Global population datasets underrepresent rural population
nature.com
nature.com
The root cause analysis also falls short for those cases: Germany's bureaucracy might be underfunded but fundamentally requires every resident to register at their place of residence. There is also no large-scale conflict or violence in Germany, no regions are really remote or hard to reach, all rural areas are electrified (important for satellite-based night-time light counting by GRUMP and WorldPop). The only satisfying root causes left are about satellite counting methods being too coarse or badly tuned to accurately count rural area, or rural living patterns possibly not fitting the assumptions of these models. But it's weird that these errors are so similar between so many different methods, not all of which even use satellite data
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56906-7/figures/7
In a world where people are considered illegal, you’ll have lots of people trying to leave no footprints and far away from seats of authority where your odds of drawing attention on accident are much better.
See also the trope of the quiet stranger who moves to a rural town and keeps to himself. Does he just like the peace and quiet or is there a warrant out for his arrest in South Carolina?
China is certainly an impressive surveillance state but the reality is that the geography is so large that it is possible to miss things like human trafficking: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/05/world/asia/xu...
Through some combination of state propaganda (their own and China's) and dystopian fiction like 1984, Westerners drastically overestimate the capabilities of the Chinese state. It would be more accurate to say that China wants to be perceived as a centralized authoritarian surveillance state, because that perception is valuable both domestically and abroad. They absolutely do have a broad surveillance apparatus, but they also have millions of square miles and more than a billion people to surveil and control.
Don't forget that we're talking about the government that has been unable to pull together either the political will or the state power to enforce health codes that would be considered table stakes for any developed democracy, ignoring or tolerating disease-spreading wet markets. They appear to pick and choose their authoritarian battles, and if you're not a battle they've chosen you can probably go ignored for a lifetime.
The logistics of centrally surveilling a massive area of land are pretty tough, much more tougher than we imagine I think.
Historically independency seeking people learn how to flee from aggressive governments and move to places that make it harder to track them. Including cutting down on written documents that could expose their org., adopting social structures that decentralize leadership etc.
It was fascinating to me, I highly recommend checking the Zomia region.
e.g.:
https://medium.com/@matthijsbijl/welcome-to-zomia-the-anarch...
2015 means there are legal 10 years olds that would have not been legal before. And I expect some grey area 11 and 12 year olds that are surprisingly mature for their age.
In the US we like to do things like throw people in prison for dealing marijuana for 20 years, then legalize it, but keep them in because when they did it it was illegal.
Another case is covid. The state tried to maintain the lockdown (which was partially supported by some of the population) but at a certain point they can no longer maintain the dissatisfaction and had to fully open back up.
Even the most tyrannical, draconian, egotistical ruler has someone to answer to. And the people second and third in power MUST be happy with the regime, or else everything goes bust.
I'm not sure if any of the mentioned gridded population tools are substantially census independent. Haven't read the paper yet, but maybe that could be one reason why methods are so similar.
From the discussion:
> how reliable current global population estimates really are. For example, is it possible that global population estimates from the United Nations (7.98 billion in 2022) or World Bank (7.95 billion in 2022), both relying heavily on national population censuses, miss a significant part of the world population?
For example cellular data or ad data, rf emissions, CO2 or other chemical emissions, satellite photography of human activity (mowing, cropping, logging, building, etc), food or fuel shipments, etc.
A census may miss people, but the rest of the data wouldn't.
This could mean that apparent population growth during that period was much slower than it appeared, and instead down to improved measurement.
Delmar with companions: "You Wash's boy?"
Child with long gun: "Yessir and Daddy told me I'm to shoot whoever's from the bank."
Delmar: "Well, we ain't from no bank, young feller."
Child: "I'm also suppose to shoot folks servin' papers!"
Delmar: "Well we ain't got no papers"
Child: "I nicked the census man."
Delmar: "Now there's a good boy"
The bias towards urban populations would be more significant in congressional districts within a state, I reckon.
That also biases presidential elections, due to the way the Electoral College is calculated.
The system wasn't designed to fairly accommodate the gigantic social benefits, massive regulatory apparatus, and local spending apparatus the feds now get involved in. The people that designed the Senate thought that stuff mostly wildly unconstitutional. If they planned on that stuff being constitutional they'd have likely made the Senate more like the house in composition.
What some people in the 18th century intended it to be matters little in the 21st. Today it’s a massive legacy system that is almost impossible to reform without a rewrite.
It's not like the other ~half of the country is just going to go 'Wellp, I guess this is just the way it is now. I completely surrender.' No, the end result is invariably violence.
