Talk Elections

2018 was relatively lame in terms of a Census being conducted.

Only about 5 major countries had one:

Colombia, Madagascar, Guatemala, Malawi and New Zealand.

The results in Guatemala, Malawi and New Zealand are not yet known and there are only very early results for Colombia.

In Madagascar, one of the poorest countries on the planet, the population has apparently more than doubled from 12.3 million in the 1993 Census to over 27 million in the 2018 Census - which would also be 3 million more than the current estimates based on the old Census:

http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20181116-madagascar-quid-recensement

That would mean Madagascar has grown by an annual rate of 3.2% over the past quarter century. Another sign of Africa's massive population explosion that is only getting worse over the next decades because there will be a much broader base of young people than ever before.

Here is the old thread (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=258662.0).

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Now on to 2019:

In 2019, several important developing countries have scheduled a Population Census.

Among them:

• Ethiopia
• Vietnam
• Kenya
• Ivory Coast
• Haiti
• Liberia
• Mali
• Belarus
• Azerbaijan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Cambodia

In other good news, Iraq is planning to conduct the 1st Census since 1997 - in 2020:

http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/121220181

2020/2021 will then see the biggest round, with about 80-90% of the world population being counted in most countries. There is a UN directive which calls for a common census round for comparable data.

Even though Israel has no population census this year, there is still some interesting news:

Israel's population has overtaken Austria's.

On Jan. 1, 2019 Israel had about 8,972,000 people and a big population growth rate of ca. 2% over the past year (+174.000 people).

Austria's numbers for Jan. 1, 2019 will be released next month, but it will probably be around 8.872.000, or +50.000 when compared with a year ago (+0.6%).

Big growth compared to Europe, but normal for Israel, So passing Austria was obviously going to happen.

... has released their 2018 Census results and they are worrying:


Link (http://www.nsomalawi.mw/images/stories/data_on_line/demography/census_2018/2018%20Population%20and%20Housing%20Census%20Preliminary%20Report.pdf)

Growth rate between Census 1987 and 1998: 2.0% annually
Growth rate between Census 1998 and 2008: 2.8% annually
Growth rate between Census 2008 and 2018: 2.9% annually

So, despite what the so-called "experts" say about falling fertility rates in Africa, here's another country that is proving them wrong:

Between 1987 and 1998, the population increased by 2.0 million.
Between 1998 and 2008, the population increased by 3.1 million.
Between 2008 and 2018, the population increased by 4.5 million.

Those experts are saying across the continent the average is falling.  Of course some will not match that by going up and some going down more than the average. 

Not sure about that ... They are not going down fast enough (or at all) in the - big - countries that matter, such as Nigeria, the Congo, Ethiopia, Egypt etc.

In some of those countries, the fertility/growth rate even increased when compared with earlier census rounds, due to the rampant growth of (backwards) Islam there, such as in Egypt. Egypt (which is already massively overcrowded) once only grew by 1.8% and is now growing by 2.5% again per year, because of the spread of radical Islam. The same in Nigeria. The Congo is also a country where fertility is now higher than 50 years ago.

So, I seriously doubt that fertility is actually going down in Africa where it matters and most new census results prove it. And even if it were going down slightly, the higher number of young people will lead to much higher growth in the future as well. A 4 billion Africa is not impossible, which would be a disaster.

There is a reason every time the UN comes out with its latest population projection, they have to revise it upwards, in the 2008 population review they had the world population reaching 9 billion by 2050, in the 2017 review, the most recent one, it is up to 9.8 billion, the UN consistently continues to overstate the level of fertility decline in Africa, in many African countries fertility is not even falling and its models have completely failed to see the rise in some countries.

In Algeria for example, the fertility rate was 2.4 in 2000, it is 3.1 as of 2017, meaning it rose by 0.7, the impact of this was to raise the annual number of births in Algeria from 600k to 1.06 million. Egypt as has been mentioned already has seen its TFR rise from 3.0 to 3.5 between 2008 and 2014, it is now back down to 3.1. 

The UN assumption that every high TFR country will eventually transition to a European level of fertility is in my opinion false and has no basis in reality. Fertility today is determined not by resource availability but cultural preferences, it is likely that countries where fertility preferences remain high will retain high fertility regardless of high their life expectancy might go. Algeria's life expectancy 70.3 in 2000 when it had a TFR of 2.4, by 2017 its life expectancy was 76, just 2.5 years below America and its TFR was 3.1, during the same period infant mortality also dropped, the models would have us believe that as infant mortality drops and life expectancy rises, fertility will fall, the inverse occurred in Algeria as it has in Egypt.

Yes, and even South Africa - which had a lot of deaths because of HIV/AIDS in the 1990s and 2000s - is now growing by 2% again.

2% is a huge population growth rate for a country of 60 million people and SA is supposed to be the most advanced and "western" countries in Africa in terms of demographics ...

I think theres a general trend of high growth countries growing more than we thought and low growth countries (see the China article I linked in the other forum) growing less than we thought.

This has nothing to do with a Census, because Turkey has a population register, but still:

Turkey's population increased by more than 1.2 million last year to 82 million.

The growth rate increased to 1.5% in 2018, up from 1.3% in 2017.

Not sure why it is the case, but it is unlikely because of rising births.

I think it is more because of refugees coming from Syria and re-migration of old guest workers from Germany and Austria. In fact, the parents of a Turkish friend of mine from high school recently packed their bags, sold their house here and returned back to sunny Turkey. They arrived here in the 1970s as guest workers and now as they filed for retirement, they went back to Turkey where life is much more cheaper than in Austria. I guess many other retired guest workers will do so in the next years.

I guess Turkey will overtake Germany this year.

Maybe, but probably next year. Both should have 83.2 million then.

Btw, did you know that the Dutch birth rate has dropped to a record-low last year and now has a lower birth rate than Austria ?

https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2019/01/population-up-by-100-thousand-for-third-year-in-a-row

The Dutch birth rate dropped to 9.8 per 1000 people in 2018, whereas Austria's birth rate has increased to above 10 (mostly because of immigration) and might continue to do so because of the child tax credit this year ?

That's an interesting fact, because a few years ago, the Dutch rate was at 13 and Austria's at 9.

Iraq is stepping up their plans for a 2020 Census, with a trip to Egypt for advice:

http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/85685324-c893-40d6-a40c-e2f6b19f51ca

This would be the first since 1997 and the first complete one since 1987, because in 1997 the Kurdish regions were not counted.

In 1987, the population of Iraq was 16 million and by 2020 it will be ~40 million.

That would be a disturbingly high annual growth rate of 2.8% between 1987 and 2020 for such a desert-like country, tight on water. But Egypt is nothing better.