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This chart tracks the UN’s latest demographic projections for four large populations: India, China, Europe, and the United States. Together, they account for about half of today’s world population.

The curves are shaped by what the UN expects to happen to future fertility, life expectancy, and migration worldwide.

India and China are the world’s most populous countries today, and the UN projects that both will remain at the top through the end of the century. Yet their trajectories diverge sharply in these projections.

China’s population has already begun to fall and is projected to more than halve to around 630 million by 2100. India, by contrast, is expected to keep growing for nearly four more decades, reaching about 1.7 billion people in 2060 and gradually declining to around 1.5 billion.

In contrast, the United States and Europe are projected to change more gradually. The US is expected to grow slowly and steadily, reaching about 420 million people by the end of the century. Europe’s population, meanwhile, is projected to decline. Based on these figures, its population peaked around 750 million in 2020, and is expected to fall to about 590 million by 2100, not far from China’s projected level.

The UN’s model is the most widely used baseline for international population comparisons, but all population projections are sensitive to the underlying assumptions. Other research groups use different demographic assumptions about fertility, life expectancy, and migration to reach different long-term population figures.

Explore the UN projections in our Population & Demography Explorer, or compare them with alternative scenarios in the Wittgenstein Centre Human Capital Data Explorer →

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Describing someone as “young” or “old” is rather arbitrary. However, something we can quantify is whether a given person is “young” or “old” compared to the rest of the world.

Imagine we sorted all 8 billion people alive today from youngest to oldest. The person standing right in the middle would be about 30 years old; that's the median age today. The chart shows the global median age and the UN’s projection to 2100.

In 2025, if you are over 30, you are older than most people in the world.

The chart also shows that if you were born in 1950, you stopped being “young” when you passed 20, as that was the median age in 1970.

As birth rates decline and life expectancy increases, the median age is expected to keep rising until the end of the century.

Whether you’re younger or older than most, the world is still relatively young, and this matters for many aspects of society, from the demand for resources and jobs to long-term planning for healthcare, education, and infrastructure.

If you want to dig deeper into this data, have a look at our Population & Demography Data Explorer →

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South Korea is undergoing one of the world’s most rapid demographic transitions. Fertility rates — the number of children a woman has over her lifetime — have fallen rapidly over the last 50 years, and this is reflected in a rapidly aging population.

One of the clearest signs is the total number of children living in South Korea. In the chart, you can see that the number of children and adolescents under 15 years old is shrinking quickly.

The number of under-15s peaked around a decade later but has now fallen by 60%, from 14 million to less than 6 million.

This is a pattern we see in other countries such as Japan, China, and even Thailand — albeit at different rates.

Explore more data on population trends, births, and fertility rates in our Population and Demography data explorer →

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The number of children in the world has stopped growing. This moment in time was given the term “peak child” by the late Hans Rosling.

The chart shows the estimated number of children under five years old globally up to 2023, with projections from the United Nations out to 2100. The UN thinks the number of under-5s peaked in 2017.

The chart also shows the number of young people under 15, which peaked in 2020. And the number of under-25s, which may have peaked last year.

“Peak child” is a sign that the world is on course for “peak population”. The UN expects the world population to start falling before the end of the century.

Read more about the key insights from the latest UN World Population Prospects →

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Today, Africa is home to 1.5 billion people. By 2070, the UN expects this number to more than double. Its estimates range from 2.7 billion to 3.7 billion, with the most likely scenario placing the African population around 3.2 billion.

This region is where most of the growth in the world population will occur in the next 50 years.

Europe’s population is already shrinking, with Asia and Latin America expected to follow from the 2050s onwards. The UN expects North America’s population to grow, although much slower than Africa's.

Read more about population growth →

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Today, there are around 830 million people aged 65 and older in the world. According to the latest UN data, it is projected to grow to 1.7 billion by 2054.

Asia, the world's most populous continent, is at the heart of this change, with its elderly population expected to more than double.

While rapid population growth has driven some of this increase, better healthcare and longer life spans also play a huge role.

It’s a great achievement that so many more people are living longer, healthier lives. At the same time, the working-age population will only grow 20% between 2024 and 2054. Societies will need to figure out how to care for more elderly people while improving everyone’s quality of life.

Explore population growth across countries with our explorer →

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Fertility rates — which measure the average number of children per woman — have been falling worldwide. Since 1950, global fertility rates have halved, from almost 5 children per woman to 2.3.

As a result, global population growth has slowed dramatically, and many countries' populations are expected to decline by the end of the century.

This is because fertility rates in many countries have fallen below the “replacement level”. This is the level at which a population replaces itself from one generation to the next. It’s generally defined as a rate of 2.1 children per woman.

The map shows which countries had fertility rates above and below this level in 2021. This is based on estimates from the UN World Population Prospects.

Explore the data →

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The increase in the world’s population is not exponential. The global population is growing, but the growth rate has declined since its peak six decades ago.

The chart shows the annual rate of global population growth according to historical estimates and projections from the UN World Population Prospects.

The growth rate peaked in 1963 at over 2% per year, and since then, it has more than halved, falling to less than 1% by 2020.

The UN demographers expect rates to continue falling until the end of the century, eventually leading to negative growth rates and a shrinking global population.

Explore this data →

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There are many ways to examine a country's age structure. One interesting approach is to look at the age group with the largest population, as shown in the world map.

Across most African countries, the largest demographic is children younger than 10.

This contrasts sharply with Europe, where the largest age groups tend to be much older. Many European countries are most heavily populated by those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. For example, the fifties are the largest age group in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In Monaco and Croatia, the most populous are those in their sixties.

If we look back to 1950, the map looks very different. Small children and teenagers were the most populous age groups in almost all countries.

Over the last 70 years, birth rates have declined in most countries, and life expectancy has increased, leading to aging populations worldwide.

Explore this data →

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China is no longer the most populated country in the world. According to estimates by the UN World Population Prospects, India took over in 2023. That year, both countries had around 1.4 billion inhabitants — as many as the entire African continent.

However, as we can see in the chart, China’s population is expected to decline, and India’s growth is expected to slow down. Meanwhile, Africa’s population is expected to keep growing; the UN estimates it could reach close to 4 billion people by the end of the century.

Explore this data →