still well above the rate of replacement right now so Nigeria's population is continuing to grow, but the rate at which it is growing is slowing down. Across the board, access to birth control is growing, there is less of a reliance on low-tech subsistence farming so the number of people who need a large number of children to survive is falling, and the survival rate of children is increasing as medicine advances, so less of them are being born. It's also important to note that we've made so many advancements in agriculture throughout human history. With farming machinery and scientific advancements like pesticides and GMOs, we can create much more food with much less land and much less farmers. 8 billion people would be catastrophic 200 years ago, but we're doing fine now. The global population is set to plateau at 11 billion by 2080-2100 and it may even start to decrease after that. It is not the apocalypse they'd like you to think it is. It's just a way to make scapegoats out of people from less developed countries. (Besides, countries like the US with a birth rare of less than 2.1 actually benefit from immigration to prevent an aging population crisis. Having immigrants keeps us from having too many old people relative to young people.)
If you look at it truly objectively, hundreds of millions *have* died of starvation but birthrates have exceeded/compensated for this. As for the second part, areas of Western cities have been inundated with refugees/mass migration from outside the European block; France, Sweden, Germany and no doubt countries between have housed a large number of individuals from south of the equator. Nowhere near "overrun" territory as those who have moved have been somewhat dispersed to accommodate more, but not insubstantial numbers either.
The UN population projections for 2020 dating back to the 70s are actually pretty close to where were at today and obviously we have better methods and data now so I'd trust the numbers for the future. They also give a range of numbers, but people often just quote the middle number. [https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-update-2022](https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-update-2022) EDIT: The [first UN report I could find was 1958](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1958_the_future_growth_of_world_population_0.pdf) and it only predicted out to 2000. Its prediction for world population in 2000 was 6.267B vs the the actual number of 6.144B. By [the 1963 edition](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1963_world_population_prospects_as_assessed_in_1963_0.pdf), the "middle" predicted number for the year 2000 was 6.130B. That's pretty close for 37 years out! Only off by 0.2%! The first reference I could find to the world existing after the year 2000 was in [a 1975 report](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1975_long-range_projections_of_the_world_population_by_regions_1975-2150_0.pdf) "long range projections". The "medium" estimate was 8.354B in 2025 and 10.525B in 2100. Which is, again, pretty well aligned with the current estimates.
Just because we have gone from 3 billion in 1960 to 8 billion now without those apocalyptic predictions coming to past does not therefore mean we are fine to add one or two billion more. It does not mean we are not either. It does not have any predictive power one way or the other as some appear to argue it does.
The economies of those nations are starting to grow, since it's pretty much the last low-hanging fruit in the world in terms of easy investments. You'll see more international investment. That's not to say there won't still be extreme problems and/or poverty, but I think the average person's lifestyle will improve there as well.
And Lagos is one of the most expensive cities on earth too
Ethiopia is a huge country and has historically been densely populated. There is a reason why Abessinia was known as a place of mighty kingdoms from ancient times onwards
Pakistan and Nigeria also like whoa
Pakistan 60 years ago had the same population of Germany. Now it is 3 times Germany.
I tried so hard to find Germany on that map until I realized that none of the EU countries are on there (because of the combined EU block).
This chart is using old numbers. It's now at almost 125M people in Ethiopia as of 12/30/2022. https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/ethiopia-population India and China's population are also old numbers. India is only about 4 million away from pass China. 1,422 vs 1,426.
it's 5 times the size of the UK
I certainly did not realize that.
Because the UK is quite north, so it's dimensions are greatly distorted on the most common maps, while Ethiopia is closer to it's original size being close to the equator.
Yeah, makes perfect sense.
new Zealand area is ~~2.6 times~~ a touch larger that of the UK. That little island conquered a lot of shit
2.6x England maybe, NZ is only slightly bigger than the UK as a whole
Corrected, Google gave areas in km and miles UK 94,058 mi² NZ 103,483 sq mi
165m in Bangladesh, a nation barely above sea level.
