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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Mali and 
Nepal, side by side
Line both places up by age in 2026. In Mali, half are older than 17; in Nepal, half are older than 27.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Mali 23,769,128 people · Nepal 29,694,614
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
MLI × NPL · 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
- 46
- Aged 15 to 64
- 52
- Aged 65 and over
- 2
- Children, under 15
- 28
- Aged 15 to 64
- 65
- Aged 65 and over
- 7
MLI × NPL · families and lifetimes
Children, and how long lives last
If the birth rates of this year held for a whole lifetime, a woman in Mali would have about 5.3 children and a woman in Nepal about 1.9. Around 2.1 children per woman keeps a population the same size over time, leaving migration aside. A baby born in Mali this year can expect to live about 61 years. In Nepal, about 71.
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.
MLI × NPL · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
Nepal is the larger of the two, with about 10% more people than Mali: 29.6 million to 25.9 million.
Mali's population is 5.5 times what it was in 1950; Nepal's population is 3.5 times what it was in 1950.
Mali's population is still growing in 2100. Meanwhile Nepal's population is expected to peak in 2067. The UN expects Mali to have more people than Nepal from 2033. In 2100: 79.4 million in Mali, 31.8 million in Nepal (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Mali: people | Nepal: people | Mali: half older than | Nepal: half older than | Mali: children per woman | Nepal: children per woman | Mali: life expectancy | Nepal: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 4.69691 million | 8.39660 million | 20.5 | 19.6 | 6.87 | 6.06 | 28.7 | 37.6 |
| 1960 | 5.40255 million | 10.1237 million | 19.8 | 19.5 | 7.02 | 6.07 | 30.5 | 38.6 |
| 1970 | 6.27647 million | 12.4362 million | 19.4 | 19.7 | 7.18 | 5.87 | 33.4 | 43.1 |
| 1980 | 7.53051 million | 15.5531 million | 18.0 | 19.5 | 7.37 | 5.60 | 40.3 | 48.3 |
| 1990 | 9.17883 million | 19.5246 million | 16.4 | 19.1 | 7.31 | 5.21 | 46.5 | 54.8 |
| 2000 | 11.5593 million | 24.5465 million | 16.4 | 19.3 | 6.89 | 3.98 | 50.6 | 62.6 |
| 2010 | 15.9452 million | 27.3420 million | 16.3 | 21.2 | 6.58 | 2.54 | 56.0 | 66.8 |
| 2023 | 23.7691 million | 29.6946 million | 16.5 | 25.7 | 5.61 | 1.98 | 60.4 | 70.3 |
| 2030* | 29.0029 million | 30.5100 million | 17.5 | 28.1 | 4.96 | 1.86 | 61.9 | 72.1 |
| 2040* | 37.4136 million | 32.9095 million | 19.2 | 32.1 | 4.05 | 1.77 | 63.8 | 74.2 |
| 2050* | 46.1541 million | 34.6420 million | 21.2 | 36.0 | 3.37 | 1.73 | 65.4 | 76.0 |
| 2060* | 54.7875 million | 35.6230 million | 23.8 | 39.6 | 2.90 | 1.71 | 66.8 | 77.8 |
| 2070* | 62.9195 million | 35.7524 million | 26.4 | 42.8 | 2.58 | 1.70 | 68.0 | 79.3 |
| 2080* | 69.9942 million | 35.0535 million | 29.0 | 45.4 | 2.36 | 1.69 | 69.2 | 80.8 |
| 2090* | 75.5399 million | 33.6420 million | 31.5 | 47.1 | 2.20 | 1.68 | 70.4 | 82.3 |
| 2100* | 79.3541 million | 31.8314 million | 33.8 | 48.4 | 2.08 | 1.67 | 71.5 | 83.7 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
MLI − NPL · 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 Mali and which is Nepal, 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; Mali is drawn in solid blue squares and Nepal 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.
For how the median age is derived, why “100 people” can read a person high or low, and what the all-country pictures do and do not count, see 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