Population

Number of people resident in a country, estimated as of 1 July each year. Population is the most structuring variable in geopolitics: it shapes the domestic market, military potential, diplomatic weight and pressure on resources. It is also the slowest to move — a population policy is read over thirty years, not over one term of office.

United Nations estimates (World Population Prospects, 2024 revision), distributed by Our World in Data, from 1970 to 2023. These are not censuses but reconstructed estimates: the UN harmonises national censuses whose frequency and reliability vary enormously, then interpolates the intervening years.

Seven logarithmic bands, from under 100,000 inhabitants to over 500 million. The scale is essential: the ratio between the Vatican and India exceeds one to a million, and a linear scale would show only two countries. The slider replays more than half a century of change.

Two countries exceed one billion inhabitants, and India overtook China in 2023 — a crossover that had not been expected before the end of the decade. World population growth has shifted to sub-Saharan Africa, the only region where fertility remains clearly above replacement level. At the other end, some twenty countries — Japan, Italy, Eastern Europe — now lose population every year.