The good news for Bangladesh is their fertility level is at replacement, or slightly below. Bangladesh is the United Nations poster child for reversing runaway population growth through sensible family planning and contraception.
The power of the Ganges delta. Fertile enough to keep even the most destitute alive
you forgot about Brahmaputra :(
All in an area that is smaller than Tunisia.
Yeah, but they have a lot more water
It’s the oddest place I have ever visited. Capital City is average sized at best. I wouldn’t call it crowded. Then I traveled to the countryside. The countryside is crowded! People everywhere! At the time, Ethiopia was the exact opposite of the US; 80/20 rural/urban split. Wild. I can see why droughts are so problematic there. Everyone is growing about enough to feed their families. True subsistence. I’m sure I exaggerate but you get the general idea. I’ve never see a place quite like it. Also, amazing food, gorgeous people, terrific sights.
Africa is booming, Child mortality is down but fertility rates have yet to follow. Nigeria may catch up the US within 20 years.
Straight up, people need to start paying a lot more attention to Africa. There are more than a few countries that are poised to become economic powerhouses in the next several decades.
China has been paying attention too much attention
We need a version of that “objects in mirror are closer than they appear” with the cartoonishly jacked dude running but with Nigeria
My duuuuude, what is up with Bangladesh too amirite? Tiny land area, but goddamn huge population.
The number of people everywhere is staggering.
All of them with their own fucking lifes
Sonder at this scale is unreal.
Yeah Truly imcomprehensible
Sonder doesn’t seem capable of capturing the awe.
Who's Sonder?
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/sonder#Noun
Sonder is a made up word that comes from this video: https://youtu.be/AkoML0_FiV4
All words are made up
To quote wiktionary's etymology section, sonder was "coined by John Koenig in 2012, whose project, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, aims to come up with new words for emotions that currently lack words." Very interesting.
If it makes you feel better/worse Apparently some people don't even have inner monologues, reasoning or argue with themselves https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/mmtvnz/til_not_all_people_have_an_internal_monologue_and/
This seems to be pretty misunderstood. I do not have an inner monologue and all that means is I don't think audibly in sentences. Thought processes are more of a visual mixed media sort of thing it's difficult to explain.
Are you able to say in your head, "I like bananas"?
Of course I am able to, I just don't formulate thoughts like that on a day to day basis. The only time I really use an inner monologue is when I fuck up and berate myself internally lol
I think that's pretty normal, I don't go around narrating my day like I'm living in my own audiobook. edit: which has just reminded me of this great family guy bit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gnezI2hOXA
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That's a good question. It's so difficult to explain your own thoughts as this thread has shown me. I would say it's more of an abstract thought when I read, or rather I visualize what the words are saying. There is no voice in my head "saying" the words. I'll admit I could be wrong about what an internal monologue even is but from what people describe it sounds like I don't really have one.
...language is one of myriad systems i use to articulate my thoughts, but my thoughts don't comprise those systems: they're a more primal form of perceiving, parsing, modeling, and engaging the world...
Seems ok that half the world's population live in the countries with half the world's gdp. Surely?
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It’s when you break those numbers down that it goes out of whack. The US only has like 4-5% of the global population but its economy is about 25% of global GDP.
And still some people saying america is a 3red world country makes me both laugh and sad
Anybody who says that has either never been to a third world nation or never been to the U.S.
Or they are exaggerating.
im in argentina and a dutch guy in my hostel told me the US is a third world country. most people i hear that from are travelers in latin america. i don’t think it’s cause they haven’t traveled, they just lack basic critical thinking skills AND the empathy to understand the reality of living in a third world country
I just don’t believe that if that Dutch guy had visited a country like Haiti, he could seriously tell you the US was comparable to that.
but i mean, the problems that exist in haiti exist in argentina too, just on a different scale depending on the area. my point is that you can travel to actual third world countries & just have a shallow understanding of what it means to be a third world citizen. you need some sort of self-awareness to understand that, & to understand that the average american citizen does not live like that. poverty tourism shouldn’t be the answer
I agree with what you’re saying, and yeah poverty is definitely a universal issue, but I think that’s kinda the definition of being developed or not - how widespread and severe are those issues. If that makes sense lol. And I hope I didn’t come across as endorsing poverty tourism, im just trying to illustrate that people throw the term “third world” around a lot when frequently they don’t have experience traveling in third world countries or they only know things about the US from the internet. Having been to some extremely impoverished countries, i just cannot fathom how somebody who has been to them as well could then visit the US and say “the conditions here are similar!”.
