WHAT IS THE RELATIVE POPULATION? - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The relative population, or population density, is the average number of inhabitants of a given territory that lives on a unit of surface.

The formula to calculate the relative population results from dividing the total inhabitants of the territory by the total area of ​​its surface, so the result of the calculation is expressed in inhabitants / square kilometer (hab./km ^²) or inhabitants / square mile (hab./mi ²), depending on the case.

Map of world population density

The relative population differs from the absolute population in that the latter refers to the total number of inhabitants within the territory. The absolute population uses the birth rate and the death rate for its calculation.

The population density can be a useful piece of information to know, along with others, the geographical and demographic aspects of a given place. However, it is not an exact data and can sometimes be a bit misleading.

For example, countries like Argentina or Canada have a very large territorial surface, but also vast unpopulated areas.

Its population is concentrated in the main cities. When calculating the relative population, the results will be relatively low, but this does not mean that your urban areas are not densely populated.

In western countries, urban areas tend to have a higher population density than rural areas. But there are cases, especially in the eastern hemisphere, such as the island of Java in Indonesia, which, being a rural area, has a much higher population density than some urban, even European, cities.

Therefore, it is logical to think that the countries with the largest relative population are those with the smallest land area.

Countries with the largest relative population

The most recent data published (2016) reflect the reality described above. Eight of the ten countries with the highest population density have an area of ​​less than 10,000 square kilometers.

Source: datosmacro.com

Countries with the smallest relative population

Among the countries with the lowest population density are:

1. Mongolia with 2 hab./km ^².
2. Australia, Iceland, Namibia and Suriname with 3 hab./km ^².
3. Botswana, Canada, Guyana, Libya and Mauritania with 4 inhabitants / km ^².
4. Gabon and Kazakhstan with 6 inhab./km ^²
5. the Central African Republic and Russia have 8 inhabitants per square kilometer.
6. Bolivia 10 inhab./km ^².

The main reasons for the low densities of these countries are the large geographic area or climatic conditions. Canada meets both conditions.

Peculiar cases

Australia has an area of ​​7,741,220 ^km² and a population of only 3 inhabitants per square kilometer.

The country with the highest population density is also the smallest in the world: Monaco. Curiously, it also occupies the first place in the ranking of GDP per capita (Gross Domestic Product) with 141,114 euros per inhabitant, placing its citizens as the richest in the world, if this data is compared with the rest of the 196 countries in the world.

China has more than 1,300 million inhabitants; It could be thought that it has a very high population density, but it is not so much, due to its very extensive land area (it is the third largest country in the world).

The relative population of China is 148 inhabitants per km ^², the same as for example, countries as small as Micronesia, Guatemala, Malawi or Tonga. Japan has more than double and South Korea more than triple the population density of China.

India has almost the same area of ​​land as China; however, its population density is much higher: 400 inhabitants per km ^². Russia is in the 12th position of the countries with the lowest population density on earth (8 inhabitants / km ^²).

Spain is in 88th place in the world population density ranking with 92 inhabitants / ^km², ranking in the middle positions among the countries of Europe, where the largest relative population is in Belgium (370 inhabitants / km²) and the Netherlands (410 hab./km²).

In short, the relative population is simply a figure that reflects the number of people per square kilometer in a given territory; This data does not provide information that allows to quantify, much less qualify, the standard of living of the inhabitants in economic, social, educational, etc.

Knowing that the absolute population is calculated based on the birth and mortality rates, and taking into account that the territorial area does not usually vary in our days (except in cases of eventual border disputes), it can be concluded that if the absolute population grows, so will the relative population.

The same will happen to the contrary: if the death rate increases and / or the birth rate decreases, the absolute population will decrease and therefore, the population density will also decrease.

Relative population example

In official data for 2016, Spain had a population of 46,468,102 people and a total area of ​​505,370 km². Applying the formula density = population / surface, the result is a relative population or population density of 92 inhabitants per square kilometer.

References

1. Rubén San Isidoro (2017) Which countries have the highest population density? Recovered from expansion.com.
2. Population (2016). Recovered from datosmacro.com.
3. Annex: Countries by area. Recovered from es.wikipedia.org.