I have terrible news: there might be a billion more people on Earth than we previously thought. According to current UN estimates, the global population is roughly 8.2 billion. That’s already a lot — but according to a study published in Nature Communications, there might be billions more.

Láng-Ritter, a co-author of the study, said, "For the first time, our study provides evidence that a significant proportion of the rural population may be missing from global population datasets." He and his colleagues found that rural populations may have been severely undercounted in global censuses, estimating the undercount could be anywhere between 54 and 84%.

The undercount is attributed to “systematic limitations” in how rural censuses are conducted. One example cited is Paraguay’s 2012 census, which found that a “quarter of the population,” mostly rural citizens, were simply “missed” by the census.

If accurate, the data suggests that roughly 40% of the world’s population lives in rural areas and if these numbers are underreported by 54-84%, then there are billions of people out there unaccounted for.

That’s one heck of a rounding error!