Topics
Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Canada and 
Spain, side by side
Line both places up by age in 2026. In Canada, half are older than 42; in Spain, half are older than 47.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Canada 39,299,104 people · Spain 47,911,580
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
CAN × ESP · 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
- 15
- Aged 15 to 64
- 64
- Aged 65 and over
- 21
- Children, under 15
- 12
- Aged 15 to 64
- 66
- Aged 65 and over
- 22
CAN × ESP · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
Canada is at about 1.3 children for each woman, at this year's rates; Spain is at about 1.2. Babies born this year can expect about 83 years of life in Canada and about 84 in Spain.
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.
CAN × ESP · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Spain has about 20% more people than Canada: 47.9 million against 40.5 million.
Canada's population is 2.9 times what it was in 1950; Spain's population is 1.7 times what it was in 1950.
Looking ahead: Canada's population is still growing in 2100, and Spain's population peaked in 2023. The UN expects Canada to have more people than Spain from 2049. In 2100: 53.6 million in Canada, 33.1 million in Spain (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Canada: people | Spain: people | Canada: half older than | Spain: half older than | Canada: children per woman | Spain: children per woman | Canada: life expectancy | Spain: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 13.7417 million | 28.0770 million | 27.7 | 27.5 | 3.37 | 2.47 | 68.2 | 61.8 |
| 1960 | 17.8988 million | 30.4049 million | 26.5 | 29.4 | 3.82 | 2.81 | 71.0 | 69.2 |
| 1970 | 21.4400 million | 33.8127 million | 26.0 | 30.1 | 2.27 | 2.88 | 72.6 | 72.2 |
| 1980 | 24.5338 million | 37.5376 million | 29.1 | 30.7 | 1.66 | 2.21 | 75.1 | 75.5 |
| 1990 | 27.7894 million | 39.0850 million | 32.8 | 33.5 | 1.70 | 1.36 | 77.4 | 77.0 |
| 2000 | 30.8918 million | 41.0198 million | 36.8 | 37.3 | 1.51 | 1.21 | 79.2 | 79.4 |
| 2010 | 34.1969 million | 46.8405 million | 39.7 | 40.2 | 1.64 | 1.37 | 81.3 | 82.0 |
| 2023 | 39.2991 million | 47.9116 million | 41.3 | 45.9 | 1.35 | 1.21 | 82.6 | 83.7 |
| 2030* | 41.6556 million | 47.6105 million | 42.7 | 49.0 | 1.32 | 1.26 | 83.7 | 84.6 |
| 2040* | 43.9514 million | 46.5917 million | 44.8 | 52.0 | 1.36 | 1.31 | 85.0 | 85.9 |
| 2050* | 45.6219 million | 44.9286 million | 46.1 | 52.8 | 1.39 | 1.36 | 86.2 | 87.1 |
| 2060* | 47.1453 million | 42.2108 million | 46.9 | 53.0 | 1.42 | 1.39 | 87.4 | 88.4 |
| 2070* | 48.8578 million | 39.0358 million | 47.5 | 53.7 | 1.45 | 1.43 | 88.5 | 89.5 |
| 2080* | 50.4493 million | 36.5245 million | 47.8 | 52.6 | 1.47 | 1.46 | 89.6 | 90.7 |
| 2090* | 51.9567 million | 34.7742 million | 47.8 | 52.4 | 1.48 | 1.47 | 90.7 | 91.8 |
| 2100* | 53.6122 million | 33.1275 million | 47.9 | 53.2 | 1.49 | 1.48 | 91.8 | 92.9 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
CAN − ESP · 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 Canada and which is Spain, 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; Canada is drawn in solid blue squares and Spain 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: Canada · Spain. Or pick any two places with the boxes at the top of this page.
Other comparisons
- Angola and Canada
- Canada and Italy
- Canada and Mozambique
- Canada and South Korea
- Canada and United States
- Canada and Uzbekistan
- Afghanistan and Spain
- Algeria and Spain
- Argentina and Spain
- Iraq and Spain
- Italy and Spain
- Portugal and Spain
- South Korea and Spain
- Spain and Yemen
- Canada and Northern America
- Spain and Southern Europe
Apparatus
Sources and method
Every figure for Canada and Spain 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