Countries With the Oldest Populations, Ranked by Median Age

The countries with the oldest populations are mostly in Europe and East Asia. Monaco has the highest median age in the world at 54.4 years, Japan follows at 49.0, and Italy at 47.5, according to the United Nations 2024 revision of World Population Prospects. Half the people in these places are older than those ages. This article ranks the top 20, explains how the numbers are built, and shows why a population can grow old in three very different ways, each with different consequences for pensions, workers, and health care.

Key takeaways

• Monaco (54.4 years) and Japan (49.0) hold the top two places on the UN's 2023 median-age list; Italy (47.5) is third among sovereign states with full data.
• Japan's population has fallen from a peak of about 128 million in 2010 to roughly 123 million, and about 30% of residents were 65 or older in 2025.
• South Korea's total fertility rate hit 0.72 in 2023, the lowest of any country, and Statistics Korea projects its population to fall from about 51.7 million in 2022 to about 36.2 million in 2072.
• Eastern European countries are aging and emptying at the same time: Latvia's population fell 29% between 1990 and 2023.
• Immigration slows aging but does not stop it, and pro-birth cash policies have a weak record.

The 20 oldest countries by median age

The table below ranks countries by median age, the age that splits a population into two equal halves. Median ages are UN estimates for 2023. The share of people aged 65 and over and the total fertility rate (TFR, the average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime at current age-specific birth rates) are World Bank figures for the same year.

Rank	Country	Median age (years)	Aged 65+ (%)	Fertility rate (births per woman)
1	Monaco	54.4	36.4	not reported
2	Japan	49.0	29.6	1.20
3	Italy	47.5	24.2	1.21
4	Portugal	46.2	24.1	1.45
5	Greece	45.7	23.5	1.26
6	Germany	45.1	22.8	1.39
7	Bosnia and Herzegovina	44.9	21.6	1.49
8	Spain	44.9	20.7	1.12
9	Croatia	44.8	22.8	1.46
10	South Korea	44.5	18.3	0.72
11	Bulgaria	44.3	21.8	1.81
12	Slovenia	43.9	21.3	1.51
13	Serbia	43.9	22.3	1.62
14	Hungary	43.3	20.8	1.55
15	Austria	43.1	20.2	1.32
16	Latvia	43.1	21.3	1.36
17	Finland	42.8	23.6	1.26
18	Czechia	42.7	20.6	1.46
19	Romania	42.6	19.8	1.54
20	Switzerland	42.3	19.6	1.33

Sources: median age from the UN World Population Prospects 2024 revision as published by Our World in Data (2023 values); share aged 65+ and fertility rate from the World Bank, 2023. The microstates San Marino (47.4) and Andorra (43.2) and territories such as Hong Kong (46.2), Puerto Rico (45.3), Martinique (48.8), and Guadeloupe (46.6) also have high median ages but are left out because the other columns are not available or they are not sovereign states.

Treat the ranks below the top five as a cluster rather than a strict ladder. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Spain tie at 44.9, Slovenia and Serbia at 43.9, and Austria and Latvia at 43.1, and a change of 0.1 year is well inside the uncertainty of any population estimate. Switzerland's 42.3 sits only 0.2 above Lithuania's 42.1, which falls just outside the table.

Different publishers also give different numbers for the same year. The CIA World Factbook's 2024 estimates, now frozen because the CIA announced the Factbook's sunset on February 4, 2026, listed Monaco at 56.9 and Japan at 49.9, a little above the UN figures. Neither is wrong. They use different base data and different projection methods, which is why a ranking should always name its source and year.

What median age measures, and what it hides

Imagine lining up every resident of a country from youngest to oldest and walking to the person in the exact middle. That person's age is the median age. In Japan she is 49, so half of all Japanese residents are younger and half are older. The statistic is a quick summary of the whole age structure, which makes it better than average age for comparing countries, because a few very old or very young people do not drag it around.

It also hides a lot. A country can have a high median age because it has many elderly people, because it has few children, or both. Monaco's share of people aged 65 and over, 36.4%, is 6.8 points above Japan's 29.6%, yet its median age is 5.4 years higher, which hints at a thin base of children and young adults as well as a large elderly group. A single number cannot tell you whether the working-age middle of the pyramid is stable or draining away.

