Count of profiles by Birth country (21 April 2024)

Question

I was curious how many open profiles there were by Birth country so I created such a list - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Count_of_Profiles_by_Birth_Country

It will probably come as no surprise to anyone that the countries with most profiles are the United States, England, Canada and Australia. It might be more of a surprise that the Netherlands has the next highest count.

The "place" with the 2nd most profiles is actually profiles that lack anything in the birth location field. These are 17.19% of the total (5,396,866 profiles).

The 10th highest count is for profiles with an unknown country (meaning WikiTree+ could not determine the country due to data and formatting). These are 1.66% of the total (519,958 profiles).

Edited to add: I have added a 2nd chart for places above 200,000 locations which includes regions (States/counties/provinces). Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York have more than the Netherlands.

Comments

The tag "statistics" is highly relevant for this post. Just sayin'

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Thanks for the suggestion - added

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So when you say "Region" like Virginia, that is in addition to what's counted for the U.S. or part of it?

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Virginia is included in the count for the United States.

In the context of a wikitree+ search a region only exists in the context of a country. A search for unknowncountry will not include anything in a region search. It may include words like Virginia in a location search, but the location is not structured so that there is a region. If you search for open birthcountry="United States" birthlocation=Virginia not birthregion=Virginia you will see profiles that are not in a region search but that may be Virginia.

Answer 1

I am no really surprised, that the Netherlands scores that high, because we Dutch think we are good with English language and genealogy is a big theme in the Netherlands. I was for years active on WeRelate and also on that platform the Dutch were (and are) close to the English speeking countries.

Comments

I am not at all surprised either. The Netherlands project does a great job (speaking for everyone else - I am a mostly inactive member of the project). I am in awe of the connecting done by that project.

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I am also not surprised. I started with my LNAB and a few hints from relatives.

Wonderful WikiTree folks have built the Dutch lines back farther and wider than any other on my lines.

I agree you, Klaas, Dutch people are good with English language and I am grateful so many of you are interested in genealogy.

Answer 2

Thank you!

Ireland comes about 9th which isn’t bad for a small county, although a fair number I’d imagine might have died elsewhere. I wonder what the result would be if you repeat in a year’s time? Do they grow at approximately the same rate?

Comments

I would assume that the Global Project & the Locators Challenge are going to have some effect on the future growth rate.

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I expect and hope the Global Project would have a big impact on the numbers, but the percentages may not change too much because there are so many profiles overall.

One way to increase Ireland (other than making profiles) is to fix locations in this search as you have time - https://plus.wikitree.com/default.htm?report=srch1&Query=open+birthcountry%3Dunknowncountry+birthlocation%3DIreland+or+open+birthcountry%3Dunknowncountry+birthlocation%3DEire+&MaxProfiles=5000&Format=&SortOrder=BiLoc&PageSize=100

Answer 3

Nice idea. It might also be interesting to see the number of profiles in proportion to the current population of the listed countries, for instance per 1,000 inhabitants. I did a quick check for the five major Nordic countries, ordered by "density":

Iceland	375,318	14,392	~38.3
Norway	5,474,360	196,088	~35.8
Sweden	10,612,086	311,318	~29.3
Denmark	5,910,913	132,866	~22.5
Finland	5,545,475	45,886	~8.3

I won't comment the figures much, only that with such relatively small numbers, individual efforts can make very large differences.

Comments

Interesting! And yes, individual efforts can make large differences