Topics
About
A picture of the world, drawn from its people
censuswall starts every page from the count: how many people are alive, how old they are and where they live. Work, migration, health, climate, money and cities are then shown as what they are to those people.
Where the numbers come from
The count itself is the United Nations' World Population Prospects 2024: every country, every year from 1950, by single year of age. Everything else comes from the agency that made it — UNHCR for people forced from home, NASA and NOAA for the climate, the World Bank, Eurostat and others — and each is listed, with its licence, on References. The UN's next edition, World Population Prospects 2027, is due on 11 July 2027; until then the 2024 edition is the UN's current one.
censuswall is independent. None of these agencies, the United Nations included, has reviewed or endorsed it.
How it is checked
Before any page is built, every source file is checked against a locked fingerprint, tested for the shape it should have, and made to reproduce figures its producer published. If one fails, nothing is built. The stamp on each page says how many checks it passed. Benton Jona checks the figures and writes the words around them; Standards sets out what that means, and lists every correction published so far.
How to read it
- Anything after the last year that was actually counted is a projection, and it is drawn with diagonal lines.
- Where the source gives a range of what could happen, the range is drawn too.
- Where scholars disagree — the world's population before 1950, for instance — each estimate is shown, and none is averaged away.
- Each picture has a line under it saying how to read it.
Who it is for
Anyone curious about the world: a school student with a project, a grandparent comparing the year they were born with today, a journalist checking a figure, a teacher building a lesson. Plain words first; the method is always there for those who want it.
What it will never do
- Tell you when you will die. Your year describes the people born when you were, never you.
- Send what you type into a figure or a tool anywhere. Birth dates and countries are worked out in your own browser. The contact form is the one thing on the site that sends, and only because you asked it to.
- Hide where a number came from. Every source is named, with its licence, on References.
- Offer data files to download. The numbers are drawn and tabled on the pages; the files belong to their producers.