The more practical companion statistic is the old-age dependency ratio: the number of people aged 65 and over per 100 people aged 15 to 64. It is a rough measure of how many potential workers stand behind each older person, and it shows the gap between countries more sharply than median age does.

Country	People 65+ per 100 aged 15 to 64 (2023)	Working-age people per person 65+
Monaco	70.1	1.4
Japan	50.1	2.0
Finland	38.3	2.6
Portugal	38.2	2.6
Italy	38.0	2.6
Germany	36.0	2.8
United States	26.8	3.7
South Korea	25.9	3.9
China	20.7	4.8
India	10.2	9.8
Nigeria	5.5	18.3

Source: UN World Population Prospects 2024 via Our World in Data, 2023. The last column is 100 divided by the ratio, rounded to one decimal place.

Read the last column as a plain-language version of the same idea. Japan has about two working-age people for every person over 65, Italy about 2.6, and Nigeria about 18. The South Korean figure looks comfortable today, 3.9, but the country sits near the start of a steep slide, which the South Korea section below explains.

Why a country gets old: three levers and a bathtub

Think of a national population as a bathtub. Births are the tap, deaths are the drain, and migration is a side pipe that can add or remove water. The age of the water in the tub depends on how fast each flows, and on how old the water was to begin with.

Three forces set the median age. Fertility is the biggest. When women have fewer than about 2.1 children each, the level at which each generation just replaces itself without migration, every cohort of newborns is smaller than the one before, and the middle of the age distribution climbs. The UN reports that more than half of the world's countries and areas are now below that replacement level, and nearly a fifth have "ultra-low" fertility, under 1.4 births per woman, a group that includes China, Italy, South Korea, and Spain.

Longevity is the second force. Longer lives stretch the top of the age pyramid, so a country with a middle-aged baby-boom generation and rising life expectancy ends up with a large and growing elderly group, even where births stabilize. The UN estimated global life expectancy at 73.3 years in 2024, and the ranking of who lives longest is covered in our article on the countries with the highest life expectancy.

Migration is the third lever, and it works in both directions. Young adults who leave remove future parents and workers at once, while young immigrants add both. The old-age population is mostly fixed, because people who are already 60 are not going anywhere in a hurry, so migration mainly changes the young end of the age structure.

Why does this happen in rich countries first? Income, women's education and employment, and the availability of contraception tend to lower fertility, while public health and medicine lengthen life. The pattern is called the demographic transition, and it started in Europe and Japan and is now spreading across Asia and Latin America. Our piece on countries with the lowest birth rates covers the fertility side in more detail, and the aging biology article explains why longer lives are not the same as slower aging.

Monaco: an outlier that proves the rule

Monaco has the highest median age and the highest share of residents aged 65 and over in the table, 36.4%. It is also a city-state of roughly two square kilometers, with an unusually wealthy resident population and a workforce that, in practice, includes many people who live across the border in France and Italy. That combination means its age structure does not behave like a normal national population.

For that reason Monaco says little about how aging unfolds in a country of millions. A small territory can change its median age by several years with a modest shift in who chooses to live there. Japan, Italy, and Germany are the more instructive cases because their age structures come from births, deaths, and long-run policy choices rather than from who can afford a flat on the Riviera.

Japan: the oldest large country

Japan is the oldest large country on Earth, and it is the clearest view of what a median age near 50 looks like in practice. In 2025, about 30% of Japan's population was 65 or older, a record. The population peaked at about 128 million in 2010 and is now roughly 123 million, according to estimates.

The trend is driven by births. Japan recorded 686,061 births in 2024, the first time the number fell below 700,000 and the lowest since records began in 1899, with a total fertility rate of about 1.15 (some compilations give 1.14). Deaths reached 1,605,298, so the country lost about 919,000 people through natural decrease in a single year.

The consequences show up in specific places. The 2023 Housing and Land Survey counted 9.0 million vacant homes, 13.8% of the housing stock and a record, and the ministry attributes much of the rise to houses left empty after an older resident dies or moves into a care facility. Japan's health ministry estimates that the country will be about 570,000 nursing-care workers short by fiscal 2040, up from a projected shortfall of about 250,000 in fiscal 2026, with about 2.15 million people working in care today.

