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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Japan and 
Qatar, side by side
In 2026, half of the people in Japan are older than 51. In Qatar, half are older than 34.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Japan 124,370,946 people · Qatar 2,979,082
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
JPN × QAT · 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
- 59
- Aged 65 and over
- 30
- Children, under 15
- 15
- Aged 15 to 64
- 83
- Aged 65 and over
- 2
JPN × QAT · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
If the birth rates of this year held for a whole lifetime, a woman in Japan would have about 1.2 children and a woman in Qatar about 1.7. A baby born in Japan this year can expect to live about 85 years. In Qatar, about 83.
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.
JPN × QAT · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Japan is the larger of the two, with about 40 times as many people as Qatar: 122 million to 3.2 million.
Since 1950 the two have moved differently: Japan's population is 1.4 times what it was in 1950, while Qatar's population is 130.7 times what it was in 1950.
Looking ahead: Japan's population peaked in 2009, and Qatar's population is still growing in 2100. In 2100: 76.8 million in Japan, 7.3 million in Qatar (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Japan: people | Qatar: people | Japan: half older than | Qatar: half older than | Japan: children per woman | Qatar: children per woman | Japan: life expectancy | Qatar: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 86.4433 million | 24,280 | 22.3 | 18.6 | 3.62 | 6.54 | 59.3 | 50.8 |
| 1960 | 96.3997 million | 36,010 | 25.7 | 18.0 | 1.98 | 6.53 | 67.7 | 57.8 |
| 1970 | 106.712 million | 116,350 | 29.3 | 23.8 | 2.04 | 6.23 | 72.0 | 64.9 |
| 1980 | 118.359 million | 275,910 | 32.7 | 23.5 | 1.74 | 5.33 | 76.1 | 69.9 |
| 1990 | 123.400 million | 440,180 | 37.9 | 27.8 | 1.51 | 4.23 | 79.0 | 73.4 |
| 2000 | 127.028 million | 644,990 | 41.8 | 29.9 | 1.35 | 3.07 | 81.2 | 75.3 |
| 2010 | 128.185 million | 1.70923 million | 45.2 | 31.2 | 1.36 | 2.14 | 82.9 | 79.4 |
| 2023 | 124.371 million | 2.97908 million | 50.0 | 34.2 | 1.21 | 1.73 | 84.7 | 82.4 |
| 2030* | 119.584 million | 3.33361 million | 52.5 | 34.1 | 1.26 | 1.66 | 85.7 | 83.4 |
| 2040* | 112.158 million | 3.71150 million | 54.1 | 33.2 | 1.31 | 1.63 | 87.1 | 84.8 |
| 2050* | 105.123 million | 4.16446 million | 53.8 | 33.3 | 1.35 | 1.62 | 88.4 | 85.9 |
| 2060* | 98.1032 million | 4.67227 million | 54.1 | 33.3 | 1.39 | 1.61 | 89.7 | 86.9 |
| 2070* | 90.6118 million | 5.24288 million | 54.6 | 33.5 | 1.42 | 1.60 | 90.9 | 87.7 |
| 2080* | 84.7300 million | 5.87129 million | 53.7 | 33.9 | 1.44 | 1.61 | 92.1 | 88.8 |
| 2090* | 80.6344 million | 6.55281 million | 53.4 | 34.3 | 1.46 | 1.62 | 93.2 | 89.9 |
| 2100* | 76.8460 million | 7.27226 million | 54.0 | 34.7 | 1.47 | 1.63 | 94.4 | 90.9 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
JPN − QAT · 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 Japan and which is Qatar, 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; Japan is drawn in solid blue squares and Qatar 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.
How the median age and the “100 people” pictures are worked out, and why the pictures of every country leave the regions out: how the figures here are put together.
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