World population

Population overview

World population - is the total number of humans currently living in the World. As of today, the total population of the world is around 8.39 billion people. The first billion was reached around 1800 and in just 200 years we reached 6 billion.

According to Population Division of United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs , these are the main milestones:

• 1 billion - 1804
• 2 billion – 1927 (in 123 years)
• 3 billion – 1960 (in 33 years)
• 4 billion – 1974 (in 14 years)
• 5 billion – 1987 (in 13 years)
• 6 billion – October 12, 1999 (in 12 years)
• 7 billion – October 31, 2011 (in 12 years)
• 8 billion – November 15, 2022 (in 11 years)

The World population is expecting to grow up to around 8.5 billion in 2030 according to our estimates.

Currently, the world population is increasing by more than 100 million per year.
Approximately 4.78 billion people live in cities today, megacities continue to grow, but smaller urban areas capture most of the urban increase.
The Global sex ratio is 1.018. It means that we have slightly more men then women. The median age of the global population is estimated to be 31 years in 2025. Globally, life expectancy at birth reached 73.3 years in 2024

More than 70% of the world population live in 20 most populous countries of the world. There are just 2 countries in the world with a population more than 1 billion people: China and India. About 36 % of the World population live just in these two countries. Despite the fact that China is curently the most populous country in the world, India's population growths much faster. And in 2025 India is expected to become the most populous country in the world.

More than half of the world's population identify with a religious group. The biggest groups are: Christianity (32%) and Islam (24%).

Top 20 most populous countries (20-04-2026)

1		India	1,485,867,206	17.72%
2		China	1,483,904,954	17.69%
3		United States of America (USA)	346,009,804	4.13%
4		Indonesia	294,744,034	3.51%
5		Pakistan	249,389,632	2.97%
6		Nigeria	240,288,962	2.87%
7		Brazil	224,247,166	2.67%
8		Bangladesh	176,661,326	2.11%
9		Russian Federation	146,280,722	1.74%
10		Mexico	139,720,180	1.67%
11		Ethiopia	132,886,347	1.58%
12		Japan	125,728,864	1.50%
13		Philippines	120,159,905	1.43%
14		Egypt	116,134,364	1.38%
15		Democratic Republic of the Congo	107,309,786	1.28%
16		Vietnam	103,946,056	1.24%
17		Turkey	93,193,840	1.11%
18		Iran	90,339,905	1.08%
19		Germany	83,983,715	1.00%
20		Tanzania	71,608,907	0.85%

This list includes 20 most populous countries in the World. Approximately 5.83 billion people live in these twenty countries, or around 70% of the world's population.

See also: Full List of countries and dependent territories of the World by population

World population 2026

The population of the world is projected to increase by 106,807,201 people in 2026 and reach 8,461,970,118 in the end of the year. The natural increase is expected to be positive, as the number of births will exceed the number of deaths by 106,035,998.

Population change rates in 2026

According to our estimations, daily change rates of world population in 2026 will be the following:

• 470,113 live births average per day (19,588.02 in an hour)
• 179,603 deaths average per day (7,483.46 in an hour)

The population of World will be increasing by 292,622 persons daily in 2026.

Demographics of the World 2025

As of 1 January 2026, the population of the world was estimated to be 8,355,162,917. This is an increase of 1.27 % (104,739,304 people) compared to population of 8,250,423,613 the year before. In 2025 the natural increase was positive, as the number of births exceeded the number of deaths by 104,064,126.

Below are the key figures for the world population in 2025:

• 168,788,901 live births
• 64,724,774 deaths
• 4,215,640,830 males as of 31 December 2025
• 4,139,522,087 females as of 31 December 2025
• 4,511,787,975 people live in urban areas (54 % of total world population)
• 3,843,374,942 people live in rural areas (46 % of total world population)

World population density

The world population density is 61.4 people per square kilometer (159.0 per mi²) as of April 2026. This number is calculated using 8,355,162,917 people as the world population and 136,120,354 km² (52,556,368 mi²)as Earth's total area. This is the sum of land and water areas within international boundaries and coastlines of all the countries in the world.

Since the Earth's total area is about 510 million square kilometers, the world population density can be calculated in several ways:

• 16.4 people/km² (42.4/mi²) - the Earth's total area (including land and water) is 510,072,000 km² (196,939,921 mi²).
• 55.5 people/km² (143.8/mi²) - the Earth's land area. This includes all continental and island land area as well as Antarctica. The area in that case is 150,461,685 km² (58,093,588 mi²).
• 61.4 people/km² (159.0/mi²) - sum of land and water areas within international boundaries and coastlines of all the countries in the world. The area in that case is 136,120,354 km² (52,556,368 mi²).

See also:

List of countries by surface area and density by United Nations Statistics Division
Map and list of the world by density of population at worldstat.info

Religion of the World

Religion	Number of followers	Percentage of total population
Christianity	2,653,697,468	31.8 %
Islam	2,127,845,836	25.5 %
Hinduism	1,244,397,016	14.9 %
Religiously Unaffiliated	1,242,123,158	14.9 %
Buddhism	538,424,325	6.4 %
Folk or traditional religions	462,918,022	5.5 %
Other	69,968,520	0.8 %
Judaism	15,788,570	0.2 %

Source: Pew Research Center. The Global Religious Landscape .

Number of followers estimated by Countrymeters ( January 1 2026).

Global age structure

As of the beginning of 2026 according to our estimates the world had the following population age distribution:

24.9

60.8

7.1

	- percentage of population under 15
	- percentage of population between 15 and 64 years old
	- percentage of population 65+

In absolute figures (estimate):

• 2,084,569,466 young people under 15 years old ( 1,077,744,528 males / 1,006,828,378 females)
• 5,081,333,771 persons between 15 and 64 years old ( 2,569,398,787 males / 2,511,954,917 females)
• 590,141,646 persons above 64 years old ( 261,787,349 males / 328,342,163 females)

We prepared a simplified model of the population distribution pyramid which is broken down into 3 main age groups. The groups are the same as we used above: population under 15, between 15 and 64 and population which is over 65 year old.

65+

15-64

0-14

male

female

As we can see the World population pyramid has an expanding type. This type of pyramid is common for developing countries with declining fertility rate but still high birth and death rates.

World life expectancy

Life expectancy at birth is one of the most important demographic indicator. It shows the number of years a newborn infant would live assuming that birth and death rates will remain at the same level during the whole lifetime.

According to Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, life expectancy at birth for the world as a whole increased from 65 years in 1990-1995 to 70 years in 2010-2015. Although wide disparities persist such that the average length of life in Africa in 2010-2015, for example, is 12 years shorter than the global average and 21 years shorter than in Northern America - see figure below.

Global literacy

According to our estimates 4,894,412,455 persons or 86.3% of adult population (aged 15 years and above) in the world are able to read and write. Accordingly about 777,070,761 adults are illiterate.

Literacy rate for adult male population is 89.96% (2,546,850,112 persons). 284,336,024 are illiterate.
Literacy rate for adult female population is 82.65% (2,347,562,343 persons). 492,734,737 are illiterate.

Youth literacy rates are 92.81% and 90.13% for males and females accordingly. The overall youth literacy rate is 91.51%. Youth literacy rate definition covers the population between the ages of 15 to 24 years.

Source: The estimation data for section "World population literacy" is based on the latest data published by UNESCO Institute for Statistics (retrieved March 13, 2016) .