Japan's immigration policy has been cautious, but the numbers are rising. At the end of 2024 the Immigration Services Agency counted a record 3,768,977 foreign residents, up 10.5% in a year. That is still only about 3% of the population, so it narrows the gap without closing it. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research projects, under its middle scenario, a population of 87.0 million in 2070 with 38.7% aged 65 or older, and it assumes foreign-born residents will reach about 9.4 million by then, according to the Japan Center for Economic Research's summary of the projection.

Officials have said so plainly. In a January 2023 policy speech, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that the falling birth rate had put Japan on the brink of being unable to maintain social functions. Japan is also the country most associated with automation as a partial response; see which countries use the most robots per worker for how that compares with South Korea, Germany, and others.

Southern Europe: old, indebted, and tied to a pay-as-you-go model

Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Spain share high median ages (44.9 to 47.5 years), fertility rates between 1.12 and 1.45, and pension systems that are mostly pay-as-you-go. In such a system, today's workers pay for today's retirees through payroll taxes, like a conveyor belt that only keeps moving if enough people stand on the start of it. As the ratio of workers to retirees falls, the belt slows unless contributions rise, benefits fall, or retirement ages move.

The OECD's Pensions at a Glance 2023 reported that Greece and Italy spent about 16% of GDP on public pensions in 2019, the highest in the organization, against an OECD average of 7.7%. Those are accounting figures for a past year, not a forecast, and spending as a share of GDP depends as much on how generous the benefits are as on how many people are old. Even so, it explains why pension reform is a recurring theme in both countries.

Italy's most significant change was the Monti government's "Salva Italia" decree of December 2011, which contained the pension reform associated with Labour Minister Elsa Fornero. It extended the contribution-based calculation method to all workers from January 2012, ending pensions computed on final salaries for future years of service, and raised the statutory retirement age toward 67 over the following decade, with periodic adjustments linked to life expectancy. Parts have been softened by temporary exemptions since, but the core remains. Our article on how national debt levels compare shows why pension commitments weigh heavily on countries that also carry high public borrowing.

Spain's median age of 44.9 is 2.6 years below Italy's, but its fertility rate of 1.12 in 2023 is the lowest of any country in the table apart from South Korea. That is the part that matters for the future: a country with a lower median age today can still be heading for the same place.

South Korea: the lowest fertility rate in the world

South Korea ranks tenth by median age, 44.5 years, which looks unremarkable next to Japan's 49.0. The reason it belongs in any discussion of aging is the fertility rate: 0.72 births per woman in 2023, the lowest of any country, and the only member of the OECD below 1.0 since 2018. If a rate of 0.72 persisted, each generation would be about a third the size of its parents' generation, since the replacement level is roughly 2.1.

Statistics Korea published a projection in December 2023 that makes the arithmetic visible. Under its middle scenario, the population falls from about 51.7 million in 2022 to about 36.2 million in 2072. The share aged 65 and over rises from 17.4% to 47.7%, and the working-age share (15 to 64) drops from 71.1% to 45.8%. The agency itself notes that uncertainty grows with distance, and its least optimistic scenario puts the population at 30.1 million in 2072 while its most optimistic scenario puts it at 42.8 million.

The picture has brightened slightly. Statistics Korea reported a TFR of 0.75 for 2024, the first annual rise in nine years, and preliminary data released in February 2026 put 2025 at 0.80, according to Reuters reporting carried by GMA News. The same report says marriages rose 14.8% in 2024 and 8.1% in 2025, which fits the usual lag of one to two years between marriages and births, and it quotes a Hallym University sociologist cautioning that some of the rebound may reflect the age composition of women in their early 30s. Seoul's rate was still only 0.63.

South Korea has spent heavily to raise births. Korean press coverage, citing the government, puts spending at about 380 trillion won (about $278 billion) since the Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy was established in 2006, though a separate estimate in the same newspaper gives 280 trillion won over 15 years, so the total depends on what is counted. Either way, fertility fell through most of that period, which suggests that the barriers are broader than cash, including housing costs, long working hours, and intense education spending.