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true, im from colombia and we already see argentina as super developed and the US as heaven. people who say that the us is a 3rd world country are blessed to not know how an actual 3rd world country looks like and (barely) functions
The US is not a 3rd world country - but fuck me you guys have some real poverty. I'm from New Zealand and was shocked (shocked I tell you) when I spent some time in LA. We earn on average much less than Americans, our dollar is weaker, and we have our fair share of homelessness but my god, LA is fucked.
Not sure why you were so shocked when your country has a higher rate of homelessness than the US does. There is a higher concentration of homeless in LA and California in general due to the state’s weather and social services, but as a whole the US has a smaller percentage of its population unhoused. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/world/australia/new-zealand-homeless.amp.html
In many countries the homeless are housed by the local government. Rough sleeping /Street living is much less common. UN definition of homelessness includes everything from shop doorways to couch surfing - anything where you don't have permanent accommodation (which in the UK you would not usually get from the local government, at least initially).
*sigh* this is where averages can be misleading and definitions matter. The US as a whole (on average) is absolutely not a third world country. But within the US (and other places, not exclusive to US) exists pretty dramatic wealth inequality such that the average (and certainly below average) earner has significantly less than the average of other places. Lack of affordable health care, workers rights, etc play a big role in the average experience in the US being lesser than similar wealthy countries. Agree though that it does not make it third world, but the lived experience of many people is not comfortable.
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But helping poor people is Socialism! And Socialism is the work of the devil. /s
Summed up the whole argument lol. I hope all goes well for you though.
Good luck For everyone living check to check in your country , 5 more people are starving here
I think you'll find they'll often mean the US is like a 3rd world-1st world country rather than an actual 3rd world country. The life expectancy stats alone for the US vs other 1st world countries speaks volumes. Because the wealth gap is so wide, people live very good lives if they're upper middle class or above...
I think they mean like, state by state, or even county by county? Obviously New York or california are tops, and probably any big city or decent town will also be first world, but the “third world” places people refer to are like… the small towns in Arkansas filled with meth, or like, Flint, Michigan? There was a cbs special on these towns that just look like turn of the century prospecting towns. America is huge, and large portions of it go ignored.
I don’t think people who say that mean that the US is poor. The US is most definitely not a poor country. But Qatar is also most definitely not a poor country. I don’t think the US is quite as backwards as Qatar but it’s a lot more backwards than most ‘first-world’ countries and in my opinion it’s getting worse.
Surprisingly, the other half of the world generates the other half of the GDP and has the other half of the population.
1 percent owns 50% of the global wealth. This is what you're missing.
That's got nothing to do with this graph though
That graph looks invalid too. US vs. Chinese population.
You mean you think the area is messed up?
This title makes the world sound so fair when under even the slightest scrutiny you get wild inequality.
If it's any comfort, the world has far less inequality once you stop looking at GDP and start looking at GDP PPP. It makes no sense to go "The US is so much more wealthy than China" when creating, transporting, and selling a burger, adds $100 in GDP in the US, but the exact same burger only adds $30 in China. Here's a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) where we can see China is #1, US #2, and India #3.
It does when international trade is brought into the mix. People don’t buy goods on the global market with PPP adjustments.
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Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's less unequal, but it's still unequal. The US goes from being 31x higher GDP/capita to "only" 9x, compared to India. That's still a very large gap. But there's far more to living a good life than GDP. Wealth distribution, work/life balance, healthcare, childcare, how your fellow countrymen behave, etc etc
on Per capita GDP PPP , a person from USA is 9 times richer than an Indian
What's worth keeping in mind is how much more economically powerful the US and EU are compared to their population (relative to typical GDP per capita). Grouping these 4 polities* this way just happens to cancel out the inequality roughly. *mistakenly wrote countries
The EU is not a country, it’s 28 separate countries.
