Topics
Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Italy and 
Japan, side by side
Italy in 2026: half the people are older than 50. Japan: half are older than 51.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Italy 59,499,453 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
ITA × 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
- 11
- Aged 15 to 64
- 63
- Aged 65 and over
- 26
- Children, under 15
- 11
- Aged 15 to 64
- 59
- Aged 65 and over
- 30
ITA × JPN · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
Italy is at about 1.2 children for each woman, at this year's rates; Japan is at about 1.2. Babies born this year can expect about 84 years of life in Italy 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.
ITA × JPN · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Japan is the larger of the two, with about twice as many people as Italy: 122 million to 58.9 million.
Set each against its own 1950 self and Italy's population is 1.3 times what it was in 1950, Japan's population is 1.4 times what it was in 1950.
Italy's population peaked in 2014. Meanwhile Japan's population peaked in 2009. In 2100: 35.4 million in Italy, 76.8 million in Japan (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Italy: people | Japan: people | Italy: half older than | Japan: half older than | Italy: children per woman | Japan: children per woman | Italy: life expectancy | Japan: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 46.3917 million | 86.4433 million | 28.5 | 22.3 | 2.52 | 3.62 | 65.7 | 59.3 |
| 1960 | 49.5146 million | 96.3997 million | 31.5 | 25.7 | 2.38 | 1.98 | 69.2 | 67.7 |
| 1970 | 53.3902 million | 106.712 million | 32.9 | 29.3 | 2.40 | 2.04 | 71.6 | 72.0 |
| 1980 | 56.4121 million | 118.359 million | 34.0 | 32.7 | 1.65 | 1.74 | 74.0 | 76.1 |
| 1990 | 57.0314 million | 123.400 million | 37.1 | 37.9 | 1.33 | 1.51 | 77.0 | 79.0 |
| 2000 | 57.2722 million | 127.028 million | 40.3 | 41.8 | 1.25 | 1.35 | 79.6 | 81.2 |
| 2010 | 60.1642 million | 128.185 million | 43.5 | 45.2 | 1.44 | 1.36 | 82.1 | 82.9 |
| 2023 | 59.4995 million | 124.371 million | 48.5 | 50.0 | 1.20 | 1.21 | 83.7 | 84.7 |
| 2030* | 57.9461 million | 119.584 million | 51.0 | 52.5 | 1.25 | 1.26 | 84.7 | 85.7 |
| 2040* | 55.2212 million | 112.158 million | 53.0 | 54.1 | 1.30 | 1.31 | 86.0 | 87.1 |
| 2050* | 51.8911 million | 105.123 million | 53.9 | 53.8 | 1.35 | 1.35 | 87.2 | 88.4 |
| 2060* | 47.5845 million | 98.1032 million | 54.0 | 54.1 | 1.39 | 1.39 | 88.4 | 89.7 |
| 2070* | 43.3533 million | 90.6118 million | 54.4 | 54.6 | 1.42 | 1.42 | 89.5 | 90.9 |
| 2080* | 40.2259 million | 84.7300 million | 54.0 | 53.7 | 1.43 | 1.44 | 90.6 | 92.1 |
| 2090* | 37.7486 million | 80.6344 million | 53.9 | 53.4 | 1.46 | 1.46 | 91.7 | 93.2 |
| 2100* | 35.3768 million | 76.8460 million | 54.4 | 54.0 | 1.48 | 1.47 | 92.8 | 94.4 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
ITA − 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 Italy 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; Italy 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.
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Keep exploring
Each place on its own: Italy · Japan. Or pick any two places with the boxes at the top of this page.
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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