Eastern Europe: aging and emptying at once

Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina appear in the table for a reason that differs from Japan's. Their fertility is not especially low; Bulgaria's 1.81 in 2023 is among the highest in the table. The problem is that many young adults left after borders opened, taking future births with them, while deaths exceed births at home.

Country	Population in 1990	Population in 2023	Change
Latvia	2,660,131	1,882,399	-29.2%
Bulgaria	8,822,366	6,795,805	-23.0%
Lithuania	3,695,016	2,854,104	-22.8%
Croatia	4,835,067	3,896,023	-19.4%
Romania	22,939,530	19,118,482	-16.7%

Source: UN World Population Prospects 2024 via Our World in Data, total population estimates for 1990 and 2023.

These figures combine emigration and natural decrease, so they do not isolate the effect of people leaving. A 2019 study by the French demographic institute INED found that the 11 post-communist members of the European Union lost about 7% of their population between 1989 and 2019 while the rest of the EU grew by 13%, and attributed the aging to low fertility together with mass emigration of young people. Emigration also removes the people who would have had children at home, which accelerates aging after the first wave of departures. The feedback is easy to see in practice: fewer children close schools, fewer workers shrink the tax base, and worse services push more young people to leave.

Germany and the limits of immigration

Germany shows both how much immigration can help and where it stops. Deaths have outnumbered births there every year since 1990, and in 2021 the gap was 228,000, according to the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). Net immigration that year was 317,000 (provisional), which kept the total population growing by about 82,000, to just over 83.2 million. Without migration, the population would have shrunk.

Demographers broadly agree that immigration is the only lever that works quickly. Immigrants are on average younger than the host population, they pay taxes, and they contribute to pension systems from the first paycheck. Countries that start from a low-fertility base, however, would need very large and sustained inflows to hold their old-age dependency ratio steady, because the migrants also age, and the boost to the age structure fades unless arrivals continue. Immigration is also politically contested, and flows are volatile from year to year. Our ranking of countries with the most immigrants shows who relies on migration most.

Can governments raise birth rates?

The evidence is discouraging, and Hungary is the best-known test. According to the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw (OSW), Hungary's fertility rate rose from 1.23 in 2011 to 1.61 in 2021, then fell to 1.38 in 2024, when about 77,500 children were born, the lowest figure on record. The government credits family policy for the climb. The OSW authors conclude that the more recent fall is driven primarily by macroeconomic factors and public sentiment, and they argue that pronatalist policy alone does not explain the reversal. Some demographers add that the earlier rise partly reflected large cohorts born in the 1970s reaching childbearing age.

One common reading of South Korea and Hungary is that incentives can shift the timing of births, by encouraging people to have children sooner, without changing how many children people have over a lifetime. Stable housing, secure employment, and affordable childcare may matter more than a one-time payment, but the research on which of these works best is still thin. Our ranking of countries with the highest birth rates shows the opposite end of the distribution, where the problems are different.

What aging does to economies

Aging changes four things at once. The tax base narrows as the working-age share falls, health spending rises because older people use more care, savings behavior shifts as people draw down wealth, and the labor market tightens. A country can offset some of this with higher productivity, later retirement, more women and migrants in work, or automation. None of those happens automatically.

Japan and South Korea are testing the automation route most aggressively, and Italy has tested the retirement-age route. Wealth does not exempt anyone: Finland's 23.6% elderly share in the table shows that even a country with strong institutions faces the same arithmetic. How much aging costs depends on whether the added years of life are healthy ones, a point covered in our ranking of countries with the best healthcare systems and in the broader piece on how demographics will reshape the global economy.

Aging is also not confined to rich countries. The UN's 2024 revision says the number of people aged 65 and over will exceed the number of children under 18 around the late 2070s, and that people aged 80 and over will outnumber infants under one around the mid-2030s. World population is projected to peak at about 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s, and 63 countries and areas have already passed their peak. The countries in this table are not outliers, they are early. For the other end of the age spectrum, see the list of countries with the youngest populations.

Common confusions

Old is not the same as short-lived. A high median age means few young people, not poor health. Japan, Italy, and Spain also have some of the longest life expectancies in the world.

