Topics
Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Australia and 
Mali, side by side
Australia in 2026: half the people are older than 40. Mali: half are older than 17.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Australia 26,451,124 people · Mali 23,769,128
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
AUS × MLI · 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
- 18
- Aged 15 to 64
- 64
- Aged 65 and over
- 18
- Children, under 15
- 46
- Aged 15 to 64
- 52
- Aged 65 and over
- 2
AUS × MLI · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
If the birth rates of this year held for a whole lifetime, a woman in Australia would have about 1.6 children and a woman in Mali about 5.3. Around 2.1 children per woman keeps a population the same size over time, leaving migration aside. Babies born this year can expect about 84 years of life in Australia and about 61 in Mali.
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.
AUS × MLI · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Australia is the larger of the two, with about as many people as Mali: 27.2 million to 25.9 million.
Since 1950 the two have moved differently: Australia's population is 3.3 times what it was in 1950, while Mali's population is 5.5 times what it was in 1950.
Australia's population is still growing in 2100; Mali's population is still growing in 2100. The UN expects Mali to have more people than Australia from 2029. In 2100: 43.1 million in Australia, 79.4 million in Mali (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Australia: people | Mali: people | Australia: half older than | Mali: half older than | Australia: children per woman | Mali: children per woman | Australia: life expectancy | Mali: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 8.17675 million | 4.69691 million | 30.4 | 20.5 | 3.06 | 6.87 | 69.0 | 28.7 |
| 1960 | 10.2808 million | 5.40255 million | 29.6 | 19.8 | 3.45 | 7.02 | 70.9 | 30.5 |
| 1970 | 12.5994 million | 6.27647 million | 27.6 | 19.4 | 2.86 | 7.18 | 70.7 | 33.4 |
| 1980 | 14.7213 million | 7.53051 million | 29.4 | 18.0 | 1.90 | 7.37 | 74.6 | 40.3 |
| 1990 | 17.1263 million | 9.17883 million | 32.1 | 16.4 | 1.91 | 7.31 | 77.0 | 46.5 |
| 2000 | 19.1325 million | 11.5593 million | 35.4 | 16.4 | 1.76 | 6.89 | 79.6 | 50.6 |
| 2010 | 22.1416 million | 15.9452 million | 37.0 | 16.3 | 1.95 | 6.58 | 82.0 | 56.0 |
| 2023 | 26.4511 million | 23.7691 million | 38.8 | 16.5 | 1.64 | 5.61 | 83.9 | 60.4 |
| 2030* | 28.1885 million | 29.0029 million | 40.5 | 17.5 | 1.64 | 4.96 | 84.9 | 61.9 |
| 2040* | 30.3575 million | 37.4136 million | 42.5 | 19.2 | 1.64 | 4.05 | 86.1 | 63.8 |
| 2050* | 32.5070 million | 46.1541 million | 43.0 | 21.2 | 1.64 | 3.37 | 87.3 | 65.4 |
| 2060* | 34.5627 million | 54.7875 million | 43.9 | 23.8 | 1.63 | 2.90 | 88.3 | 66.8 |
| 2070* | 36.6351 million | 62.9195 million | 44.6 | 26.4 | 1.63 | 2.58 | 89.4 | 68.0 |
| 2080* | 38.7008 million | 69.9942 million | 44.9 | 29.0 | 1.64 | 2.36 | 90.5 | 69.2 |
| 2090* | 40.8767 million | 75.5399 million | 45.1 | 31.5 | 1.64 | 2.20 | 91.6 | 70.4 |
| 2100* | 43.1437 million | 79.3541 million | 45.8 | 33.8 | 1.63 | 2.08 | 92.6 | 71.5 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
AUS − MLI · 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 Australia and which is Mali, 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; Australia is drawn in solid blue squares and Mali in open orange squares, so you can see whether each is ahead of the crowd, behind it or in the middle.
Apparatus
Sources and method
Both sides of this comparison come from the UN Population Division's World Population Prospects 2024 — the same release, the same tables, counted to 2023 and projected beyond it on the medium variant. That shared origin is what a comparison rests on.
The working behind the median age, the rounding in the “100 people” pictures and the reason the regions are kept out of the all-country views are all set out in the method.
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Sources: UN WPP 2024 · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries