Is there reason to believe that Nigeria’s population size is more likely to be exaggerated than other LMICs? (Since I imagine the incentives to exaggerate, and weak safeguards against this, exist in many other contexts too)
I have heard anecdotally that there is the opposite problem in Uganda and Burkina Faso.
In Burkina Faso the issue was that GDP per capita numbers were calculated from industrial output divided by population estimates so in order to look good, local government had an incentive to underestimate population so they seemed richer.
It’s a particularly acute issue in federal and resource-rich countries in which such large relative amounts of cash are distributed according to local population numbers, so I’d imagine more exaggeration in Nigeria than the average LMIC.
Is there reason to believe that Nigeria’s population size is more likely to be exaggerated than other LMICs? (Since I imagine the incentives to exaggerate, and weak safeguards against this, exist in many other contexts too)
I have heard anecdotally that there is the opposite problem in Uganda and Burkina Faso.
In Burkina Faso the issue was that GDP per capita numbers were calculated from industrial output divided by population estimates so in order to look good, local government had an incentive to underestimate population so they seemed richer.
It’s a particularly acute issue in federal and resource-rich countries in which such large relative amounts of cash are distributed according to local population numbers, so I’d imagine more exaggeration in Nigeria than the average LMIC.