Aging is not the same as shrinking. A population can age while growing, as long as immigration or past births keep the total rising. Germany's population grew in 2021 even as it aged.

Median age is not retirement age. Japan's median age of 49 says nothing about when people stop working. The two numbers measure different things.

Rankings are sensitive to definitions. Whether Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, or Martinique count as "countries" changes the top 10, and different data vintages shift the order. The ranking above names its source, year, and exclusions for that reason. For measures where definitions swing results, our most urbanized countries and population density rankings make the same point.

Aging is a problem of arithmetic, not of old people. The strain comes from the ratio of workers to dependents, not from anything about older adults themselves. It is also why the largest countries by headcount, including those in our list of most populous countries, are not automatically the ones facing the sharpest shift.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Which country has the oldest population in the world? A: Monaco, with a UN-estimated median age of 54.4 years in 2023. Among large countries, Japan is oldest at 49.0 years, with about 30% of residents aged 65 or older in 2025. Other sources, such as the discontinued CIA World Factbook, report slightly higher figures for both, so always check the year and source.

Q: Why is Japan's population so old? A: Japan combined long life expectancy with a fertility rate that has stayed below the replacement level of about 2.1 for decades. It recorded just 686,061 births in 2024 and a total fertility rate of about 1.15. Immigration has been limited, though foreign residents reached a record 3.77 million at the end of 2024.

Q: Which country has the lowest fertility rate? A: South Korea, at 0.72 births per woman in 2023. Statistics Korea reported 0.75 for 2024, and preliminary data put 2025 at 0.80, which would still be far below the replacement level of about 2.1.

Q: Can immigration fix an aging population? A: It can slow it. Immigrants tend to be younger, and Germany's population grew in 2021 only because net immigration of 317,000 exceeded the natural decrease of 228,000. Migrants age too, so the effect fades unless inflows continue, and it will not by itself restore a low-fertility country to a young age structure.

Q: Do pro-birth policies work? A: Results are mixed at best. Hungary's fertility rate rose from 1.23 in 2011 to 1.61 in 2021 and then fell to 1.38 in 2024, and South Korea's rate fell for most of the period in which it spent hundreds of trillions of won on family policy. Housing, jobs, and childcare costs appear to matter alongside cash incentives.

Q: What is the median age of the world? A: The UN estimates the global median age at about 30.4 years in 2023, a figure that sits far below Japan's 49.0 and far above Nigeria's 17.8. The world as a whole is still far younger than the countries in this ranking.

Q: Will other countries become as old as Japan? A: On UN projections, yes. The number of people 65 and over is expected to surpass the number of children under 18 worldwide in the late 2070s, and many countries that are young today will pass through the same transition at a different pace. Japan is early, not unique.

The takeaway

A country's median age is the end product of three decisions made decades earlier by millions of households: how many children to have, how long to live, and where to settle. The countries at the top of this list reached their positions through different routes. Monaco did it through who chooses to live there, Japan and Southern Europe through very low fertility, and Eastern Europe through emigration on top of both.

That difference matters more than the rank. A country whose population is old because of emigration has a different set of options from one whose population is old because of extremely low fertility, and neither can rely on a single policy to restore its age structure. The practical lesson from Japan, South Korea, and Hungary is that aging is slow, so societies get years of warning, and the choices that count, such as retirement ages, care systems, and immigration, have to be made while the arithmetic is still forgiving.

Sources

• United Nations, World Population Prospects 2024 press release: peak population, 65+ versus under-18, ultra-low fertility countries, 2024 life expectancy.
• Our World in Data, median age and old-age dependency ratio, both based on UN WPP 2024.
• World Bank, population ages 65 and above and fertility rate.
• Japan Center for Economic Research, summary of the IPSS 2023 population projection.
• Statistics Korea projection as reported by The Korea Times.
• Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), Hungary's ongoing demographic decline.
• German Federal Statistical Office, press release No. 251 of June 20, 2022.
• Nippon.com, foreign residents in Japan, end of 2024.
• OECD, Pensions at a Glance 2023 (public pension spending in 2019).

Related reading

• Countries With the Youngest Populations (2025)
• Most Populous Countries in the World (2025)
• Countries With the Longest Life Expectancy