Mar 20, 2025 06:24 PM
(This post was last modified: Mar 20, 2025 06:25 PM by C C.)
If such was the case, the view that world population is destined to finally peak and fizzle backwards might be in jeopardy. Perhaps the only large segment actually reproductively faltering slash shrinking and going anti-natalism would be the West, in non-immigrant influx context.
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Are There Billions More People Than We Thought? Controversial Study Suggests Rural Population May Be Undercounted by 50%
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-...ted-by-50/
EXCERPTS: The latest United Nations figures claim the world’s population is 8.2 billion, projected to peak at 10.3 billion by the mid-2080s. This has always been a rough estimate because you can never count all the people in the world one by one. Some countries have sophisticated censusing systems that fairly accurately track their populations, while others lag behind greatly. For instance, an estimated 850 million people in the world don’t have any identification documents.
So how many people are there truly in the world? There’s no way to tell for sure, but a controversial new study suggests that we may be underestimating the number of people living in rural areas by as much as 84%.
[...] So, does all of this mean that there are billions more than officially reported in the UN data? The researchers in Finland didn’t want to recklessly offer a global population estimate. They recognize the limitations of projecting global figures from potential undercounting in rural areas surrounding dam projects.
Much of the study’s data comes from China and other parts of Asia, which have always been prone to undercounting, and may not apply to countries with more robust registration systems, such as Finland or Australia. If we’re really undercounting populations by such a massive amount, it’s reasonable to assume that governments should notice. Such a discrepancy should be reflected in other metrics, such as energy use, food production, and even mobile phone usage.
However, Láng-Ritter still believes his team is onto something. “The countries we looked at are so different, and the rural areas we investigated have very different properties,” he says. “We’re quite confident that it gives a representative sample for the whole globe.” (MORE - missing details)
New study compares people’s views on voluntary childlessness across Europe
https://plos.io/4bXcvpx
PRESS RELEASE: A new study compares people’s attitudes towards voluntary childlessness across 27 countries and finds that different results may emerge depending on whether the measurement focuses on social expectations or perceived consequences of childlessness. Ivett Szalma of the HUN-REN Center for Social Sciences in Budapest, Hungary, in collaboration with Marieke Heers (FORS - the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences) and Maria Letizia Tanturri from the University of Padova, Italy (within the framework of the Childzero project), present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on March 19, 2025.
More and more people in Europe are choosing not to have children, prompting researchers to study how attitudes towards voluntary childlessness may be evolving. However, such attitudes can be nuanced, and it has been unclear how to measure people’s perspectives most effectively. To shed new light, Szalma and colleagues conducted a new analysis of data from 27 countries that had been collected for two prior surveys.
The researchers aimed to distinguish between two different categories of attitudes on voluntary childlessness: prescriptive versus proscriptive. Prescriptive attitudes focus on the expectation for people to have children, and can be measured with questions like, “How much do you approve or disapprove if a woman/man chooses never to have children?” Meanwhile, proscriptive attitudes highlight perceived negative consequences of childlessness, and are measured with questions about whether people need to have children to be fulfilled.
The analysis revealed that certain sociodemographic characteristics were statistically linked in different ways to prescriptive versus proscriptive attitudes towards voluntary childlessness. People in countries with higher childlessness rates tended to have higher acceptance of voluntary childlessness in a proscriptive sense, but no such trend was seen for prescriptive attitudes about consequences.
People in countries with more gender equality had higher rates of acceptance in both a prescriptive and proscriptive sense – perhaps because here, women often play a larger role in economic stability and are seen in roles beyond motherhood.
Women, more highly educated people, and in some cases, younger people, were more likely to be accepting of voluntary childlessness – potentially because of a heightened awareness of the physical, emotional, psychological and career costs of bearing children.
While employment status was not associated with any trends in proscriptive attitudes, from a prescriptive viewpoint, retirees were relatively more disapproving of people choosing not to have children – perhaps again reflecting generational differences. Interestingly, the religiosity of countries showed no trends for either category – although at the individual level, people who were more religious were less accepting of both dimensions of voluntary childlessness.
These findings suggest that distinguishing between prescriptive and proscriptive attitudes on voluntary childlessness can more precisely capture people’s viewpoints. This study could therefore help shape ongoing research into how such attitudes may change over time, in Europe and elsewhere.
