Topics
Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Iran and 
Iraq, side by side
Iran in 2026: half the people are older than 36. Iraq: half are older than 22.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Iran 90,608,707 people · Iraq 45,074,049
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
IRN × IRQ · 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
- 22
- Aged 15 to 64
- 69
- Aged 65 and over
- 9
- Children, under 15
- 35
- Aged 15 to 64
- 61
- Aged 65 and over
- 4
IRN × IRQ · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
If the birth rates of this year held for a whole lifetime, a woman in Iran would have about 1.7 children and a woman in Iraq about 3.1. Around 2.1 children per woman keeps a population the same size over time, leaving migration aside. Life expectancy at birth this year: about 78 years in Iran, about 73 in Iraq.
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.
IRN × IRQ · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Iran is the larger of the two, with about 90% more people than Iraq: 93.2 million to 48.0 million.
Set each against its own 1950 self and Iran's population is 5.6 times what it was in 1950, Iraq's population is 8.5 times what it was in 1950.
Iran's population is expected to peak in 2053; Iraq's population is still growing in 2100. The UN expects Iraq to have more people than Iran from 2078. In 2100: 80.0 million in Iran, 101 million in Iraq (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Iran: people | Iraq: people | Iran: half older than | Iraq: half older than | Iran: children per woman | Iraq: children per woman | Iran: life expectancy | Iraq: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 16.5105 million | 5.65335 million | 21.7 | 21.5 | 6.97 | 6.20 | 38.2 | 37.4 |
| 1960 | 21.4704 million | 7.02205 million | 19.0 | 20.4 | 7.52 | 5.30 | 43.3 | 51.5 |
| 1970 | 29.1451 million | 9.73561 million | 17.5 | 18.0 | 6.80 | 7.07 | 50.2 | 60.5 |
| 1980 | 39.8423 million | 13.5920 million | 18.2 | 16.4 | 6.63 | 6.59 | 58.4 | 60.9 |
| 1990 | 58.3801 million | 17.5812 million | 18.1 | 17.0 | 4.93 | 5.93 | 64.1 | 57.6 |
| 2000 | 66.4187 million | 24.4241 million | 21.2 | 17.9 | 2.00 | 4.92 | 70.2 | 64.9 |
| 2010 | 77.4208 million | 31.0454 million | 27.1 | 18.9 | 1.75 | 4.46 | 74.4 | 68.1 |
| 2023 | 90.6087 million | 45.0740 million | 33.9 | 21.3 | 1.70 | 3.25 | 77.7 | 72.3 |
| 2030* | 95.4867 million | 51.9372 million | 37.7 | 23.1 | 1.63 | 2.97 | 79.0 | 73.1 |
| 2040* | 99.5243 million | 62.2232 million | 41.8 | 26.2 | 1.63 | 2.66 | 81.0 | 74.1 |
| 2050* | 101.862 million | 71.9287 million | 44.5 | 28.8 | 1.63 | 2.45 | 82.8 | 75.3 |
| 2060* | 100.971 million | 80.5202 million | 47.5 | 31.2 | 1.63 | 2.27 | 84.3 | 76.5 |
| 2070* | 96.7073 million | 87.9959 million | 50.7 | 33.7 | 1.64 | 2.15 | 85.8 | 77.8 |
| 2080* | 90.8439 million | 93.7619 million | 51.3 | 36.2 | 1.63 | 2.05 | 87.0 | 79.0 |
| 2090* | 85.2486 million | 98.0040 million | 51.6 | 38.3 | 1.64 | 1.97 | 88.2 | 80.3 |
| 2100* | 80.0453 million | 100.649 million | 52.9 | 40.1 | 1.64 | 1.92 | 89.3 | 81.6 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
IRN − IRQ · 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 Iran and which is Iraq, 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; Iran is drawn in solid blue squares and Iraq 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
Both sides of this comparison come from the UN Population Division's World Population Prospects 2024 — the same release, the same tables, counted to 2023 and projected beyond it on the medium variant. That shared origin is what a comparison rests on.
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