China and India are by far the most populous countries in the world.Tokyo’s population almost equals the population of all of Oceania. The metropolitan area of Beijing has the same population as all of Australia. And again within countries we see a very high concentration. South-East Asia is densely populated while large countries such as Mongolia, Australia, Kazakhstan, and the Asian part of Russia are home to relatively few people. Within this world region the population is very unequally distributed.The cartogram below focusses on Asia and Oceania where 6 out of 10 people in the world live. But Russia is home to only less than 2% of the world population and is therefore shrunken in this cartogram to the size of Bangladesh, a country that is smaller than Florida. The area of Russia takes up 11% of the world’s land, and the gigantic country borders both Norway and North Korea.The cartogram offers us many more perspectives that we can keep in mind if we want to keep an overview of the world. Some perspectives on the distribution of the world population The two largest countries in Asia – China or India – are the home of more people than any other entire continent. And a line chart that shows improvements in all African countries or across all of the American countries refers to fewer people than a chart with a single line that shows an improvement in China. We should keep this cartogram in mind when we are looking at charts that show country-by-country data, because we have to remember that the number of people that these charts speak about is very different from one country to the next: An increase of the life expectancy in Denmark means that the average health of 5.8 million people is increasing, while an increase for India means that the health of 1,354 million people is improving. Large countries with a small population shrink in size – talking about you Canada, Mongolia, Australia, and Russia. Small countries with a high population density increase in size in this cartogram relative to the world maps we are used to – look at Bangladesh, Taiwan, or the Netherlands. The 11.5 million Belgians are represented by 23 squares the 49.5 million Colombians are represented by 99 squares the 1.415 billion people in China are represented by 2830 squares and this year’s entire world population of 7.633 billion people is represented by the total sum of 15,266 squares.Īs the size of the population rather than the size of the territory is shown in this map, you can see some big differences when you compare it to the standard geographical map we're most familiar with.

The cartogram is made up of squares, each of which represents half a million people of a country’s population.

So I spent the last few weekends making this cartogram for the world population in 2018. If we want to show where the world’s people are we need a population cartogram, a geographical presentation of the world where the size of the countries are not drawn according to the distribution of land, but according to the distribution of people. Maps are made for a different purpose they show us where the world’s land masses are. But despite the popularity and familiarity of world maps, they can mislead our understanding of global living conditions. To show global data it is convenient to use a map. Our mission here at Our World in Data is to make the big global problems understandable.

Us population density change map