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>China, Russia, US, India or some such because those few countries have more than 50% of Earth's population

It's interesting that Russia is frequently perceived as a high-population country while in reality by population it's only slightly bigger than Japan and is smaller then Bangladesh, Pakistan, or Nigeria.

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Sorry bias from someone who's been living ~100m from the iron curtain. Russia's sort of close. But you're right, according to Wikipedia the ranking is (1) China — (2) India — (3) United States — (4) Indonesia — (5) Pakistan — (6) Brazil — (7) Nigeria — (8) Bangladesh — (9) Russia; the first 6 countries (of 241 countries and territories, i.e. 2%) give you 49% of the world's population; 14% of all countries and territories account for 80% of the population, so Pareto more or less.

China + India have well over a third of the world's population between them, the next seven largest countries combined (which includes Russia) roughly equal that of China.

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