The authors add: “Our study finds that lower gender inequality predicts higher acceptance of voluntary childlessness, while the level of religiosity does not make any differences.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Are There Billions More People Than We Thought? Controversial Study Suggests Rural Population May Be Undercounted by 50%
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-...ted-by-50/
EXCERPTS: The latest United Nations figures claim the world’s population is 8.2 billion, projected to peak at 10.3 billion by the mid-2080s. This has always been a rough estimate because you can never count all the people in the world one by one. Some countries have sophisticated censusing systems that fairly accurately track their populations, while others lag behind greatly. For instance, an estimated 850 million people in the world don’t have any identification documents.
So how many people are there truly in the world? There’s no way to tell for sure, but a controversial new study suggests that we may be underestimating the number of people living in rural areas by as much as 84%.
[...] So, does all of this mean that there are billions more than officially reported in the UN data? The researchers in Finland didn’t want to recklessly offer a global population estimate. They recognize the limitations of projecting global figures from potential undercounting in rural areas surrounding dam projects.
Much of the study’s data comes from China and other parts of Asia, which have always been prone to undercounting, and may not apply to countries with more robust registration systems, such as Finland or Australia. If we’re really undercounting populations by such a massive amount, it’s reasonable to assume that governments should notice. Such a discrepancy should be reflected in other metrics, such as energy use, food production, and even mobile phone usage.
However, Láng-Ritter still believes his team is onto something. “The countries we looked at are so different, and the rural areas we investigated have very different properties,” he says. “We’re quite confident that it gives a representative sample for the whole globe.” (MORE - missing details)
New study compares people’s views on voluntary childlessness across Europe
https://plos.io/4bXcvpx
PRESS RELEASE: A new study compares people’s attitudes towards voluntary childlessness across 27 countries and finds that different results may emerge depending on whether the measurement focuses on social expectations or perceived consequences of childlessness. Ivett Szalma of the HUN-REN Center for Social Sciences in Budapest, Hungary, in collaboration with Marieke Heers (FORS - the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences) and Maria Letizia Tanturri from the University of Padova, Italy (within the framework of the Childzero project), present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on March 19, 2025.
More and more people in Europe are choosing not to have children, prompting researchers to study how attitudes towards voluntary childlessness may be evolving. However, such attitudes can be nuanced, and it has been unclear how to measure people’s perspectives most effectively. To shed new light, Szalma and colleagues conducted a new analysis of data from 27 countries that had been collected for two prior surveys.
The researchers aimed to distinguish between two different categories of attitudes on voluntary childlessness: prescriptive versus proscriptive. Prescriptive attitudes focus on the expectation for people to have children, and can be measured with questions like, “How much do you approve or disapprove if a woman/man chooses never to have children?” Meanwhile, proscriptive attitudes highlight perceived negative consequences of childlessness, and are measured with questions about whether people need to have children to be fulfilled.
The analysis revealed that certain sociodemographic characteristics were statistically linked in different ways to prescriptive versus proscriptive attitudes towards voluntary childlessness. People in countries with higher childlessness rates tended to have higher acceptance of voluntary childlessness in a proscriptive sense, but no such trend was seen for prescriptive attitudes about consequences.
People in countries with more gender equality had higher rates of acceptance in both a prescriptive and proscriptive sense – perhaps because here, women often play a larger role in economic stability and are seen in roles beyond motherhood.
Women, more highly educated people, and in some cases, younger people, were more likely to be accepting of voluntary childlessness – potentially because of a heightened awareness of the physical, emotional, psychological and career costs of bearing children.
While employment status was not associated with any trends in proscriptive attitudes, from a prescriptive viewpoint, retirees were relatively more disapproving of people choosing not to have children – perhaps again reflecting generational differences. Interestingly, the religiosity of countries showed no trends for either category – although at the individual level, people who were more religious were less accepting of both dimensions of voluntary childlessness.
These findings suggest that distinguishing between prescriptive and proscriptive attitudes on voluntary childlessness can more precisely capture people’s viewpoints. This study could therefore help shape ongoing research into how such attitudes may change over time, in Europe and elsewhere.
The authors add: “Our study finds that lower gender inequality predicts higher acceptance of voluntary childlessness, while the level of religiosity does not make any differences.”