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Compare · UN World Population Prospects 2024
Mali and 
Syria, side by side
Mali in 2026: half the people are older than 17. Syria: half are older than 25.
UN estimates for mid-2023: Mali 23,769,128 people · Syria 23,594,623
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 × SYR · 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
- 67
- Aged 65 and over
- 5
MLI × SYR · 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 Syria about 2.6. Babies born this year can expect about 61 years of life in Mali and about 73 in Syria.
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 × SYR · 1950–2100 · how many
How big, and where they are heading
There are 26.5 million people in Syria and 25.9 million in Mali: about as many people as Mali.
Set each against its own 1950 self and Mali's population is 5.5 times what it was in 1950, Syria's population is 7.3 times what it was in 1950.
Mali's population is still growing in 2100. Meanwhile Syria's population is expected to peak in 2086. The UN expects Mali to have more people than Syria from 2033. In 2100: 79.4 million in Mali, 43.7 million in Syria (UN projection, medium).
Show the numbers
| Year | Mali: people | Syria: people | Mali: half older than | Syria: half older than | Mali: children per woman | Syria: children per woman | Mali: life expectancy | Syria: life expectancy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 4.69691 million | 3.61208 million | 20.5 | 20.2 | 6.87 | 7.62 | 28.7 | 42.5 |
| 1960 | 5.40255 million | 4.67350 million | 19.8 | 17.5 | 7.02 | 7.50 | 30.5 | 52.7 |
| 1970 | 6.27647 million | 6.38061 million | 19.4 | 15.8 | 7.18 | 7.62 | 33.4 | 60.6 |
| 1980 | 7.53051 million | 8.95766 million | 18.0 | 15.5 | 7.37 | 7.12 | 40.3 | 66.5 |
| 1990 | 9.17883 million | 12.5792 million | 16.4 | 16.4 | 7.31 | 5.56 | 46.5 | 69.8 |
| 2000 | 11.5593 million | 16.6379 million | 16.4 | 18.5 | 6.89 | 4.07 | 50.6 | 70.9 |
| 2010 | 15.9452 million | 22.4824 million | 16.3 | 21.7 | 6.58 | 3.35 | 56.0 | 73.5 |
| 2023 | 23.7691 million | 23.5946 million | 16.5 | 23.3 | 5.61 | 2.71 | 60.4 | 72.1 |
| 2030* | 29.0029 million | 29.3955 million | 17.5 | 26.5 | 4.96 | 2.48 | 61.9 | 74.0 |
| 2040* | 37.4136 million | 34.5332 million | 19.2 | 30.3 | 4.05 | 2.23 | 63.8 | 75.6 |
| 2050* | 46.1541 million | 37.7934 million | 21.2 | 33.1 | 3.37 | 2.06 | 65.4 | 77.0 |
| 2060* | 54.7875 million | 40.8240 million | 23.8 | 35.0 | 2.90 | 1.95 | 66.8 | 78.5 |
| 2070* | 62.9195 million | 42.9823 million | 26.4 | 38.6 | 2.58 | 1.87 | 68.0 | 79.9 |
| 2080* | 69.9942 million | 43.8899 million | 29.0 | 41.8 | 2.36 | 1.82 | 69.2 | 81.3 |
| 2090* | 75.5399 million | 44.1231 million | 31.5 | 43.0 | 2.20 | 1.78 | 70.4 | 82.7 |
| 2100* | 79.3541 million | 43.6867 million | 33.8 | 44.3 | 2.08 | 1.76 | 71.5 | 84.0 |
* UN projection, medium variant. People at mid-year; ages and life expectancy in years.
MLI − SYR · 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 Syria, 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 Syria 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
Mali and Syria 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.
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