There has been a lot of talk about the world population in recent years, especially in terms of sustainability and the planet's future resources. The world's population is currently around 7.5 billion people, and the number is increasing. It seems impossible to make an accurate assessment of the number of people at a given moment. It is clear that there are people who die and others are born every second of every day. So how is the world population measured?

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# How is the world population counted?
Since nearly the last 700 years, specifically since the Great Famine of 1315 and Black Death in 1350, the population of the planet has experienced continuous growth, meaning that the total number of people on the planet is increasing. It is estimated that the world population at the time was about 370 million people. Since then, growth has been growing.

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The total population of the world depends on many different things, first and foremost the reports of nations on the population of each country. Every five years, the United Nations updates its estimates by country, based on figures collected directly from governments, as well as numbers from the WHO, UNICEF, DHS and UNHCR.

By combining these figures and estimates, the total growth rate of the planet is established, which is used as a measure for the next five years.

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# Doubts about accuracy of numbers
While all these figures are collected and calculated accurately, there is a high level of uncertainty in the estimates. But the United Nations recognizes that the margin of error is 2-3%. In most cases, this percentage is negligible, but when applied to as many as 7.5 billion people, 2-3% of the error is 225 million people ! This is more than the population of Brazil (the fifth largest country in the world).

The inaccuracy of these figures is inevitable for many reasons. Depending on where you live, infrastructure and effort to accurately calculate the population, so things will be very different. In the United States and the United Kingdom, for example, a very accurate national census is conducted every 10 years. Italy has not had a census since 2000, and Germany has not conducted a census since 1987. Australia records every 5 Years.

Although birth and death records can give a relatively honest picture of the country's population, migration and refugee crises affect the actual number of inhabitants of a given country.

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In many developing countries, there is simply a reliable system for documenting births and deaths, but its accuracy is not very credible, as there are many factors that contribute to changing the number of birth and death rates, notably the presence of many hard-to-reach places. For the current five-year forecast, other factors also affect the change in birth and death rates.

Population analysts are doing their best to collect the information available to them from a wide range of sources, but a statement of the overall growth rate of the world's population is impossible. But the world's population is expected to reach 8 billion in 2023, or perhaps 2022 or 2024 due to the margin of error.

Source:
https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/how-is-the-global-population-counted.html