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World population is growing faster than we thought

World population is growing faster than we thought

We’ve all heard the aphorism ‘Lies, damned lies and statistics.’ Statistics are an invaluable tool for understanding and responding appropriately to the world, but when the numbers say one thing and the headlines say another, it’s a cause for concern. TOP takes a dive into World Population Prospects 2022.

The world’s population has grown more than anticipated in the past three years.

That should have been the headline when the United Nations released its latest revision of world population data (World Population Prospects 2022) on 11 July. Instead, the headline was that global population would peak in 2086 at 10.4 billion, about 15 years earlier and half a billion fewer than projected in 2019.

Is this fake news? Why should greater-than-anticipated growth yield lower future growth projections? Let’s look at the data they have given us. Apologies if this article is a bit nerdy, but the UN projections play an important role in government planning throughout the world. Any criticism of them needs to be thoroughly justified.

Figure 1 shows the world population as it was estimated in each revision of World Population Prospects (WPP) from 2010 to 2022. The pink line connects each revision’s estimate of the current population, i.e. the mid-2010 population as estimated by WPP2010 connected to the mid-2012 population as estimated by WPP2012 etc. Using this rolling-current estimate avoids any bias in the UN’s model that might be influencing the slope of the projected line.

In blue dashed lines are the projected growth anticipated in each of those revisions. With the exception of 2019, where recent past estimates closely matched what was expected in 2017, each new revision has concluded that growth since the last update was greater than they anticipated.

The world population estimates for each successive revision of World Population Prospects from 2010 to 2022 have been higher than the previous years'

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What history teaches us about the coronavirus pandemic

What history teaches us about the coronavirus pandemic 

Currently there is much debate over what kind of policy is best for dealing with the coronavirus epidemic. We are dealing with a true pandemicand have been ever since the virus was confirmed to have spread to every continent in early February. This will not be over by the summer but will last in a series of episodes for about eighteen months. The virus has a bad combination of qualities inasmuch as it is highly infectious but has serious effects in a large proportion of cases and a not-insignificant mortality rate while in addition another large part of those infected show no symptoms. What is worth doing is thinking about the likely longer-term results and here history is the best guide.

Pandemics and major epidemics are a recurrent feature of human history. A true pandemic is global but the term is also used for any epidemic that spreads widely beyond its geographical point of origin. In such cases it is spread by humans, though their movement and that of animals associated with us, such as rats and lice. Pandemics are epidemics that spread throughout what we may call an ecumene, a part of the world that has an integrated economy and division of labour, held together and produced by trade and exchange. What we now have is a truly global ecumene. If we look at the history of pandemics, they tend to occur at the end of a period of increasing trade and economic integration over a large part of the planet’s surface. That is because those processes have results, such as much more human movement and increased urbanisation, that make major epidemics more likely. Historically pandemics have spread along trade and exchange routes.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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