Comment by matt-p
Incentives (for western Governments) are strong to show population has grown as little as possible, because it reduces stats on (mostly illegal) immigration, and improves GDP-per capita. I think it is probably healthy to explore if these incentives leak into the data that Governments produce. Probably to some extent it does, to be frank, even if that extent is just not looking too closely at passive measurements like food purchase trends or similar.
> and improves GDP-per capita.
This is amusing. If you think population numbers are fake you absolutely do not want to see how they come up with GDP estimates.