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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
China and 
India, side by side
Line both places up by age in 2026. In China, half are older than 42; in India, half are older than 30.
UN estimates for mid-2023: China 1,422,584,932 people · India 1,438,069,596
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
CHN × IND · 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
- 70
- Aged 65 and over
- 15
- Children, under 15
- 24
- Aged 15 to 64
- 68
- Aged 65 and over
- 8
CHN × IND · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
If the birth rates of this year held for a whole lifetime, a woman in China would have about 1.0 children and a woman in India about 1.9. A baby born in China this year can expect to live about 79 years. In India, 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.
CHN × IND · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
There are 1.48 billion people in India and 1.41 billion in China: about as many people as China.
China's population is 2.6 times what it was in 1950; India's population is 4.3 times what it was in 1950.
China's population peaked in 2021; India's population is expected to peak in 2061. In 2100: 633 million in China, 1.51 billion in India (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | China: people | India: people | China: half older than | India: half older than | China: children per woman | India: children per woman | China: life expectancy | India: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 544.044 million | 346.279 million | 23.3 | 21.0 | 5.81 | 5.73 | 43.8 | 41.2 |
| 1960 | 654.802 million | 435.990 million | 20.9 | 20.2 | 4.45 | 5.92 | 33.4 | 45.6 |
| 1970 | 823.309 million | 545.864 million | 19.0 | 19.1 | 6.08 | 5.62 | 56.8 | 48.6 |
| 1980 | 983.164 million | 687.354 million | 21.9 | 19.9 | 2.74 | 4.78 | 64.2 | 53.6 |
| 1990 | 1.15358 billion | 864.972 million | 24.7 | 20.7 | 2.51 | 4.04 | 68.2 | 58.6 |
| 2000 | 1.26958 billion | 1.05792 billion | 30.0 | 22.2 | 1.63 | 3.35 | 72.3 | 62.8 |
| 2010 | 1.35156 billion | 1.24348 billion | 35.1 | 24.6 | 1.69 | 2.60 | 75.7 | 67.2 |
| 2023 | 1.42258 billion | 1.43807 billion | 40.1 | 29.1 | 1.00 | 1.98 | 78.0 | 72.0 |
| 2030* | 1.39815 billion | 1.52514 billion | 43.9 | 31.8 | 1.06 | 1.88 | 79.8 | 73.6 |
| 2040* | 1.34282 billion | 1.62258 billion | 49.6 | 35.7 | 1.13 | 1.80 | 81.7 | 75.7 |
| 2050* | 1.26029 billion | 1.67959 billion | 53.1 | 39.3 | 1.18 | 1.76 | 83.4 | 77.5 |
| 2060* | 1.13513 billion | 1.70095 billion | 55.7 | 42.3 | 1.23 | 1.73 | 84.9 | 79.3 |
| 2070* | 998.784 million | 1.68920 billion | 58.7 | 44.6 | 1.27 | 1.72 | 86.3 | 81.0 |
| 2080* | 870.252 million | 1.64555 billion | 62.4 | 46.5 | 1.29 | 1.71 | 87.5 | 82.5 |
| 2090* | 744.903 million | 1.58031 billion | 62.4 | 47.9 | 1.32 | 1.70 | 88.7 | 84.0 |
| 2100* | 633.368 million | 1.50525 billion | 61.7 | 48.8 | 1.34 | 1.69 | 89.8 | 85.3 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
CHN − IND · 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 China and which is India, 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; China is drawn in solid blue squares and India 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
China and India are drawn here from one source and one release: the UN Population Division's World Population Prospects 2024, counted through 2023 and projected on its medium variant after that. Two places read off the same tables can be set against each other; two read off different tables cannot.
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