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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Japan and 
Vietnam, side by side
In 2026, half of the people in Japan are older than 51. In Vietnam, half are older than 35.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Japan 124,370,946 people · Vietnam 100,352,192
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 × VNM · 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
- 22
- Aged 15 to 64
- 68
- Aged 65 and over
- 10
JPN × VNM · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
At today's rates, a woman in Japan would have about 1.2 children in her lifetime. In Vietnam, about 1.9. Life expectancy at birth this year: about 85 years in Japan, about 75 in Vietnam.
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 × VNM · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Japan has about 20% more people than Vietnam: 122 million against 102 million.
Japan's population is 1.4 times what it was in 1950; Vietnam's population is 4.1 times what it was in 1950.
Japan's population peaked in 2009. Meanwhile Vietnam's population is expected to peak in 2049. The UN expects Vietnam to have more people than Japan from 2044. In 2100: 76.8 million in Japan, 91.7 million in Vietnam (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Japan: people | Vietnam: people | Japan: half older than | Vietnam: half older than | Japan: children per woman | Vietnam: children per woman | Japan: life expectancy | Vietnam: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 86.4433 million | 25.1007 million | 22.3 | 24.1 | 3.62 | 5.15 | 59.3 | 48.0 |
| 1960 | 96.3997 million | 32.5319 million | 25.7 | 21.2 | 1.98 | 6.27 | 67.7 | 58.0 |
| 1970 | 106.712 million | 41.4752 million | 29.3 | 18.2 | 2.04 | 6.02 | 72.0 | 54.9 |
| 1980 | 118.359 million | 52.4901 million | 32.7 | 19.4 | 1.74 | 4.79 | 76.1 | 65.3 |
| 1990 | 123.400 million | 65.5045 million | 37.9 | 20.5 | 1.51 | 3.60 | 79.0 | 69.0 |
| 2000 | 127.028 million | 77.1540 million | 41.8 | 23.7 | 1.35 | 2.03 | 81.2 | 72.8 |
| 2010 | 128.185 million | 87.4552 million | 45.2 | 28.2 | 1.36 | 1.91 | 82.9 | 73.6 |
| 2023 | 124.371 million | 100.352 million | 50.0 | 33.4 | 1.21 | 1.91 | 84.7 | 74.6 |
| 2030* | 119.584 million | 104.255 million | 52.5 | 36.7 | 1.26 | 1.82 | 85.7 | 75.7 |
| 2040* | 112.158 million | 108.438 million | 54.1 | 39.2 | 1.31 | 1.77 | 87.1 | 77.3 |
| 2050* | 105.123 million | 110.009 million | 53.8 | 41.2 | 1.35 | 1.75 | 88.4 | 78.9 |
| 2060* | 98.1032 million | 108.397 million | 54.1 | 44.6 | 1.39 | 1.73 | 89.7 | 80.5 |
| 2070* | 90.6118 million | 105.261 million | 54.6 | 46.6 | 1.42 | 1.72 | 90.9 | 82.0 |
| 2080* | 84.7300 million | 101.039 million | 53.7 | 47.3 | 1.44 | 1.72 | 92.1 | 83.4 |
| 2090* | 80.6344 million | 96.4070 million | 53.4 | 48.9 | 1.46 | 1.71 | 93.2 | 84.8 |
| 2100* | 76.8460 million | 91.7051 million | 54.0 | 50.3 | 1.47 | 1.70 | 94.4 | 86.1 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
JPN − VNM · 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 Vietnam, 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 Vietnam 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: Japan · Vietnam. Or pick any two places with the boxes at the top of this page.
Other comparisons
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- Japan and Eastern Asia
- Vietnam and South-Eastern Asia
Apparatus
Sources and method
Every figure for Japan and Vietnam is the United Nations Population Division's, from World Population Prospects 2024: counted to 2023, and the medium projection for each year after that. Both places are taken from the same release and the same tables, which is what makes them comparable at all.
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.
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