That is the reason the Senate is designed how it is. People will get a voice in the House, and states get a voice in the Senate. In fact it wasn't even until the 20th century with the 17 (IIRC) amendment that Senators were even openly elected - previously they were s(elected) by state legislatures.
The entire Constitution is written to create a system where people can loathe each other yet still manage to stay under the same flag. And it turned some backwater outposts into perhaps the greatest empire in history, all in a ridiculously brief period of time. So clearly there was more than a bit of wisdom in its construction.
Here's a trick: Go through this process: 'My emotions, which are not reality; are ...; my perceptions, which are not reality, are ...; if I bring my intellect to bear, I've learned ...'. At no point do we know reality - those things are all we've got, 'shadows on the wall'. The process forces us to sync up our frontal cortex and the emotional parts of our brains, which is essential and powerful, and to get some distance from our own perceptions.
Do you have evidence of that? It sounds like an 'appeal to authority' of the small government crowd.
> the federal government was meant
It was meant to be a democracy, where the people are free to make it what they want.
The reason why the thoughts of the people that designed our government is relevant is not appeal to authority but to understand the rational to how it was designed the way it was.
>democracy
The whole point here is the Senate is not a democracy in a conventional sense, but rather distorted on weight of vote per capita.
You can ignore history but simply declaring it can't be imposed on you ignores all the inertia of a system only partially amended since the 18th Century (and amended using mostly 18th century imposed criteria). It imposes whether you acknowledge it or not, and no matter how soundly you might think your rebuttal it does zero to change that.
Can you back that up? The history I learned is of constant change. It's another 'appeal to authority' to say your way is the true way and therefore others shouldn't get to vote for their way. How about trying to persuade people on the merits of different options, and then they can vote?
It's well known that people like John Lock, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, William Blackstone, David Hume, Francis Bacon, and others influenced the founders in the US. A lot of the ideas espoused by those people formed the philosophical underpinning for our country. Even in the 19th century authors like Alexis de Tocqueville traveled and wrote about the great experiment embarked upon by the Americans in "Democracy in America". I think a lot of the ideas of the founding generation can be summed up by Frederic Bastiat who said in the the 19th century "[l]ife, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."
> It was meant to be a democracy, where the people are free to make it what they want.
The federal government includes many anti-democratic features. Let's just take bills of attainder as an example. In a democracy this is possible, you can legislatively vote that someone is guilty. In our system this is just not allowed, at least not without amending the constitution which requires a very wide margin of support. The Supreme Court and judicial review is anti-democratic, as is the electoral college, as was the senate until the 17th Amendment. The Bill of Rights are what we now call negative rights, but these can be traced back to John Locke's conception of rights as a limitation on government as opposed to what many people today consider rights, e.g. right to an education which is a positive right.
To draw an analogy to software development, it seems like we have a legacy code base that we really want to make changes to with a bunch of new ideas. Just like software development though, too many people don't understand the code base at all and any changes that are made carry a very high risk of breaking something else.
The elected legislature make the laws. The judiciary is there to ensure the legislature don't bypass proper democratic procedure. If the judiciary decide that something is not consistent with the law then the legislators have the ability to openly debate and vote on a law that 'corrects' that. And the people get to petition their representatives over the bill.
It's part of a balanced systems that prevents the legislature from doing things it doesn't have a mandate for.
Though in USA we've seen how that system can and has been corrupted as it relies on honour and a genuine will to serve the people.
> The federal government includes many anti-democratic features.
No matter how much detail someone includes, you can always correct them with more, pointing toward democracy or a million other things. It's an enormous subject.
The federal government includes many many democratic features, such as electing the legislature and executive. For a short comment on HN, it's safe to say 'It was meant to be a democracy'.
“Men being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.” -- John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
"Government has no other end, but the preservation of property." -- John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
Without really reading his two treatises on government those quotes are not very enlightening I'm afraid. The only way to really understand the philosophical core of the US is to read the writings that influenced the founding generation. So my "evidence" is their body of work; apologies for not being able to be more succinct than that.
> For a short comment on HN, it's safe to say 'It was meant to be a democracy'.
This is a topic that was covered by the founders so I can pretty easily provide quotes here.
