Topics
Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Afghanistan and 
Iraq, side by side
Line both places up by age in 2026. In Afghanistan, half are older than 18; in Iraq, half are older than 22.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Afghanistan 41,454,761 people · Iraq 45,074,049
How to read this: each pyramid stacks a place’s people by age — babies at the bottom, the oldest at the top, men on the left and women on the right. A wide bottom means many children; a wide top means many older people.
Each bar is a share of its own place’s people, so a small country and a large one can be read side by side.
men women projected
AFG × IRQ · 2026 · age groups
If each place were 100 people
Shrink each population to 100 people and count them. Dots are children under 15, filled squares are people aged 15 to 64, and open squares are people 65 and over. The picture follows the year slider above.
- Children, under 15
- 42
- Aged 15 to 64
- 55
- Aged 65 and over
- 3
- Children, under 15
- 35
- Aged 15 to 64
- 61
- Aged 65 and over
- 4
AFG × IRQ · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
At today's rates, a woman in Afghanistan would have about 4.6 children in her lifetime. In Iraq, about 3.1. A baby born in Afghanistan this year can expect to live about 67 years. In Iraq, about 73.
Children per woman, 2026
Each figure is one child: how many children a woman would have in her lifetime at that year’s rates.
The dashed line at 2.1 is about what it takes for each generation to replace the one before it, leaving migration aside.
How long a newborn can expect to live, 2026
Each block is ten years of life, if the death rates of that year stayed the same all life long.
Hatched marks are UN projections (medium variant), not measurements.
AFG × IRQ · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Iraq has about as many people as Afghanistan: 48.0 million against 45.0 million.
Afghanistan's population is 5.8 times what it was in 1950; Iraq's population is 8.5 times what it was in 1950.
Looking ahead: Afghanistan's population is still growing in 2100, and Iraq's population is still growing in 2100. The UN expects Afghanistan to have more people than Iraq from 2037. In 2100: 130 million in Afghanistan, 101 million in Iraq (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Afghanistan: people | Iraq: people | Afghanistan: half older than | Iraq: half older than | Afghanistan: children per woman | Iraq: children per woman | Afghanistan: life expectancy | Iraq: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 7.77618 million | 5.65335 million | 19.4 | 21.5 | 7.25 | 6.20 | 28.2 | 37.4 |
| 1960 | 9.03504 million | 7.02205 million | 18.9 | 20.4 | 7.28 | 5.30 | 32.8 | 51.5 |
| 1970 | 11.2901 million | 9.73561 million | 18.0 | 18.0 | 7.40 | 7.07 | 37.5 | 60.5 |
| 1980 | 13.1693 million | 13.5920 million | 16.8 | 16.4 | 7.64 | 6.59 | 39.3 | 60.9 |
| 1990 | 12.0457 million | 17.5812 million | 16.0 | 17.0 | 7.58 | 5.93 | 45.1 | 57.6 |
| 2000 | 20.1303 million | 24.4241 million | 15.0 | 17.9 | 7.57 | 4.92 | 55.0 | 64.9 |
| 2010 | 28.2841 million | 31.0454 million | 15.6 | 18.9 | 6.20 | 4.46 | 60.7 | 68.1 |
| 2023 | 41.4548 million | 45.0740 million | 17.9 | 21.3 | 4.84 | 3.25 | 66.0 | 72.3 |
| 2030* | 50.0394 million | 51.9372 million | 19.2 | 23.1 | 4.22 | 2.97 | 67.6 | 73.1 |
| 2040* | 63.3479 million | 62.2232 million | 21.5 | 26.2 | 3.56 | 2.66 | 69.5 | 74.1 |
| 2050* | 76.8851 million | 71.9287 million | 24.0 | 28.8 | 3.09 | 2.45 | 70.9 | 75.3 |
| 2060* | 90.3627 million | 80.5202 million | 26.6 | 31.2 | 2.76 | 2.27 | 72.3 | 76.5 |
| 2070* | 103.417 million | 87.9959 million | 29.1 | 33.7 | 2.51 | 2.15 | 73.6 | 77.8 |
| 2080* | 114.674 million | 93.7619 million | 31.4 | 36.2 | 2.31 | 2.05 | 74.8 | 79.0 |
| 2090* | 123.305 million | 98.0040 million | 33.7 | 38.3 | 2.17 | 1.97 | 76.1 | 80.3 |
| 2100* | 130.217 million | 100.649 million | 35.8 | 40.1 | 2.06 | 1.92 | 77.3 | 81.6 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
AFG − IRQ · 1950–2100 · every age
Which ages each place has more of
Each column is a year and each row an age, from babies at the bottom to 100 at the top. The shade of a cell shows which place has more of its people at that age — the key beside the picture tells you which shade is Afghanistan and which is Iraq, and the in-between shade means the same. Because it compares shares, a small place and a large one can be compared fairly.
236 countries · 1950–2100
Where they sit among all countries
Every country in the world, every year from 1950 to 2100. The grey cloud shows where most countries are; Afghanistan is drawn in solid blue squares and Iraq in open orange squares, so you can see whether each is ahead of the crowd, behind it or in the middle.
More comparisons
Keep exploring
Each place on its own: Afghanistan · Iraq. Or pick any two places with the boxes at the top of this page.
Other comparisons
- Afghanistan and Algeria
- Afghanistan and Angola
- Afghanistan and Argentina
- Afghanistan and Colombia
- Afghanistan and Pakistan
- Afghanistan and Spain
- Afghanistan and Uganda
- Algeria and Iraq
- Angola and Iraq
- Argentina and Iraq
- Iran and Iraq
- Iraq and South Korea
- Iraq and Spain
- Iraq and Yemen
- Afghanistan and Southern Asia
- Iraq and Western Asia
Apparatus
Sources and method
Every figure for Afghanistan and Iraq is the United Nations Population Division's, from World Population Prospects 2024: counted to 2023, and the medium projection for each year after that. Both places are taken from the same release and the same tables, which is what makes them comparable at all.
For how the median age is derived, why “100 people” can read a person high or low, and what the all-country pictures do and do not count, see the method.
250 comparisons have a page of their own; any other two places can be compared from the boxes at the top.
Sources: UN WPP 2024 · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries