Sources & attribution
Where every number comes from, and the licence it is used under.
Primary source
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024.
All population figures, projections, median ages, fertility rates, life expectancy and age structures on this site are derived from WPP 2024, using the Estimates (1950–2023) and the Medium, Low and High projection variants (2024–2100). Age-structure pyramids use the “Population by 5-year age groups” dataset.
Licence
The UN World Population Prospects data is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO licence (CC BY 3.0 IGO). We attribute the United Nations as the source on every page and link back to the original data. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by the United Nations.
Download the data yourself
All of the underlying files are free to download from the UN:
- WPP 2024 downloads: demographic indicators and population by age.
Further reading
See the methodology for how we turn these sources into the charts and projections on the site.