The region of present-day China has historically been the most populous region in the world; however, its population development has fluctuated throughout history. In 2022, China was overtaken as the most populous country in the world, and current projections suggest its population is heading for a rapid decline in the coming decades. Transitions of power lead to mortality The source suggests that conflict, and the diseases brought with it, were the major obstacles to population growth throughout most of the Common Era, particularly during transitions of power between various dynasties and rulers. It estimates that the total population fell by approximately 30 million people during the 14th century due to the impact of Mongol invasions, which inflicted heavy losses on the northern population through conflict, enslavement, food instability, and the introduction of bubonic plague. Between 1850 and 1870, the total population fell once more, by more than 50 million people, through further conflict, famine and disease; the most notable of these was the Taiping Rebellion, although the Miao an Panthay Rebellions, and the Dungan Revolt, also had large death tolls. The third plague pandemic also originated in Yunnan in 1855, which killed approximately two million people in China. 20th and 21st centuries There were additional conflicts at the turn of the 20th century, which had significant geopolitical consequences for China, but did not result in the same high levels of mortality seen previously. It was not until the overlapping Chinese Civil War (1927-1949) and Second World War (1937-1945) where the death tolls reached approximately 10 and 20 million respectively. Additionally, as China attempted to industrialize during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), economic and agricultural mismanagement resulted in the deaths of tens of millions (possibly as many as 55 million) in less than four years, during the Great Chinese Famine. This mortality is not observable on the given dataset, due to the rapidity of China's demographic transition over the entire period; this saw improvements in healthcare, sanitation, and infrastructure result in sweeping changes across the population. The early 2020s marked some significant milestones in China's demographics, where it was overtaken by India as the world's most populous country, and its population also went into decline. Current projections suggest that China is heading for a "demographic disaster", as its rapidly aging population is placing significant burdens on China's economy, government, and society. In stark contrast to the restrictive "one-child policy" of the past, the government has introduced a series of pro-fertility incentives for couples to have larger families, although the impact of these policies are yet to materialize. If these current projections come true, then China's population may be around half its current size by the end of the century.

Whereas the population is expected to decrease somewhat until 2100 in Asia, Europe, and South America, it is predicted to grow significantly in Africa. While there were 1.5 billion inhabitants on the continent at the beginning of 2024, the number of inhabitants is expected to reach 3.8 billion by 2100. In total, the global population is expected to reach nearly 10.4 billion by 2100. Worldwide population In the United States, the total population is expected to steadily increase over the next couple of years. In 2024, Asia held over half of the global population and is expected to have the highest number of people living in urban areas in 2050. Asia is home to the two most populous countries, India and China, both with a population of over one billion people. However, the small country of Monaco had the highest population density worldwide in 2021. Effects of overpopulation Alongside the growing worldwide population, there are negative effects of overpopulation. The increasing population puts a higher pressure on existing resources and contributes to pollution. As the population grows, the demand for food grows, which requires more water, which in turn takes away from the freshwater available. Concurrently, food needs to be transported through different mechanisms, which contributes to air pollution. Not every resource is renewable, meaning the world is using up limited resources that will eventually run out. Furthermore, more species will become extinct which harms the ecosystem and food chain. Overpopulation was considered to be one of the most important environmental issues worldwide in 2020.

From now until 2100, India and China will remain the most populous countries in the world, however China's population decline has already started, and it is on course to fall by around 50 percent in the 2090s; while India's population decline is projected to begin in the 2060s. Of the 10 most populous countries in the world in 2100, five will be located in Asia, four in Africa, as well as the United States. Rapid growth in Africa Rapid population growth across Africa will see the continent's population grow from around 1.5 billion people in 2024 to 3.8 billion in 2100. Additionally, unlike China or India, population growth in many of these countries is not expected to go into decline, and instead is expected to continue well into the 2100s. Previous estimates had projected these countries' populations would be much higher by 2100 (the 2019 report estimated Nigeria's population would exceed 650 million), yet the increased threat of the climate crisis and persistent instability is delaying demographic development and extending population growth. The U.S. as an outlier Compared to the nine other largest populations in 2100, the United States stands out as it is more demographically advanced, politically stable, and economically stronger. However, while most other so-called "advanced countries" are projected to see their population decline drastically in the coming decades, the U.S. population is projected to continue growing into the 2100s. This will largely be driven by high rates of immigration into the U.S., which will drive growth despite fertility rates being around 1.6 births per woman (below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman), and the slowing rate of life expectancy. Current projections estimate the U.S. will have a net migration rate over 1.2 million people per year for the remainder of the century.

