The Population Project has temporarily suspended its activities. Our database of about 700 million and 200 million dead remains freely accessible. Read more.

A review of the past year

A review of the past twelve months at the Population Project

AB

Antoine Bello · August 8, 2024

Three years into a Population Project, where do we stand?
Overall we're doing fine. We're a team a 15, scattered across the US, Canada, Madagascar and Romania. We're all laser focused on our goal: collect the full name and date of birth of all humans alive.
We have strong processes in place. Lists are collected and stored in a giant Dropbox organized by country. They're then cleaned up and processed in Madagascar, imported on our servers where each new record is compared to all homonyms before being created, merged or dropped.
In the past year, we've been working on a new SaaS tool called Roamy which will query the web 24/7 in search of actionable lists. By expanding our reach and allowing us to address countries using different alphabets, Roamy will no doubt become a precious asset for the Population Project.
We have so far collected close to 600 million unique profiles, in the Western world only. This might sound low but we're encouraged by the fact that we're already covering over 50% of the population of 10 countries, big or small. Launching our first non-Roman alphabet, hopefully within the next year, will mark a milestone.
No matter what the future entails, we will strive for ever more transparency. If you're sympathetic to our endeavor, we'll keep sharing more data on our website. If you'd like to do more but wonder what, please
reach out and Antoine Bello will personally give you a (virtual) tour of our operations.

A nonprofit organization striving to compile a list of every living person’s full name and place and date of birth.
The Population Project relies heavily on the work and contributions of volunteers. We believe that information-gathering and use should go hand-in-hand with transparency. This Privacy Policy explains how the Population Project, the non-profit organization that hosts this site, collects, uses, and shares information we receive from you through your use of the Population Project Site. It is essential to understand that, by using the Population Project Site, you consent to the collection, transfer, processing, storage, disclosure, and use of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. That means that reading this Policy carefully is important. We believe that you shouldn't have to provide nonpublic Personal Information to participate to the Population Project. You do not have to provide things like your real name, address, or country to sign up for a standard account or contribute content to the Population Project Site. We do not sell or rent your Personal Information, nor do we give it to others to sell you anything. We use it to figure out how to make the Population Project Site more engaging and accessible. Put simply: we use this information to make the Population Project Site better for you.