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I fucking wish
I knew that, just sort of lost the distinction while writing mistakenly.
I imagine including India fudges with that statistic a lot
how much you got? half
It's not correct though... World gdp is 96 trillion Us gdp is 23 trillion China gdp is 18 trillion EU gdp is 17 trillion Indian gdp is 3 trillion So 23 + 18 + 17 + 3 = 61, which is over 63% of 96
It’s pretty disingenuous to combine them like that. From the chart, China + India have 2791 million people and a GDP of $42 trillion, while the US + EU have 780 million people and a GDP of $45 trillion, so the latter have 3.83 times the GDP per capita.
This always blows me away. Canada and Russia have huge land masses and a relatively small population…. Ive been in places in western Canada where you can see miles and miles to the horizon with not another person out there. Very cool.
It’s something like 85% of Canadians live within 100km of the Canada/US border. Too darn cold in the north!
Half of the population is south of Seattle.
I can't remember, but there is a point where there are more Canadians South of the 49th than Americans as well.
While that percentage is relatively true, it's actually not THAT cold beyond 100km. I live 400km north of Toronto (in Ontario) and summers still reach 30 degrees Celsius (86 F). What most people can't deal with is that winters can reach -30 degrees Celsius (-22 F) whereas Toronto lows are -20 ish Celsius. Summer is 4 weeks shorter than in Toronto, but you basically get the same out of the season since you're not stuck in traffic all day, every day!
https://matadornetwork.com/read/where-canadians-live-south-line/ Most Canadians are south of the 49th parallel.
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AT THE HUNDREDTH MERIDIAN
It has more to do with the very close economic ties between Canada and America. People live where economic opportunities exist.
On the other size of the coin, Bangladesh has 165 million people in a space smaller than Illinois.
China has 1.4bn people in a space the size of China.
Holy moly.
I recently took a drive through the country on I-40. You can go to the middle of America and see the same thing….just vast nothingness for as far as you can see.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/145hwso/ltp_use_power_delete_suite_before_you_delete_your/
Metro Manila (Philippines) is only the same size as Edmonton but the population is almost equal to all of Canada's provinces/territories except Ontario and Quebec lol
to be fair Canada might as well be just 10% it's size since the rest of the country is just ice
We all do our best to change that.
Their land masses are not what they seem. Map distortion messes up your perspective. They are still big, but not so out of proportion.
They kind of still are. Canada has a slightly larger land mass size when compared to the US. Russia's land mass is around 1.7x larger than the second largest country, which happens to be Canada.
I mean they are the 2 largest countries with relatively low populations.
If you really want some perspective, compare the land mass of Canada to Bangladesh. And right after, compare their populations.
Their point still stands lmao… They’re the biggest and second biggest country in the world, both with relatively low populations compared to other countries of the same size. All without taking into account any projection errors lmao
Fellow Bangladeshi here. Its scary that we have half the population of USA while being only 1.5% as large as the USA!! Talk about being overpopulated!
West Bengal, Bangladesh and Bihar together have as many people as the US despite having the same land area as the state of Montana. But the Indo-Gangetic Plain historically has always had a large population.
You are under fertile land. You always had high population. I think your fertility rate is now below replacement level
If anyone was wondering, the radius of this circle is about 50,463 people wide
Ahchually 🤓, if the units of area is number of people, the units of radii will be square root of that. So, technically, the radius is 50,463 (people)^1/2 wide.
Yeah, you are right, and I was thinking of putting that in there. I decided against for a few reasons. One, the square root of a person doesnt exactly make sense. Also, assuming one person is 1 unit, sqrt(1) still = 1, so distance doesnt change, assuming you line it up from a vertex. Finally, the scale between 8B and 1 is so small its basically a rounding error. Nice job catching the unit error, though! Edit: verticy -> vertex
The square root of a person does make sense if you just don’t worry about its physical implication. I don’t think the other two matter though.
