Share of the world
Each country’s people (or births) as a percent of the world total that year. Forecast years use the UN medium variant. Toggle countries on the chart — population stock or annual births.
Population and births over time
UN medium variant. History through 2023; forecast from 2024 to 2100.
Shaded area = UN medium forecast from 2024.
Select up to 8 countries. Values are percent of the world total that year (residents).
Have a correction, a better estimate, or additional data—at the global, national, regional, or city level? Help improve the data
Will US births overtake China's? Not under this chart's assumptions — but that answer is shakier than it looks.
The 2024–2100 portion of this chart is the UN WPP 2024-revision medium variant, which assumes China's fertility partially stabilises and keeps its births roughly 2× the US's all the way to 2100. The real numbers since published don't show that stabilising: China's NBS reported 9.54M births in 2024 (a one-off Year-of-the-Dragon bump) then 7.92M in 2025 — a 17% drop in one year, and already below the level the UN medium variant doesn't expect China to reach until the 2040s. The chart above now plots those two real figures instead of the superseded 2024 forecast for China and the US; everything from 2026 onward is still the UN projection.
Extrapolating China's actual ~2015–2025 decline rate in a straight line (as several people online have done) puts a crossing somewhere in the mid-2030s to early-2040s — plausible, but it leans on a decade that includes an unusual one-year dragon-year swing, so treat any specific year as a rough estimate, not a forecast. The honest range is: UN medium variant says no crossing this century; trend extrapolation says 2030s–2040s. Nobody has a reliable single number.
Sources: China NBS, 2025 national economic & social development communiqué (28 Feb 2026); US CDC/NCHS, “Births: Final Data for 2024” and “Births: Provisional Data for 2025” (Apr 2026).
Who makes up the world, 1950 to 2100
Tile area is each country's share of world population (or births). Pick a year: 2023 uses counts, other years the UN's shares, with 2024 onward from the medium projection. Asia still dominates the stock; Africa's share of births is already much larger.
- Asia
- Africa
- Europe
- North America
- South America
- Oceania
Area = share of world population. Tiny countries are rolled into “Other” per region — click any tile for the exact figure.
Have a correction, a better estimate, or additional data—at the global, national, regional, or city level? Help improve the data
Latest shares
Population 2023; births 2023. Δ is birth share minus population share — positive means a younger age structure punching above its weight.
| # | Country | Pop. share | Birth share | Δ pp |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 17.8% | 17.6% | -0.2 |
| 2 | China | 17.6% | 6.0% | -11.6 |
| 3 | United States | 4.2% | 2.7% | -1.5 |
| 4 | Indonesia | 3.5% | 3.4% | -0.1 |
| 5 | Pakistan | 3.1% | 5.2% | +2.1 |
| 6 | Nigeria | 2.8% | 5.7% | +2.9 |
| 7 | Brazil | 2.6% | 2.0% | -0.6 |
| 8 | Bangladesh | 2.1% | 2.6% | +0.5 |
| 9 | Russia | 1.8% | 1.0% | -0.8 |
| 10 | Ethiopia | 1.6% | 3.1% | +1.5 |
| 11 | Mexico | 1.6% | 1.5% | -0.1 |
| 12 | Japan | 1.5% | 0.6% | -0.9 |
| 13 | Egypt | 1.4% | 1.8% | +0.4 |
| 14 | Philippines | 1.4% | 1.4% | 0.0 |
| 15 | DR Congo | 1.3% | 3.3% | +2.0 |
| 16 | Vietnam | 1.2% | 1.1% | -0.1 |
| 17 | Iran | 1.1% | 0.9% | -0.2 |
| 18 | Turkey | 1.1% | 0.8% | -0.3 |
| 19 | Germany | 1.0% | 0.5% | -0.5 |
| 20 | Thailand | 0.9% | 0.4% | -0.5 |
| 21 | France | 0.8% | 0.5% | -0.3 |
| 22 | South Africa | 0.8% | 0.9% | +0.1 |
| 23 | Tanzania | 0.8% | 1.8% | +1.0 |
| 24 | United Kingdom | 0.8% | 0.5% | -0.3 |
| 25 | Italy | 0.7% | 0.3% | -0.4 |
| 26 | Kenya | 0.7% | 1.1% | +0.4 |
| 27 | Myanmar | 0.7% | 0.7% | 0.0 |
| 28 | Algeria | 0.6% | 0.7% | +0.1 |
| 29 | Argentina | 0.6% | 0.4% | -0.2 |
| 30 | Colombia | 0.6% | 0.5% | -0.1 |
| 31 | Iraq | 0.6% | 0.9% | +0.3 |
| 32 | South Korea | 0.6% | 0.2% | -0.4 |
| 33 | Spain | 0.6% | 0.3% | -0.3 |
| 34 | Sudan | 0.6% | 1.3% | +0.7 |
| 35 | Uganda | 0.6% | 1.3% | +0.7 |
| 36 | Afghanistan | 0.5% | 1.1% | +0.6 |
| 37 | Angola | 0.5% | 1.0% | +0.5 |
| 38 | Canada | 0.5% | 0.3% | -0.2 |
| 39 | Morocco | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.0 |
| 40 | Poland | 0.5% | 0.2% | -0.3 |
| 41 | Ukraine | 0.5% | 0.2% | -0.3 |
| 42 | Yemen | 0.5% | 1.0% | +0.5 |
| 43 | Cameroon | 0.4% | 0.7% | +0.3 |
| 44 | Cote d'Ivoire | 0.4% | 0.8% | +0.4 |
| 45 | Ghana | 0.4% | 0.7% | +0.3 |
| 46 | Madagascar | 0.4% | 0.8% | +0.4 |
| 47 | Malaysia | 0.4% | 0.3% | -0.1 |
| 48 | Mozambique | 0.4% | 1.0% | +0.6 |
| 49 | Nepal | 0.4% | 0.4% | 0.0 |
| 50 | Peru | 0.4% | 0.4% | 0.0 |
How to read it
Population share is the stock of people. Birth share is the flow of babies that year — so Nigeria or the DRC can outrank much larger rich countries on births while still trailing on population.
Related: regional birth pies · population explorer · compare countries · The world in 82 equal-population regions, 1914
Source: OWID population with UN projections · number of births.