demographics

Jakarta leads the UN's 2025 city ranking, yet Chongqing has more people inside its borders. See the biggest cities by city, urban area, and metro definition.

The Maldives has the world's highest divorce rate. Russia, Belarus, and Latvia follow. The United States, often cited as unusually divorce-prone, has been declining since its 1980s peak and now sits below several European nations. Divorce rates track female economic independence, secularisation, and legal access more reliably than they track marital unhappiness.

Chad and Somalia have the world's highest birth rates at approximately 6.0 children per woman. Sub-Saharan Africa dominates the top 20. Meanwhile Europe and East Asia face demographic contraction below 1.5. The gap between the world's fastest-growing and fastest-shrinking populations is the largest in recorded history — with consequences for migration, economics, and geopolitics that are only beginning.

South Korea has a total fertility rate of 0.72 — the lowest ever reliably recorded for any country in human history. At that rate, each generation is roughly one-third the size of its predecessor. Japan has been below replacement level since 1975. Here are the countries with the lowest birth rates and what the data actually means.

Monaco packs about 18,500 people into each square kilometre of land, Singapore about 8,300 and Bangladesh about 1,330 — the densest country of any real size. World Bank 2024 data, ranked two ways, with what density does and does not tell you.

Women in Monaco, Hong Kong, and Japan live longest, at 87 to 88.5 years on average. Here is how the ranking is built, why the leaders lead, and what the data cannot tell you.

The UAE has the highest immigrant share of any country in the world — 88% of its population was born abroad. From Gulf states built on migrant labour to traditional immigration nations like Australia and Canada, this ranking reveals where immigrants are most concentrated and why.

Monaco's median age is 54.4 years, the highest on Earth, and Japan follows at 49.0. Here is the 2023 ranking of the world's oldest countries, why they got there, and what aging does to pensions, labor, and health care.

Niger has a median age of just 15.0 years — half the population is younger than a teenager. The top 20 countries with the world's youngest populations are almost exclusively in sub-Saharan Africa, and their demographic trajectory will reshape the global economy over the coming decades.

India overtook China as the world's most populous country in 2023, according to UN projections. This ranking covers the 20 largest countries with World Bank figures for population, growth, fertility, and age structure, plus what the UN projects for the rest of the century.

The Maldives has the world's highest marriage rate — 20 per 1,000 people — driven by easy divorce and remarriage. In contrast, Japan's marriage rate has hit record lows and South Korea is in a full-scale marriage crisis. Western Europe is seeing marriage replaced by cohabitation. Here's how marriage patterns define societies.

By 2050, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and dozens of other countries will have more people over 65 than under 30. Shrinking workforces, swelling pension obligations, and collapsing birth rates are creating an economic slow-motion crisis. Here's what's actually happening and why it matters.