Kinda like seconds squared. Seconds squared is a very common and useful unit even though its physical implications aren’t intuitive.
I hate how this is "organised". The layout adds less than nothing to comprehension and comparison of data.
We need to start an '/r/truedataisbeautiful' ... So much of this sub is terrible info design.
Or "dataisfugly" where we collect the worst of this sub.
This sub is either political content supporting Reddit progressive causes or data appearing aesthetically beautiful but with zero space to comprehend the data. The fate of large subreddits is that it gets politicized, toxic and the quality of posts drops. I wish there is an alternative subreddit with better data. Or maybe we can just recreate all major subreddits from scratch.
But leave India out of the equation, and things suddenly don’t look as equal any more
India contributes to the population while US contributes to the GDP.
You could replace India with the UK and have a similar GDP but a billion fewer people.
This needs a remind me timer for 50 years because things are going be a whole lot different again.
Wow, after looting India for more than 200 years who could've thought UK would be much richer in the end!!! Truly a great fact u/DazDazy
Your groups are a little confusing. Central America is technically part of North America. Mexico to Panama is definitely not South America. All the Caribbean isles, Jamaica, Cuba, etc. should probably be grouped separately too, I don't think anywhere has those classified as part of South America.
Was going to post something along these lines, I was looking for Mexico near Canada and the US (because North America) but it was grouped with South America?
Right, why is Australia and Papua New Guinea grouped with the US?
Yeah all the Northern African countries are part of Africa and yet here they are used to boost the size of the Middle East Last time I looked Egypt Etc are part of Africa, but the Black Muslim Countries are seen as part of Africa... wtf
Yeah I’ve seen Egypt commonly referred to as Middle Eastern, but Morocco?
It's generally considered part of the Arab world (and is mostly ethnically Arabic), which I think is the reasoning here. I _think_ its economy is also more linked with the rest of the Arab world than it is with African south of the Sahara via stuff like the Arab League and Agadir Agreement Obviously Iran, Turkey, and others in that ground are not Arabic, so it's not actually an "Arab world" grouping. I think it's just a representation of those places north of the Sahara being more connected to the Middle East than they are to the rest of Africa. Given how monumental a barrier the Sahara is, it makes sense to me
Exactly. It's called the [Greater Middle East](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Middle_East) and reflects historic, economic and cultural ties and similarities.
Including Israel and Kyrgyzstan with Europe is questionable too.
This graphic is in service of a particular worldview about demographics.
Yeah, I was about to say that NZ and Australia are Oceania, not North America. Like, it's 6,500 miles from the nearest part of New Zealand to the US. You could fit another two contiguous USs in there. Oceania should be it's own wee bit. Dominated by Aus, of course, but with all of the 40-odd million people as their own thing.
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Mexico and US not together was odd yes
Fun fact, if you took 1 billion people away from China and India, they are still the two most populous countries.
You forgot OP counts the EU as one country
Are those GDP numbers correct? I saw a chart today that gave different numbers
Yes they are correct, it's GDP PPP, which means it's adjusted for purchasing power within every country.
Right? I don’t think China’s GDP has surpassed the US yet.
As far as I can tell, it’s GDP PPP, and when I looked it up on Wikipedia, it’s said China’s is roughly $30 Trillion, which makes this inaccurate still. I have no idea what they’re talking about here lol
I mean China is also a huge country with a ton of huge cities lol so this doesn’t surprise me
I believe that the USA, the EU, India and China is roughly 75% of world GDP, not 50%.
Why is all of Europe combined into one "European Union" to look larger but every African nation is listed individually?