V1 dataset:Under the global framework of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), based on localized population and economic parameters, a Population Development Environment (PDE) model is adopted to construct population grid data for SSPs from 2020 to 2100; Using the Cobb Douglas model, construct economic data for SSPs from 2020 to 2100.The v1 dataset includes:Population grid data of the world, The Belt and Road region, and China, with a spatial resolution of 0.5°GDP grid data of the world, The Belt and Road region, and China, with a spatial resolution of 0.5 °Grid data on the output value of three industries in the Chinese region, with a spatial resolution of 0.1 °V2 dataset:Based on the data from the 7th National Population Census of China, starting from 2020, the parameters such as fertility rate, mortality rate, migration rate, and education level in the Population Development Environment (PDE) model were updated. Under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP1-5), a new version (v2) of the total population and age and gender specific population projection dataset for China and its provinces from 2020 to 2100 was created. Based on the data from the 7th National Population Census and the 4th Economic Census of China, with 2020 as the starting year, the parameters of total factor productivity, capital stock, labor input, and capital elasticity coefficient in the Cobb Douglas model were updated. Under the shared SSP1-5, a new version (v2) of China and its provincial GDP projectiondataset from 2020 to 2100 was created.The v2 (2024 version) dataset includes:Total Population Data of China and Provinces (2020-2100)Population data by age and gender in China (2020-2100)China and Provincial GDP Data (2020-2100)

Total current population for China in 2025 is 1,424,381,924, a 0.06% decline from 2024.

<ul style='margin-top:20px;'>

<li>Total population for China in 2024 was <strong>1,425,178,782</strong>, a <strong>1.03% increase</strong> from 2023.</li>
<li>Total population for China in 2023 was <strong>1,410,710,000</strong>, a <strong>0.1% decline</strong> from 2022.</li>
<li>Total population for China in 2022 was <strong>1,412,175,000</strong>, a <strong>0.01% decline</strong> from 2021.</li>
</ul>Total population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship. The values shown are midyear estimates.

In 2020, about 17.9 percent of the population in China had been 60 years and older. This share is growing rapidly and was estimated to reach 40 percent by 2050. China's aging population With China’s boomer generation growing old and life expectancy increasing at the same time, the number of people at an age of 60 or above nearly doubled between 2000 and 2020 and reached around 255 million. This development is even more pronounced for the age group of 80 and above, which nearly tripled and is expected to reach a size of roughly 132 million in 2050, up from only 32 million in 2020. At the same time, the share of the working-age population is forecasted to decrease gradually from 64 percent of the total population in 2020 to around 50 percent in 2050, which could pose a heavy economic strain on the social security system. The old-age dependency ratio, which denotes the relation of the old-age to the working-age population, is estimated to grow from 18.2 percent in 2020 to more than 50 percent in 2050, implying that by then, statistically, two working-age adults would have to support one elderly. Strain on the social security net During the last 15 years, China's government has successfully increased the coverage of the pension insurance and health insurance. Today, most of the people are covered by some kind of social insurance. Conditions in the pension system are generous, with a regular retirement age for males at 60 years and women at 50 or 55. With the number of retirees increasing quickly, the social insurance system is now under pressure. From an economic point of view, improving the productivity of China's economy would be the primary choice for mitigating alleged inconsistencies of the system. However, without increasing the burden on the working people while tightening payment conditions, balancing the social security net could prove to be challenging.

This dataset contains key characteristics about the data described in the Data Descriptor Provincial and gridded population projection for China under shared socioeconomic pathways from 2010 to 2100. Contents:

    1. human readable metadata summary table in CSV format


    2. machine readable metadata file in JSON format 


      Versioning Note:Version 2 was generated when the metadata format was updated from JSON to JSON-LD. This was an automatic process that changed only the format, not the contents, of the metadata.

This is a hybrid gridded dataset of demographic data for China from 1979 to 2100, given as 21 five-year age groups of population divided by gender every year at a 0.5-degree grid resolution.