"I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either." -- John Adams, Letter to John Taylor
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty." -- John Adams, Letter to John Taylor
"It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity." -- Alexander Hamilton, New York speech
"We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. Those who mean to form a solid republican government, ought to proceed to the confinges of another government. As long as offices are open to all men, and no constitutional rank is established, it is pure republicanism. But if we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy." -- Alexander Hamilton, Constitutional Convention 1787
"A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of Government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions." -- James Madison, Federalist No. 10
Many of the founders, despite the above quotes, thought more direct style democracy and civic engagement was valuable in very local contexts rather than federally. Tocqueville wrote about this in "Democracy in America". Republicanism (representative democracy) at the national level was thought to be much preferable to (direct) democracy but also had constitutional limits placed on it due to its shortcomings as I mentioned before, e.g. no bills of attainder, protection of habeas corpus, prohibitions against ex post facto laws, the Bill of Rights (expressed as limitations on government), enumerated powers, checks and balances, etc...
I like to point to "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" by Edsger Dijkstra in this situation. Dijkstra was discussing unrestricted goto statements in much older languages like Algol, something which doesn't exist in any language in use today that I'm aware of. It was also never an absolute "ban" on the unrestricted goto. Yet the lesson that was learned was to never use restricted goto (e.g. C). The issue Dijkstra was concerned with was something we are still concerned with; clean, maintainable code. If we take the simplified conclusion that most people have internalized then the Linux kernel's error handling and resource clean-up would likely be far less maintainable than their current judicious use of goto for that purpose.
Similarly we are still debating what effective governance looks like today. By simplifying the founders thoughts on the matter we obfuscate the problem they were trying to solve and deny ourselves past insight into the problems we are trying to solve.
Also the presidential population is decided by delegates based on population.
What am I missing here? I feel like that's basic information.
Each state's number of electoral college votes = house + senate representatives. The latter number is always 2, of course, so people in less populated states have more electoral college power per capita.
The fact we use an electoral college or count senators and house reps equally is separate and after the fact, we don't have to do it that way
We see a similar hierarchy in the order laws are passed. The people get a law proposed via the House, once it passes it goes onto "state review" in the Senate, and finally "Federal" review by signing of the president.
They were, but not are. They are now elected by popular vote and the citizens clearly expect the senators to represent them. Few people know this history and fewer care. Most are in the crowd always looking for another argument against freedom and democracy.
> The fact we use an electoral college or count senators and house reps equally is separate and after the fact, we don't have to do it that way
It's in the Constitution just like the Senators, so we do have to do it. We can change anything, of course. We can get rid of both branches and go with a parliamentary system.
> We see a similar hierarchy in the order laws are passed. The people get a law proposed via the House, once it passes it goes onto "state review" in the Senate, and finally "Federal" review by signing of the president.
Legislation originates also in the Senate, and of course the president authors much of it (wherever it's interoduced). Only a few things are required to officially start in the House.
Still, that's an interesting way to look at it. But I follow politics and federal government closely, I read lots of history, and read at a sophisticted level, and I've never heard that. Maybe that was an idea back in the 18th century?
> Legislation originates also in the Senate, and of course the president authors much of it (wherever it's interoduced). Only a few things are required to officially start in the House.
The only thing that must start in the House is anything related to raising revenue. The fact the senate or house can start bills does support my perspective though - the house can start bills for the people, the senate for the state itself.
But, your rural areas may be over half of your territory. People living there also matter, and the needs of those territories are very different.
Just to bring an example of how the current system backfires:
- we need railroads to reopen so we are able to sell produce to our own industry base competitevely
- we are always told there aren't enough people here, so no railroads. Even though, the primary objective of those wouldn't be to transport people
- we sell our produce to the neighbouring country instead, given it is closer than our own country's industrial hotspots. By selling off raw produce, our country will end up earning less than if it were processed by our own food industry.
- without much economic incentive to remain living there, many will emigrate.
- less people = even less representative power.
The cycle continues...
Now, I don't have a solution. It is a difficult problem to solve. One could be to have a higher minimum number of representatives per region, as the lowest populated region only elects 2, 24 times less than the highest populated one. And, just to show how different the political landscape is when compared to the US: the metropolitan regions have voted way more to the far right and far left parties than the rural regions have, which have led to a lot of divisive political outcomes.
A census literally counts every individual. Census public reports are aggregated for privacy.
This is about spatial disaggregation of aggregated census data. The problem in developing countries (which is what these datasets are used for) is that they often fail to run a complete census (in some cases, for many decades) because it is expensive and/or the government is not functional. So these datasets may not be well-calibrated overall.
The US has no problem running a decennial census, aside from nonresponse by immigrants, conspiracy theory enjoyers, etc.
Is there any evidence of how accurately the US census actually does that job? Having spoken with a number of people who were involved with the 2020 census (mostly on a volunteer, local basis) the answer is not "absolutely every person in the country got counted exactly once". There are a number of sources of error that would seem essentially impossible to fully remediate, due to people being complicated and error-prone and the census being largely self-reported:
- People in multiple households being counted twice, e.g. college students being counted both at college and at home.
