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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Ireland and 
United Kingdom, side by side
Ireland in 2026: half the people are older than 40. The United Kingdom: half are older than 41.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Ireland 5,196,630 people · United Kingdom 68,682,962
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
IRL × GBR · 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
- 18
- Aged 15 to 64
- 66
- Aged 65 and over
- 16
- Children, under 15
- 17
- Aged 15 to 64
- 63
- Aged 65 and over
- 20
IRL × GBR · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
At today's rates, a woman in Ireland would have about 1.6 children in her lifetime. In the United Kingdom, about 1.5. Life expectancy at birth this year: about 83 years in Ireland, about 82 in the United Kingdom.
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.
IRL × GBR · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
There are 69.9 million people in the United Kingdom and 5.4 million in Ireland: about 13 times as many people as Ireland.
Ireland's population is 1.8 times what it was in 1950; the United Kingdom's population is 1.4 times what it was in 1950.
Ireland's population is expected to peak in 2053; the United Kingdom's population is expected to peak in 2072. In 2100: 5.3 million in Ireland, 74.3 million in the United Kingdom (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Ireland: people | United Kingdom: people | Ireland: half older than | United Kingdom: half older than | Ireland: children per woman | United Kingdom: children per woman | Ireland: life expectancy | United Kingdom: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 2.91265 million | 50.1210 million | 30.0 | 34.9 | 3.50 | 2.22 | 65.6 | 68.6 |
| 1960 | 2.82769 million | 52.5386 million | 30.1 | 35.5 | 3.75 | 2.70 | 70.2 | 71.0 |
| 1970 | 2.96140 million | 55.6638 million | 27.2 | 34.2 | 3.85 | 2.42 | 70.8 | 71.9 |
| 1980 | 3.41524 million | 56.2821 million | 26.5 | 34.3 | 3.21 | 1.89 | 72.5 | 73.6 |
| 1990 | 3.51402 million | 57.3679 million | 29.2 | 35.9 | 2.11 | 1.83 | 74.8 | 75.7 |
| 2000 | 3.80259 million | 59.0573 million | 32.5 | 37.6 | 1.89 | 1.64 | 76.5 | 77.8 |
| 2010 | 4.55908 million | 63.0065 million | 34.3 | 39.2 | 2.06 | 1.92 | 80.6 | 80.4 |
| 2023 | 5.19663 million | 68.6830 million | 39.4 | 40.8 | 1.60 | 1.56 | 82.4 | 81.3 |
| 2030* | 5.52509 million | 71.2870 million | 40.9 | 41.7 | 1.60 | 1.52 | 83.5 | 82.4 |
| 2040* | 5.81757 million | 73.7746 million | 42.0 | 43.1 | 1.60 | 1.53 | 85.0 | 83.8 |
| 2050* | 5.97004 million | 75.5047 million | 43.9 | 43.9 | 1.60 | 1.55 | 86.2 | 85.1 |
| 2060* | 5.93392 million | 76.0104 million | 46.7 | 45.7 | 1.60 | 1.56 | 87.4 | 86.3 |
| 2070* | 5.79149 million | 76.0491 million | 48.2 | 46.9 | 1.60 | 1.57 | 88.5 | 87.4 |
| 2080* | 5.63397 million | 75.9562 million | 48.3 | 47.4 | 1.61 | 1.58 | 89.7 | 88.5 |
| 2090* | 5.49373 million | 75.3783 million | 49.5 | 48.0 | 1.61 | 1.59 | 90.7 | 89.5 |
| 2100* | 5.28612 million | 74.3054 million | 50.9 | 48.9 | 1.61 | 1.59 | 91.8 | 90.6 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
IRL − GBR · 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 Ireland and which is the United Kingdom, 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; Ireland is drawn in solid blue squares and the United Kingdom 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: Ireland · United Kingdom. Or pick any two places with the boxes at the top of this page.
Apparatus
Sources and method
Ireland and United Kingdom 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