How is world population calculated? And how accurate is the number? Is it possible that the number can be entirely wrong?
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One thing not mentioned is that a lot of developing countries have a huge incentive to over-report their populations because the foreign aid they receive from more wealthy countries is linked to population. And, frankly, I’m not sure I trust the UN to do more than repeat what their member states say. So it depends on the source for the number. If it comes from the UN, you have this problem. If it comes from somewhere using formulas like the logistic differential equation mentioned here, it’s based on a guess of fertility rates that we don’t know is right. They all mostly agree, but their only source of ground truth is each other, so they could be agreeing with each other but not agreeing with reality. The estimates are probably mostly right, but probably off by more than their reported margins of error would have you believe.
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