Keith challenges the usual "overpopulated vs. underpopulated" debate and shows why that's the wrong way to think about demographics—especially if you're a real estate investor.

Listeners will hear about surprising global population comparisons that flip common assumptions.

Why raw population numbers don't actually explain housing shortages or rent strength.

How household formation, aging, and migration really drive demand for rentals.

Which kinds of markets tend to see persistent housing pressure—and why the US has a long‑term demographic edge.

You'll come away seeing population headlines very differently, and with a clearer lens for spotting where future housing demand is most likely to show up.

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Complete episode transcript:

Keith Weinhold 0:01

Keith, welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, is the world overpopulated or underpopulated? Also is the United States over or underpopulated? These are not just rhetorical questions, because I'm going to answer them both. Just one of Africa's 54 nations has more births than all of Europe and Russia combined. One US state has seen their population decline for decades. This is all central to housing demand today. On get rich education

Keith Weinhold 0:36

since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors, and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast, or visit get rich education.com

Speaker 1 1:21

You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.

Keith Weinhold 1:31

Welcome to GRE from Norfolk Virginia to Norfolk, Nebraska and across 188 nations worldwide, you are inside. Get rich education. I am the GRE founder, Best Selling Author, longtime real estate investor. You can see my written work in Forbes and the USA Today, but I'm best known as the host of this incomprehensibly slack John operation that you're listening to right now. My name is Keith Weinhold. You probably know that already, one reason that we're talking about underpopulated versus overpopulated today is that also one of my degrees is in geography and demography, essentially, is human geography, and that's why this topic is in my wheelhouse. It's just a humble bachelor's degree, by the way, if a population is not staying stable or growing, then demand for housing just must atrophy away. That's what people think, but that is not true. That's oversimplified. In some cases. It might even be totally false. You're going to see why. Now, Earth's population is at an all time high of about 8.2 billion people, and it keeps growing, and it's going to continue to keep growing, but the rate of growth is slowing now. Where could all of the people on earth fit? This is just a bit of a ridiculous abstraction in a sense, but I think it helps you visualize things. Just take this scenario, if all the humans were packed together tightly, but in a somewhat realistic way, in a standing room only way, if every person on earth stood shoulder to shoulder, that would allow about 2.7 square feet per person, they would sort of be packed like a subway car. Well, they could fit in a square, about 27 kilometers on one side, about 17 miles on each side of that square. Now, what does that mean in real places that is smaller than New York City, about half the size of Los Angeles County and roughly the footprint of Lake Tahoe? So yes, every human alive today could physically fit inside one midsize us metro area. This alone tells you something important. The world's problem is certainly not a lack of space. Rather, it's where people live and not how many there are. So that was all of Earth's inhabitants. Now, where could all Americans fit us residents using the same shoulder to shoulder assumption, and the US population by mid year this year is supposed to be about 350,000,00349 that's a square about five and a half kilometers, or 3.4 miles on each side. And some real world comparisons there are. That's about half of Manhattan, smaller than San Francisco and roughly the size of Disney World, so every American could fit into a single small city footprint. And if you're beginning to form an early clue that we are not overpopulated globally, yes, that's the sense that you Should be getting.

Keith Weinhold 5:01

now, if you're in Bangladesh, it feels overpopulated there. They've got 175 million people, and that nation is only the size of Iowa. In area, Bangladesh is low lying and typhoon prone. They get a lot of flooding, which complicates their already bad sanitation problems and a dense population like that, and that creates waterborne diseases, and it's really more of an infrastructure problem in a place like Bangladesh than it is a population problem. Then Oppositely, you've got Australia as much land as the 48 contiguous states, yet just 27 million people in Australia, and only 1/400 as many people as Bangladesh in density. Now we talk about differential population. About 80% of Americans live in the eastern half of the US. But yet, the East is not overpopulated because we have sufficient infrastructure, and I've got some more mind blowing population stats for you later, both world and us. Now, as far as is the world overpopulated or underpopulated, which is our central question, depending on who you ask and where they live, you're going to hear completely different answers. Some people are convinced that the planet is bursting at the seams. Others warn that we're headed for a population collapse. But here's the problem, that question overpopulated or underpopulated, it's the wrong question. It's the wrong framing, especially if you're into real estate, because housing demand doesn't respond to total headcount or global averages or scary demographic headlines. Housing demand responds to where people live, how old they are, and how they form households. And once you understand this, a lot of things suddenly begin to make sense, like why housing shortages persist, why rents stay high, even when affordability feels stretched, why some states struggle while others boom, and why population headlines often mislead investors.

Keith Weinhold 7:20

So today I want to reframe how you think about population and connect it directly to housing demand, both globally and right here in the United States. And let's start with the US, because that's probably where you invest.

Keith Weinhold 7:33

Here's a simple fact that should confuse people, but usually doesn't, the United States has below replacement fertility. I'll talk about fertility rates a little later. They're similar to birth rates, meaning that Americans are not having enough children to replace the population naturally and without immigration, the US population would eventually shrink, and yet in the US, we have a housing shortage, rising rents, tight vacancy and a lot of metros and persistent demand for rental housing, which could all seem contradictory. Now, if population alone determine housing demand, well, then the US really shouldn't have any housing shortage at all, but it does so clearly, population alone is not the main driver, and really that contradiction is like your first clue that most ...