Map Monday: Where are all the people?

We humans have been on the move for a long time, a very, very long time.  Movement between countries, cultures, and continents may have seemed to slow down for a brief period of time, but not really so much so.  Many factors keep arising to encourage relocation: war and ongoing conflicts, economic distress and/or opportunity, famine, increasing dislocation because of climate change, and so much more.  We’re a mobile society, and in many ways we always have been.  Taking just one relatively recent example (what’s 50 years?!), the existence of the EU (formerly the European Community) fostered cross-border movement within the EU, and now Brexit is encouraging/forcing movement away from the UK.  There’s always something.

Let’s take a look at what shifting populations look like around the world.  Aside from immigration and migration there are also varying levels of new births and varying levels of living standards and healthcare, resulting in vast differences in life expectancies.

One thing to keep in mind is that most of these maps present population trends in 2020 and so don’t reflect the effects of the global pandemic or the impact of increased numbers of refugees (and loss of life) from the world’s most recent war inflicted on Ukraine by Russia.

We’ll start by reminding ourselves of the world’s population.  The first map is straightforward; it presents the population within each country. [As always, you can click on any of the maps to get a better look at the details]

Now let’s think about the number of people in each country with respect to its geographical size, in other words each country’s population density.  The next two maps show each country’s population density, using first a conventional world map and then the world population density using a cartogram.  Remember, in a cartogram the size of a country is proportional to the size of its population. Notice how in the cartogram geographically large countries like Canada, Russia, and Australia nearly disappear!  We have land, lots of land … it’s just that most of it is either under snow and ice (but maybe not so much so in a few decades) or is uninhabitable desert as in Australia.

The cartogram of word population densities.

Now let’s take a look at this next intriguing map that shows population density around the world by latitude.  Look at where everyone lives!  This isn’t going to be so much fun as the warm weather gets hotter and hotter … and hotter.

Next we’ll take a look at the makeup of the population in each country. Which countries are gaining more by immigration and which ones are losing?

From the website Visual Capitalist, a look at the changes across the world in snapshots of 1990, 2005, and 2020.  Don’t forget that this includes all of us who weren’t born in the country in which we now live as citizens or permanent residents.  It’s not simply reflecting brand new immigrants by any stretch of the imagination.  For example, I am one of the many proud immigrants to Canada.  Of our closest friends fully half would be counted as immigrants, maybe more.  That needs to be kept in mind.

Now let’s take a look at which countries have the fastest declining populations, due both to outward migration and deaths exceeding births.

And, finally, a look at the world’s oldest countries (by age of population, not history) versus the world’s youngest.

It will be interesting to see what these maps look like in as little as 10 years, when, among other factors, some percentage of the world’s population currently living in the most “temperate” zones find that life there is no longer sustainable.