The historical period (1979-2020) part of this dataset combines the NASA SEDAC Gridded Population of the World version 4 (GPWv4, UN WPP-Adjusted Population Count) with gridded population from the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP, Histsoc gridded population data).

The projection (2010-2100) part of this dataset is resampled directly from Chen et al.’s data published in Scientific Data.

This dataset includes 31 provincial administrative districts of China, including 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, and 4 municipalities directly under the control of the central government (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao were excluded due to missing data).

Method - demographic fractions by age and gender in 1979-2020

Age- and gender-specific demographic data by grid cell for each province in China are derived by combining historical demographic data in 1979-2020 with the national population census data provided by the National Statistics Bureau of China.

To combine the national population census data with the historical demographics, we constructed the provincial fractions of demographic in each age groups and each gender according to the fourth, fifth and sixth national population census, which cover the year of 1979-1990, 1991-2000 and 2001-2020, respectively. The provincial fractions can be computed as:

\(\begin{align*} \begin{split} f_{year,province,age,gender}= \left \{ \begin{array}{lr} POP_{1990,province,age,gender}^{4^{th}census}/POP_{1990,province}^{4^{th}census} & 1979\le\mathrm{year}\le1990\\ POP_{2000,province,age,gender}^{5^{th}census}/POP_{2000,province}^{5^{th}census} & 1991\le\mathrm{year}\le2000\\ POP_{2010,province,age,gender}^{6^{th}census}/POP_{2010,province}^{6^{th}census}, & 2001\le\mathrm{year}\le2020 \end{array} \right. \end{split} \end{align*}\)

Where:

- \( f_{\mathrm{year,province,age,gender}}\)is the fraction of population for a given age, a given gender in each province from the national census from 1979-2020.

- \(\mathrm{PO}\mathrm{P}_{\mathrm{year,province,age,gender}}^{X^{\mathrm{th}}\mathrm{census} }\) is the total population for a given age, a given gender in each province from the X^th national census.

- \(\mathrm{PO}\mathrm{P}_{\mathrm{year,province}}^{X^{\mathrm{th}}\mathrm{census} }\) is the total population for all ages and both genders in each province from the X^th national census.

Method - demographic totals by age and gender in 1979-2020

The yearly grid population for 1979-1999 are from ISIMIP Histsoc gridded population data, and for 2000-2020 are from the GPWv4 demographic data adjusted by the UN WPP (UN WPP-Adjusted Population Count, v4.11, https://beta.sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/gpw-v4-population-count-adjusted-to-2015-unwpp-country-totals-rev11), which combines the spatial distribution of demographics from GPWv4 with the temporal trends from the UN WPP to improve accuracy. These two gridded time series are simply joined at the cut-over date to give a single dataset - historical demographic data covering 1979-2020.

Next, historical demographic data are mapped onto the grid scale to obtain provincial data by using gridded provincial code lookup data and name lookup table. The age- and gender-specific fraction were multiplied by the historical demographic data at the provincial level to obtain the total population by age and gender for per grid cell for china in 1979-2020.

Method - demographic totals and fractions by age and gender in 2010-2100

The grid population count data in 2010-2100 under different shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) scenarios are drawn from Chen et al. published in Scientific Data with a resolution of 1km (~ 0.008333 degree). We resampled the data to 0.5 degree by aggregating the population count together to obtain the future population data per cell.

This previously published dataset also provided age- and gender-specific population of each provinces, so we calculated the fraction of each age and gender group at provincial level. Then, we multiply the fractions with grid population count to get the total population per age group per cell for each gender.

Note that the projected population data from Chen’s dataset covers 2010-2020, while the historical population in our dataset also covers 2010-2020. The two datasets of that same period may vary because the original population data come from different sources and are calculated based on different methods.

Disclaimer

This dataset is a hybrid of different datasets with independent methodologies. Spatial or temporal consistency across dataset boundaries cannot be guaranteed.

The Country-Level Population and Downscaled Projections Based on Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) B2 Scenario, 1990-2100, were based on the UN 1998 Medium Long Range Projection for the years 1995 to 2100. The official version projects population for 8 regions of the world including Africa, Asia (minus India and China), India, China, Europe, Latin America, Northern America, and Oceania. This data set is produced and distributed by the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN).