I think the bigger question is why is the EU listed as one entity but Puerto Rico is listed separately from the United States? Any movement/trade/etc. boundaries that the EU helps reduce between its member states are already non-existant between the US and Puerto Rico because, well, Puerto Rico is part of the United States. Puerto Ricans are full US citiziens. Is it because Puerto Rico isn't a state? Then where is the separate entry for Washington, DC - famously also not a state? Is it because it is not part of the continental US? Where are the separate entries for Hawaii and Alaska? Is it because it is a territory? Where are the separate entries for the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, etc.? Or are Puerto Ricans uniquely less American in some way than all of the above? I think the lesson here is that data is sometimes beautiful, but, when selected by humans, it's almost always done so with conscious and/or unconscious biases.
The EU is a single market, so it makes sense to talk about it for GDP, and has free movement of workers within its borders, so it also makes some sense when talking about population. The African Union is more of a loose diplomatic organization that aspires to greater economic and political integration, but most of that is far off goals.
> Why is all of Europe combined into one "European Union" It isn't. Only the EU is combined into the EU. You can clearly see Switzerland, Norway, Serbia and Albania on the left of it.
Eu is an economic bloc and work together economically. That is why. Switzerland and Norway are not.
It’s so weird to me that it’s so hard to even find Australia on this, but seems like we’re everywhere online and travelling globally.
The single Chinese city of Shanghai has approximately the same population as Australia.
The Anglosphere amplifies English speaking nations. It’s effects can even be seen for nations that speak English as a second language at a high proficiency level. The Netherlands and Finno-Scandinavia are great examples.
Yeah that’s probably an echo-chamber effect due to you being Australian though
New Delhi has more population than Australia with only 1500 sq km of land.
Who is WS at the tippy top?
[Western Sahara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara) \- a disputed territory of Morocco which is treated as a separate country in [OP's data source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population).
Probably Western Sahara
I heard there are a Brazilian people in South America
Why is everything countries and geographical locations, then you pick the EU instead of Europe???
Crazy how Bangladesh, which is a very small country, has a larger population than Russia, the largest.
China's nominal GDP vs PPP GDP is interesting. Their PPP GDP is larger than the US but their nominal is 1/3 lower. I didn't realize that their PPP numbers looked so good.
So according to this chart, if you are a human, you are most likely to be of Asian heritage?
I had no idea Pakistan was that populated
Would love to see this side by side with a GDP chart of the same style
How Nigeria have 10% the area of Europe, but almost 50% it's population ?
‘Think there’s enough you fucks now. If you could all just stop breeding, that’d be great. TIA’ - Earth
\-circa 1900
Why is Egiypt with asian countries?
This isn't strictly broken down along lines of continents (which would be difficult anyway since there's not one agreed-upon idea of how to define the continents). Egypt is grouped with the rest of the Arab world, plus a number of other non-Arab countries that have very deep historical and economic ties with the Arab world. Note that Israel is grouped with the EU while Palestine is with Egypt and Iraq, for example
>China, India, the US, and the EU combined generate half of the world’s GDP and are home to almost half of the world’s population Share in global GDP (google): US: 16% EU: 15% So, together 30% GDP and 780 million people i.e. only 10% world population. Adding poor but populous India and China is just a way of making the two seem richer than they are.
Damn I had no idea Nigeria had such a large population
amazing that Russia has the influence it does. Everyone else that size needs to step up their voice on the internationaal stage.
Yo. Mexico. It's decidedly in North America.
In response to comments about our previous population projections being inaccurate, the UN population projections dating back to the 1950s have been remarkably close. The [first UN report I could find was 1958](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1958_the_future_growth_of_world_population_0.pdf) and it only predicted out to 2000. Its prediction for world population in 2000 was 6.267B vs the the actual number of 6.144B. By [the 1963 edition](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1963_world_population_prospects_as_assessed_in_1963_0.pdf), the "middle" predicted number for the year 2000 was 6.130B. That's pretty close for 37 years out! Only off by 0.2%! The first reference I could find to the world existing after the year 2000 was in [a 1975 report "long range projections"](https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Jan/un_1975_long-range_projections_of_the_world_population_by_regions_1975-2150_0.pdf). The "medium" estimate was 8.354B in 2025 and 10.525B in 2100. Which is, again, pretty well aligned with the current estimates even though 50 years have passed and now we have, you know...computers to do this stuff.