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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Germany and 
Japan, side by side
Germany in 2026: half the people are older than 47. Japan: half are older than 51.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Germany 84,548,231 people · Japan 124,370,946
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
DEU × JPN · 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
- 14
- Aged 15 to 64
- 62
- Aged 65 and over
- 24
- Children, under 15
- 11
- Aged 15 to 64
- 59
- Aged 65 and over
- 30
DEU × JPN · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
If the birth rates of this year held for a whole lifetime, a woman in Germany would have about 1.5 children and a woman in Japan about 1.2. A baby born in Germany this year can expect to live about 82 years. In Japan, about 85.
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.
DEU × JPN · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Japan has about 50% more people than Germany: 122 million against 83.6 million.
Since 1950 the two have moved differently: Germany's population is 1.2 times what it was in 1950, while Japan's population is 1.4 times what it was in 1950.
Germany's population peaked in 2024; Japan's population peaked in 2009. In 2100: 70.9 million in Germany, 76.8 million in Japan (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Germany: people | Japan: people | Germany: half older than | Japan: half older than | Germany: children per woman | Japan: children per woman | Germany: life expectancy | Japan: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 69.8478 million | 86.4433 million | 33.9 | 22.3 | 2.19 | 3.62 | 66.8 | 59.3 |
| 1960 | 72.8116 million | 96.3997 million | 34.7 | 25.7 | 2.38 | 1.98 | 69.3 | 67.7 |
| 1970 | 78.2051 million | 106.712 million | 34.2 | 29.3 | 2.02 | 2.04 | 70.7 | 72.0 |
| 1980 | 78.3154 million | 118.359 million | 36.7 | 32.7 | 1.56 | 1.74 | 73.1 | 76.1 |
| 1990 | 79.7080 million | 123.400 million | 37.6 | 37.9 | 1.46 | 1.51 | 75.3 | 79.0 |
| 2000 | 81.7973 million | 127.028 million | 40.0 | 41.8 | 1.39 | 1.35 | 78.1 | 81.2 |
| 2010 | 80.8309 million | 128.185 million | 44.3 | 45.2 | 1.40 | 1.36 | 80.1 | 82.9 |
| 2023 | 84.5482 million | 124.371 million | 46.1 | 50.0 | 1.44 | 1.21 | 81.4 | 84.7 |
| 2030* | 82.7810 million | 119.584 million | 47.3 | 52.5 | 1.48 | 1.26 | 82.5 | 85.7 |
| 2040* | 80.5517 million | 112.158 million | 49.1 | 54.1 | 1.51 | 1.31 | 83.9 | 87.1 |
| 2050* | 78.2946 million | 105.123 million | 48.9 | 53.8 | 1.54 | 1.35 | 85.2 | 88.4 |
| 2060* | 75.6046 million | 98.1032 million | 47.6 | 54.1 | 1.56 | 1.39 | 86.4 | 89.7 |
| 2070* | 73.6158 million | 90.6118 million | 48.2 | 54.6 | 1.56 | 1.42 | 87.5 | 90.9 |
| 2080* | 72.1125 million | 84.7300 million | 48.1 | 53.7 | 1.58 | 1.44 | 88.7 | 92.1 |
| 2090* | 71.2004 million | 80.6344 million | 47.7 | 53.4 | 1.59 | 1.46 | 89.7 | 93.2 |
| 2100* | 70.8999 million | 76.8460 million | 48.4 | 54.0 | 1.60 | 1.47 | 90.8 | 94.4 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
DEU − JPN · 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 Germany and which is Japan, 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; Germany is drawn in solid blue squares and Japan 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: Germany · Japan. Or pick any two places with the boxes at the top of this page.
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Apparatus
Sources and method
Every figure for Germany and Japan 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.
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.
There are 250 ready-made comparisons on this site. For anything else, name two places in the boxes at the top of the page.
Sources: UN WPP 2024 · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries