The UN releases an update of its World Population Prospects every two years. Its latest release was due in 2021 but was delayed as a result of the pandemic. But today, the long-awaited dataset has been released.
With early access to this new UN data, we have published a new Population and Demography Data Explorer on Our World in Data, where you can explore this full dataset in detail.
To complement this data explorer, we've also published a post on the Five key findings from the 2022 UN Population Prospects.
All metrics are available:
- For every country in the world, continent, and World Bank income group
- With projection scenarios up to the year 2100
- Broken down by sex and age group
Here's the full list of metrics:
- Population
- Age structure
- Population density
- Births (absolute & rate)
- Deaths (absolute & rate / all ages, child, infant)
- Life expectancy
- Migration
- Sex ratio
- Dependency ratio
- Median age
I saw these articles [1-2]/tweet [3] on a researcher claiming that China's population is significantly lower than what's stated in the official China/UN sources, so much as he estimates 1.28 instead of 1.41 billion.
I am Curious if anyone knows whether there is some truth to that claim and whether the UN takes the official national data at face value or do independent estimates of some kind?
[1] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-2020-census-inflates-population-figures-downplays-demographic-challenge-by-yi-fuxian-2021-08 [Paywall]
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/researcher-questions-chinas-population-data-says-it-may-be-lower-2021-12-03/
[3] https://twitter.com/fuxianyi/status/1546716386290008064