There Are 8.2 Billion People on Earth—but There Might Actually Be Billions More

The United Nations says there are 8.2 billion people on Earth. According to a fresh look at the data by researcher Josias Láng-Ritter of Aalto University, that number could be wrong. Very, extremely wrong. It could be off by several billions, and all because we may have been severely undercounting rural populations.

Current population estimates rely heavily on census data. Remote and rural areas are notoriously difficult to track, and the research shows that the best available datasets still fall short—by up to 50 percent in some cases.

This matters. As Professor Jonathan Kennedy from Queen Mary University of London puts it bluntly in an opinion piece published in The Guardian: population numbers are political weapons.

“They reflect power struggles over which lives matter,” he writes. H