Monday, July 18, 2022

The world's most densely-populated countries

We had cause the other day to be discussing which countries were the most densely populated. I was being told that, according to Google, Bangladesh was the densest, followed by Taiwan, South Korea, Rwanda and the Netherlands. This surprised me greatly; I had expected city-states like Singapore, Monaco, etc, to be the densest countries.

Well, it turns out I was right after all. According to WikipediaWorld Population Review, WorldData and Statistics Times, those city-states are indeed the most densely-populated, followed by some small islands. In order: Monaco, Macau, Singapore, Hong Kong (not a country, I know), Gibraltar, Bahrain, Maldives, Malta, Sint Maarten, Bermuda. Bangladesh appears as No. 11, Taiwan as No. 20, South Korea as No. 24, etc.

The confusion? Bangladesh, Taiwan, South Korea, etc are the most densely-populated LARGE countries (defined as those with over 10 million inhabitants), as noted in Statistics Times. Thus proving that one needs to be careful when looking at those Google quick results ("from sources across the web") without following up to those sources and checking in more detail.

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