Topics
Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Cameroon and 
Peru, side by side
Line both places up by age in 2026. In Cameroon, half are older than 19; in Peru, half are older than 32.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Cameroon 28,372,687 people · Peru 33,845,617
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
CMR × PER · 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
- 41
- Aged 15 to 64
- 56
- Aged 65 and over
- 3
- Children, under 15
- 23
- Aged 15 to 64
- 67
- Aged 65 and over
- 10
CMR × PER · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
At today's rates, a woman in Cameroon would have about 4.1 children in her lifetime. In Peru, about 1.9. Around 2.1 children per woman keeps a population the same size over time, leaving migration aside. Babies born this year can expect about 65 years of life in Cameroon and about 78 in Peru.
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.
CMR × PER · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Peru is the larger of the two, with about 10% more people than Cameroon: 34.9 million to 30.6 million.
Set each against its own 1950 self and Cameroon's population is 7.1 times what it was in 1950, Peru's population is 4.5 times what it was in 1950.
Cameroon's population is still growing in 2100; Peru's population is expected to peak in 2066. The UN expects Cameroon to have more people than Peru from 2035. In 2100: 88.9 million in Cameroon, 38.2 million in Peru (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Cameroon: people | Peru: people | Cameroon: half older than | Peru: half older than | Cameroon: children per woman | Peru: children per woman | Cameroon: life expectancy | Peru: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 4.33008 million | 7.67741 million | 20.3 | 18.9 | 5.73 | 6.94 | 33.1 | 46.0 |
| 1960 | 5.15906 million | 10.1741 million | 20.5 | 18.1 | 5.72 | 6.94 | 34.7 | 50.6 |
| 1970 | 6.44979 million | 13.5012 million | 19.1 | 17.8 | 6.20 | 6.32 | 48.0 | 47.7 |
| 1980 | 8.51222 million | 17.3609 million | 17.7 | 18.4 | 6.61 | 5.04 | 50.9 | 60.0 |
| 1990 | 11.3318 million | 22.0148 million | 16.7 | 19.8 | 6.36 | 3.91 | 54.4 | 64.0 |
| 2000 | 14.9126 million | 26.5983 million | 17.2 | 22.4 | 5.51 | 2.85 | 53.3 | 69.8 |
| 2010 | 19.6681 million | 29.0860 million | 17.8 | 26.2 | 5.15 | 2.42 | 57.0 | 72.9 |
| 2023 | 28.3727 million | 33.8456 million | 18.8 | 30.5 | 4.32 | 1.98 | 63.7 | 77.7 |
| 2030* | 33.7772 million | 36.1939 million | 19.9 | 33.0 | 3.88 | 1.87 | 65.5 | 79.0 |
| 2040* | 42.2080 million | 38.7946 million | 21.9 | 36.5 | 3.35 | 1.79 | 67.7 | 80.7 |
| 2050* | 51.0963 million | 40.5839 million | 24.1 | 40.1 | 2.96 | 1.74 | 69.5 | 82.3 |
| 2060* | 59.9609 million | 41.5355 million | 26.2 | 43.0 | 2.68 | 1.72 | 71.1 | 83.8 |
| 2070* | 68.4582 million | 41.6449 million | 28.5 | 45.5 | 2.48 | 1.70 | 72.7 | 85.1 |
| 2080* | 76.3444 million | 40.9815 million | 30.7 | 47.4 | 2.32 | 1.70 | 74.2 | 86.3 |
| 2090* | 83.2033 million | 39.7365 million | 32.9 | 48.8 | 2.19 | 1.69 | 75.7 | 87.3 |
| 2100* | 88.8757 million | 38.1633 million | 35.0 | 49.9 | 2.10 | 1.69 | 77.1 | 88.3 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
CMR − PER · 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 Cameroon and which is Peru, 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; Cameroon is drawn in solid blue squares and Peru 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.
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.
This is one of 250 pairs with a page. The boxes at the top will take any other two places you want to see side by side.
Sources: UN WPP 2024 · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries