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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
India and 
Japan, side by side
India in 2026: half the people are older than 30. Japan: half are older than 51.
UN estimates for mid-2023: India 1,438,069,596 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
IND × 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
- 24
- Aged 15 to 64
- 68
- Aged 65 and over
- 8
- Children, under 15
- 11
- Aged 15 to 64
- 59
- Aged 65 and over
- 30
IND × JPN · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
India is at about 1.9 children for each woman, at this year's rates; Japan is at about 1.2. Babies born this year can expect about 73 years of life in India and about 85 in Japan.
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.
IND × JPN · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
There are 1.48 billion people in India and 122 million in Japan: about 12 times as many people as Japan.
Set each against its own 1950 self and India's population is 4.3 times what it was in 1950, Japan's population is 1.4 times what it was in 1950.
India's population is expected to peak in 2061; Japan's population peaked in 2009. In 2100: 1.51 billion in India, 76.8 million in Japan (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | India: people | Japan: people | India: half older than | Japan: half older than | India: children per woman | Japan: children per woman | India: life expectancy | Japan: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 346.279 million | 86.4433 million | 21.0 | 22.3 | 5.73 | 3.62 | 41.2 | 59.3 |
| 1960 | 435.990 million | 96.3997 million | 20.2 | 25.7 | 5.92 | 1.98 | 45.6 | 67.7 |
| 1970 | 545.864 million | 106.712 million | 19.1 | 29.3 | 5.62 | 2.04 | 48.6 | 72.0 |
| 1980 | 687.354 million | 118.359 million | 19.9 | 32.7 | 4.78 | 1.74 | 53.6 | 76.1 |
| 1990 | 864.972 million | 123.400 million | 20.7 | 37.9 | 4.04 | 1.51 | 58.6 | 79.0 |
| 2000 | 1.05792 billion | 127.028 million | 22.2 | 41.8 | 3.35 | 1.35 | 62.8 | 81.2 |
| 2010 | 1.24348 billion | 128.185 million | 24.6 | 45.2 | 2.60 | 1.36 | 67.2 | 82.9 |
| 2023 | 1.43807 billion | 124.371 million | 29.1 | 50.0 | 1.98 | 1.21 | 72.0 | 84.7 |
| 2030* | 1.52514 billion | 119.584 million | 31.8 | 52.5 | 1.88 | 1.26 | 73.6 | 85.7 |
| 2040* | 1.62258 billion | 112.158 million | 35.7 | 54.1 | 1.80 | 1.31 | 75.7 | 87.1 |
| 2050* | 1.67959 billion | 105.123 million | 39.3 | 53.8 | 1.76 | 1.35 | 77.5 | 88.4 |
| 2060* | 1.70095 billion | 98.1032 million | 42.3 | 54.1 | 1.73 | 1.39 | 79.3 | 89.7 |
| 2070* | 1.68920 billion | 90.6118 million | 44.6 | 54.6 | 1.72 | 1.42 | 81.0 | 90.9 |
| 2080* | 1.64555 billion | 84.7300 million | 46.5 | 53.7 | 1.71 | 1.44 | 82.5 | 92.1 |
| 2090* | 1.58031 billion | 80.6344 million | 47.9 | 53.4 | 1.70 | 1.46 | 84.0 | 93.2 |
| 2100* | 1.50525 billion | 76.8460 million | 48.8 | 54.0 | 1.69 | 1.47 | 85.3 | 94.4 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
IND − 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 India 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; India 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: India · Japan. Or pick any two places with the boxes at the top of this page.
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Apparatus
Sources and method
India and Japan 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.
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