Since 1970, the median age of China’s population has continued to increase from around ** years to around **** years in 2020. According to estimates from the United Nations, the increasing trend will slow down when the median age will reach ** years in the middle of the 21st century and will remain at around ** years up to 2100. China’s aging population Although the median age of China’s population is still lower than in many developed countries, for example in Japan, the consequences of a rapidly aging population have already become a concern for the country’s future. As the most populated country in the world, the large labor force in China contributed to the country’s astonishing economic growth in the last decades. Nowadays however, the aging population is going to become a burden for China’s social welfare system and could change China’s economic situation. Reasons for the aging population Like in many other countries, increasing life expectancy is regarded as the main reason for the aging of the population. As healthcare and living standards have improved, life expectancy in China has also increased. In addition, the one-child policy led to a decreasing fertility rate in China, which further increased the share of older people in the society. Even though the one-child policy has been abolished in 2016, many young people are refraining from having children, largely due to the high costs of raising a child, career pressure and the pursuit of freedom.

The graph shows the share of the population aged 80 and over in China from 1950 to 2020, with forecasts up until 2100. In 2020, about 2.3 percent of the population in China was 80 years of age and over.

In 2020, the child and old-age dependency ratios in China ranged at around 25.9 and 18.2 percent respectively, summing up to a total dependency ratio of 44.1 percent. While the child dependency ratio is expected to drop slightly and then remain stable, the old-age dependency ratio will rise steadily in coming decades. Age demographics in China With a populace of 1.4 billion people by the end of 2023, China stands the country with the second largest population in the world. Since its foundation in 1949, the PRC has experienced high population growth. With the beginning of the reform period in the end of the 1970s, population growth decreased steadily. Finally, China's population size peaked in 2021 and entered a declining path. Falling birth rates in combination with higher life expectancy led to a continuously increasing median age of the population in China over the past five decades. The median age of the Chinese population is expected to rise further and to reach 50 years by the middle of the century. Development of the dependency ratio China has enjoyed a continuously growing work force since the late 1970s. Simultaneously, the total dependency ratio in China decreased from 80 percent in 1970 to about 37 percent in 2010. However, an important turning point was reached in 2011, as the total dependency ratio was set to increase again after 30 years of population bonus. As can be seen from the above graph, until 2100, child-dependency is estimated to remain steady around 15 to 20 percent. Old-age dependency on the other hand is expected to grow from about 12 percent in 2010 to 69 percent in 2060, implying a growing number of senior citizens that need support from the working population. The shift of age demographics in the near future in China is bound to have ineligible economical and social impacts. To learn more about age demographics in China, take a look at our dossier aging population in China.

The median age in India was 27 years old in 2020, meaning half the population was older than that, half younger. This figure was lowest in 1970, at 18.1 years, and was projected to increase to 47.8 years old by 2100. Aging in India India has the second largest population in the world, after China. Because of the significant population growth of the past years, the age distribution remains skewed in favor of the younger age bracket. This tells a story of rapid population growth, but also of a lower life expectancy. Economic effects of a young population Many young people means that the Indian economy must support a large number of students, who demand education from the economy but cannot yet work. Educating the future workforce will be important, because the economy is growing as well and is one of the largest in the world. Failing to do this could lead to high youth unemployment and political consequences. However, a productive and young workforce could provide huge economic returns for India.

This graph shows the working-age adults to elderly ratio in China from 2000 to 2020 with forecasts until 2100. In 2030, about 2.3 adults are estimated to support one elderly person in China.

In the middle of 2023, about 60 percent of the global population was living in Asia.The total world population amounted to 8.1 billion people on the planet. In other words 4.7 billion people were living in Asia as of 2023. Global populationDue to medical advances, better living conditions and the increase of agricultural productivity, the world population increased rapidly over the past century, and is expected to continue to grow. After reaching eight billion in 2023, the global population is estimated to pass 10 billion by 2060. Africa expected to drive population increase Most of the future population increase is expected to happen in Africa. The countries with the highest population growth rate in 2024 were mostly African countries. While around 1.47 billion people live on the continent as of 2024, this is forecast to grow to 3.9 billion by 2100. This is underlined by the fact that most of the countries wit the highest population growth rate are found in Africa. The growing population, in combination with climate change, puts increasing pressure on the world's resources.