World Demographics
How many of us there are, and how that's changing — population, fertility, median age, and urbanisation.
There are 8.1 billion people on Earth — more than three times as many as in 1950, and still climbing. But underneath the headline, almost everything else about world demographics has shifted: the average woman has fewer than half as many children as her grandmother did, the median person on the planet is now thirty rather than twenty-two, and more of us live in cities than not.
These four series are the engine of a lot else on the platform — the long arc of Human Development is built on falling fertility and lengthening lives; the trajectory in Energy & Decarbonization is the arithmetic of more people, living better, in (mostly) less-polluting cities. The growth phase isn't over (the UN projects a peak around 10.4 billion in the 2080s) but its character has changed: today's increase is much more about people living longer than about births, and that changes everything from labour markets to climate policy.
Data: Our World in Data (CC BY).
Fertility rate
yearly2.25 children per woman in 2023 — barely above the 2.1 'replacement rate' that holds a population steady. The world figure peaked at 5.3 in 1963 and has fallen steadily since: as incomes rise, child survival improves, and contraception spreads, women everywhere have fewer children. Most of the world is now *below* replacement — including all of East Asia, almost all of Europe, much of the Americas, and India. Population growth from here is driven mainly by demographic momentum (today's young have not yet had their children) and by the remaining high-fertility regions, principally sub-Saharan Africa.
@admin · 28 May 2026
Median age
yearly30 years old in 2023 — up from 22 in 1950. The world is now noticeably older than it was when someone born mid-century grew up. Most of the shift happened after 1990: with fertility falling and lives lengthening simultaneously, the age distribution moves up. Japan's median is now 49; the EU's is 44; sub-Saharan Africa's is still under 20. The economic, fiscal, and political consequences of an older world — pensions, housing, productivity, voting patterns — are only just beginning to bite.
@admin · 28 May 2026
Urban share
yearly58% of humanity lived in cities and towns in 2025 — up from under 30% in 1950. The world crossed 50% urban for the first time around 2007. Almost all of the projected population growth between now and the 2080s will land in cities, almost entirely in Africa and Asia. The other stories on this dashboard hinge on this one: urbanisation drives down fertility (city families tend to be smaller), and rising median age plus urbanisation together set up the most consequential economic story of the century — what the world's labour force does as it ages and concentrates.
@admin · 28 May 2026
Discussion of this dashboard
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8.09 billion people in 2023, more than three times the 2.49 billion of 1950. The population took the first 200,000 years of *Homo sapiens* to reach 1 billion (around 1804), and 12 years to add the most recent billion (7 → 8 between 2011 and 2022). But the growth *rate* has been falling for decades — it peaked over 2.1% a year in the late 1960s and is now about 0.9%. The UN projects a peak around 10.4 billion in the 2080s, then a slow decline. The hockey stick is bending.
@admin · 28 May 2026