Demographic information is often provided on a national basis, but global environmental and other cross-disciplinary studies usually require data that are referenced by geographic coordinates, such as latitude and longitude, rather than by political or administrative units. In this Gridded Population of the World (GPW) data set, the distribution of human population is converted from national or subnational units to a series of georeferenced quadrilateral grids. Developed in 1999-2000, GPW version 2, incorporates a number improvements to the original version of this popular dataset.

GPW version 2 provides estimates of the population of the world in 1990 and 1995, both population counts (raw counts) and population densities (per square km). National figures have been reconciled to be consistent with United Nations population estimates for those years; unadjusted data are also available. Both images and data are accessible and downloadable. Looking for LandScan? Want to compare GPW with LandScan?