Taking Advantage of the Improved Availability of Census Data: A First Look at the Gridded Population of the World, Version 4

Abstract

Global gridded population data are increasingly being applied to a broad range of fields. This article presents improvements made in the fourth version of the Gridded Population of the World (GPWv4) data set. GPWv4 is a minimally modeled data set that uses uniform distribution to disaggregate census data from their native input units into a thirty arc-second global grid. Due to an increase in freely accessible census data from the 2010 round of censuses, eighty-seven countries are gridded at a higher administrative level than in the previous version, with a more than fivefold increase in the total number of census units outside of the United States. The resultant decrease in unit size has greatly improved the data set accuracy. Additionally, version 4 has expanded to include grids of age, sex, and urban–rural status. Obtaining high-resolution census data and matching census geography remains a priority for improving global gridded population data sets.