Instead of presenting you with the world’s largest islands by land area, today we take a look into the 11 Largest Islands in the World by Population. Some of us may think of islands as tiny specks on the world map, with white sandy beaches, a few inhabitants and a rural vibe. In contrast to the 10 Most Remote Inhabited Islands in the World, most of the islands in this list will be huge, hosting millions of people and a variety of flora and fauna.
There may be correlation between the largest islands in the world by land area and the largest in the world by population, as most of the entries in this list have 20 largest islands in the world by land area. It makes sense as for you to have a large number of inhabitants, you would also need a large area, and with it a suitable ecosystem, environment and abundant natural resources. These three things may have been the ones responsible for the huge number of people living in these islands.
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Rank for each island was determined by computing the estimated population for 2014. Most of the countries on this list have 2010 as their recent census, thus the population estimates in this list were either obtained from different government agency websites of manually computed based on the 2010 population census and the annual population growth rate. Sources of data for 2010 population came mostly from Wikipedia, with additional information such as population growth percent coming from each country’s census bureau. CityPopulation was also used for individual region populations. For some entries with adjacent islands, the population of the islands was subtracted from the general population to some up with a more accurate number. Australia was not included in this list as it is generally agreed upon that Australia is a continent.
With that said, let us take a closer look at the 11 largest islands in the world by population.
