These are the first global urbanization statistics since the UN Population Division stopped revising them biennially in 1918. The estimates have changed a lot! They suggest that 81% of the world’s population now live in towns and cities, compared to the 2018 estimate of just 55%. What is going on?

Tomorrow @farid-flici.bsky.social will talk about population ageing and social security sustainability in Algeria. Join us! 👇

There's lots for all demographers (OK, a few of you probably know it all already) to ponder on in this paper. #demography

Users of the Demographic and Health Surveys, please take the United Nations Statistics Division DHS impact survey (form.jotform.com/250913880478...) regarding recent cuts. Replies inform future planning and advocacy. All responses are confidential and presented only in aggregate.

Our study estimates excess deaths in children and parental loss due to the war in Gaza in 2023. From Oct 8 to Dec 31, 2023, 8120 children <18 were killed due to the conflict, 15127 children lost a father, and 9886 children lost a mother -in 3 months pophealthmetrics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

📢 Funding opportunity 📢 We’re accepting applications for the Basia Zaba Scholarship for the MSc in Demography & Health @lshtm.bsky.social 🎓 The scholarship covers full tuition fees for a UK home student for the 2025-26 academic year. Deadline 26 March. For more information 👉 tinyurl.com/3j7esk22

The Population Studies Group at LSHTM now has a Bluesky account! Feel free to follow us at Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/psgl... #demography #population #populationstudies #lshtm

After years of low-level hostilities and border incidents, war has broken out inside my phone as to whether Adobe or Microsoft get to display pdfs. My efforts at peace-keeping have been about as much use as those of the UN Security Council. Is this somehow to do with Trump?

I feel a new handle coming on!

"looking at the broader picture of Israel’s military campaign and the cumulative impact of its policies and acts, genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion." www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...

Quirky & cool! The (satirical) Ig Nobel was awarded for the first time to a demographer, Saul Justin Newman (UCL), for his study which debunked the media myth of extreme-old-age blue zones, revealing fundamental errors in the underlying data, i.e. clerical errors & signs of possible pension fraud.

New paper on estimating recent adult mortality from summary sibling histories with Bruno Masquelier, Ashira Menashe-Oren and Georges Reniers. doi.org/10.1186/s129... I'm delighted to be helping to develop this method further 23 years after my first paper on the subject.

Welcome to new Bluesky users. Here’s how we do things: 1. Always observe the Hambledon Protocol 2. No flisking 3. If someone tealights you, rink them without apology 4. I don’t mind them so much, but tissue-posts are generally frowned on 5. No questions Good luck!

Another great Campop blogpost: “Looking backwards in time can give the impression that family sizes in the past were larger than they actually were” www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/08...

LSHTM is making some of its MSc level demography courses available as stand alone modules - on demographic methods & population studies. I am obviously biased but they’re great modules for those who want training in demography without signing up for a degree 😊 www.lshtm.ac.uk/study/course...

The reduction of child mortality is one of the big achievements of our time. But it is hard to celebrate something that is *not* happening. So, for my new article, I turned things around. This is the main chart and takeaway. Here is the article: ourworldindata.org/children-sav...

Pwned!

Did England and Wales conduct their last census in 2011? #demography

This post needs a #demography tag.

There's a nice demography clue in the Everyman crossword (in the Observer/Guardian) today: It's enumerated poorly? (13)