Topics
Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Denmark and 
Sweden, side by side
Denmark in 2026: half the people are older than 42. Sweden: half are older than 41.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Denmark 5,948,137 people · Sweden 10,551,494
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
DNK × SWE · 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
- 16
- Aged 15 to 64
- 63
- Aged 65 and over
- 21
- Children, under 15
- 16
- Aged 15 to 64
- 63
- Aged 65 and over
- 21
DNK × SWE · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
At today's rates, a woman in Denmark would have about 1.5 children in her lifetime. In Sweden, about 1.4. Life expectancy at birth this year: about 82 years in Denmark, about 84 in Sweden.
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.
DNK × SWE · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
There are 10.7 million people in Sweden and 6.0 million in Denmark: about 80% more people than Denmark.
Denmark's population is 1.4 times what it was in 1950; Sweden's population is 1.5 times what it was in 1950.
Denmark's population is expected to peak in 2042; Sweden's population is expected to peak in 2079. In 2100: 5.9 million in Denmark, 11.4 million in Sweden (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Denmark: people | Sweden: people | Denmark: half older than | Sweden: half older than | Denmark: children per woman | Sweden: children per woman | Denmark: life expectancy | Sweden: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 4.26841 million | 7.01657 million | 31.6 | 34.2 | 2.57 | 2.29 | 70.3 | 71.1 |
| 1960 | 4.57934 million | 7.48460 million | 33.1 | 36.1 | 2.56 | 2.17 | 72.2 | 73.0 |
| 1970 | 4.92867 million | 8.04278 million | 32.5 | 35.4 | 1.96 | 1.92 | 73.4 | 74.7 |
| 1980 | 5.12308 million | 8.31047 million | 34.3 | 36.1 | 1.54 | 1.67 | 74.1 | 75.7 |
| 1990 | 5.14103 million | 8.55857 million | 37.1 | 38.4 | 1.66 | 2.12 | 74.9 | 77.6 |
| 2000 | 5.33966 million | 8.87210 million | 38.3 | 39.4 | 1.76 | 1.54 | 76.8 | 79.7 |
| 2010 | 5.54786 million | 9.37823 million | 40.6 | 40.7 | 1.86 | 1.97 | 79.3 | 81.5 |
| 2023 | 5.94814 million | 10.5515 million | 42.2 | 40.9 | 1.51 | 1.43 | 81.9 | 83.3 |
| 2030* | 6.08200 million | 10.8418 million | 42.6 | 42.3 | 1.54 | 1.46 | 83.0 | 84.3 |
| 2040* | 6.13466 million | 11.0786 million | 44.1 | 44.7 | 1.56 | 1.50 | 84.4 | 85.6 |
| 2050* | 6.12484 million | 11.3096 million | 45.3 | 45.1 | 1.57 | 1.52 | 85.6 | 86.8 |
| 2060* | 6.07822 million | 11.3915 million | 46.3 | 46.9 | 1.59 | 1.55 | 86.8 | 87.9 |
| 2070* | 6.03660 million | 11.4035 million | 47.0 | 48.6 | 1.60 | 1.56 | 87.9 | 89.0 |
| 2080* | 6.00879 million | 11.4318 million | 47.7 | 48.6 | 1.61 | 1.57 | 89.0 | 90.1 |
| 2090* | 5.94088 million | 11.3927 million | 48.2 | 48.7 | 1.61 | 1.57 | 90.1 | 91.2 |
| 2100* | 5.86322 million | 11.3669 million | 48.5 | 49.6 | 1.61 | 1.58 | 91.1 | 92.2 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
DNK − SWE · 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 Denmark and which is Sweden, 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; Denmark is drawn in solid blue squares and Sweden 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
Denmark and Sweden 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.
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.
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