- People who refuse to participate (one of the census-takers I know had someone wave a gun at her face when she tried to follow up on their household's non-response).
- People who are transient or disconnected enough from the social fabric that they are hard to maintain consistent contact with. I knew someone involved with taking the census for an urban unhoused population and there was no doubt that they both missed and double-counted people; I'm sure it's even more difficult for rural populations that might be even less connected and even more transient.
It's not hard to imagine that, on net and despite there being rules and processes for handling each of those situations, there ends up being regional and/or urban/rural bias in the final counts.
Yes. The Census uses a post-enumeration survey for this purpose. They found evidence of significant under- or over-counting in 14 states for the 2020 census.
That was considerably worse than the 2010 census, though covid might be partly to blame. Still, afaik, there wasn't anywhere near the rural undercount described in the article.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/05/2020-census-u...
The census should really have an option for refusers that collects an absolute minimum of information. The Constitution only asks that people be counted, not that they be broken down into categories.
At least it's just the short form now. Prior to 2010, one out of six people got the long form, which had ten pages of questions for each person in the household. Here's a pdf: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/d...
Isn't this more complex? Do they mistrust the census bureau?
I say this because their mistrust seems to ignore politicians who align with their views. The same people who control the government.
For example ask a rural person if they trust "Ron Desantis" or "Greg Abbott"
If you receive it you are legally required to respond.
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/about/top-questi...
Considering cenus data is used to determine representation numbers just counting people could lead inflated numbers if that information can't be verified.
Technically you're required to respond, with a fine of $100 per question if you don't (with 50 questions). However, in the past half century the government has not prosecuted or fined anyone for failing to respond.[2]
[1] https://www.prb.org/resources/continuity-and-change-in-the-u...
[2] https://www.easidemographics.com/web/do-i-have-to-complete-t...
I'm not sure of that at all. Cities have many poeple who are members of black and brown minorities, unpopular religions, undocumented people, and immigrants - those are groups that might prefer to avoid government attention and often are very suspicious.
Do you have any thoughts on how the US census takes your insightful comment's points into account?
I imagine it's got to be quite an involved process given the vast differences in US geography, kinda blows my mind thinking about even basic stuff like age demographics vs. taking into account how many people died on census day.
But then - maybe that's too granular and it all balances out in the end? Or at least, it does if you use special magic sauce the US census has covered?
In the US, rural undercounting isn’t really a problem politically, although it has negative impacts on revenue allocation that is population based like sales taxes.
The biggest issue is that poor residents are underreported. This is both an urban and rural issue but from a numbers perspective impacts urban areas more.
I'm afraid that this isn't the case; a census is a best-efforts estimate.
There are plenty of people missed for a variety of reason, everything from not wanting to be found, through to simple avoidance. Let alone filling out the forms incorrectly or giving dud answers to the army of amazing people trying to make sense of all the madness.
Edit: realising the above has added to a long list of things that once upon a time I thought were hard-set facts, and nowadays I'm slowly losing my mind over. Coordinates, populated place boundaries, census counts + demographics... I mean, what _is_ an address? Incredibly painful to get to the bottom of that one, at least in the UK where the definition of an address will vary significantly by use case
screams into the void
Did that cause a double count due to them being counted wherever they moved to? Were my guesses correct? Or correct enough? No idea but that's the data the census worker recorded.
They would only have been double counted if they incorrectly reported living at their new address as of April 1st.
For example disease prevalence, lifestyle condition differences between rural and urban, etc
The movie is great and China censorship story worth a glance. There no direct critics but it depicts some collaterals of rural areas transformations. Also poetic and contemplative.
(Some other countries are included, but it seems like China, or at least south east Asia, provides the bulk of the data.)
Which is not nothing - if China's population is underestimated, even by a small amount, that means a lot.
But there might be purely historical reason ("ghost kids" unreported because of the "one child policy" come to mind) that would not apply to, say, the US census, or the size of constituencies in Europe that would undermine right wing parties.
There are some rural places in the Mountains in places not so far from America where they harass and rape teachers, doctors or any government service employees.
The national census always struggles how to safely and practically reach those places.
The comment you’re replying to is correct in its usage.
Something done systematically is typically done explicitly and intentionally. This may be what the author of the article was implying, but the comment was pointing out that miscounting of the population due to an inability to perform the task is not systematic by definition.
Means they would be estimated, surely. Something simple like count the dwellings, match to a similar community that had been counted.
Estimation wouldn't necessarily be under-estimation, it could go either way.