Friday, November 05, 2010

World's largest population, 2010

The US Census Bureau, Population Division, gave this population projection for many countries. For this purpose, I chose only the top 30, then other Asian countries in lower rank.

World's largest countries in population size, 2010 (in million)

1. China, 1,330.1
2. India, 1,173.1
3. United States, 310.2
4. Indonesia, 243.0
5. Brazil, 201.1
6. Pakistan, 184.4
7. Bangladesh, 156.1
8. Nigeria, 152.2
9. Russia, 139.4
10. Japan, 126.8

11. Mexico 112.5
12. Philippines, 99.9
13. Vietnam, 89.6
14. Ethiopia, 88.1
15. Germany, 82.3
16. Egypt, 80.5
17. Turkey, 77.8
18. Iran, 76.9
19. Congo (Kinshasa), 70.9
20. Thailand, 67.1

21. France, 64.8
22. United Kingdom, 62.3
23. Italy, 58.1
24. Burma, 53.4
25. South Africa, 49.1
26. South Korea, 48.6
27. Spain, 46.5
28. Ukraine, 45.4
29. Colombia, 44.2
30. Sudan, 43.9

43. Malaysia, 28.3
49. Taiwan, 23.0
50. North Korea, 22.8
54. Australia, 21.5
55. Sri Lanka, 21.5
66. Cambodia, 14.4
99. Hong Kong, 7.1

source: http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/broker

I do not know how the US Census Bureau produced this projection, but I think the numbers for some countries, like the Philippines, are bloated. The National Census Office (NSO, wwww.census.gov.ph), the official census office of the Philippine government which conducts actual headcount surveys every 5 years, put the country's population this year at only 94.0 million, not 99.9 M as indicated above.

Nevertheless, in the top 20 countries above, only the US, Russia, Japan and Germany are the developed and industrialized ones. The rest are either emerging/industrializing or poor/developing countries.

The prospect of ever-rising population of currently non-industrialized countries send shivers to the elitists in many rich countries. Hence, the panic towards climate alarmism because of the "unsustainabiity" for the planet of taking care of several billion people more in the coming years.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, the US Census Bureau considers Hong Kong a country? Heh.

Regarding the population projection for the Philippines, does the NSO's headcount include overseas Filipinos? That might account for some of the difference

Bienvenido Oplas Jr said...

Yes, I think the NSO headcount includes the OFWs. I was in the house when the NSO surveyors came, and one of the questions was if any family member is working or studying or temporarily living abroad. If the answer is yes, that person is counted in the population.

What perhaps bloated the US census bureau figures, is their assumption that Filipinos based abroad are not counted in the NSO surveys, so they added them up.