The population of Europe was estimated to be 745 million in 2024, an increase of around 4 million when compared with 2012. Over 35 years between 1950 and 1985, the population of Europe grew by approximately 157.8 million. But 35 years after 1985 it was estimated to have only increased by around 38.7 million. Since the 1960s, population growth in Europe has fallen quite significantly and was even negative during the mid-1990s. While population growth has increased slightly since the low of -0.07 percent in 1998, the growth rate for 2020 was just 0.04 percent. Which European country has the biggest population? As of 2024, the population of Russia was estimated to be approximately 144.8 million and was by far Europe's largest country in terms of population, with Turkey being the second-largest at over 87 million. While these two countries both have territory in Europe, however, they are both only partially in Europe, with the majority of their landmasses being in Asia. In terms of countries wholly located on the European continent, Germany had the highest population at 84.5 million, and was followed by the United Kingdom and France at 69.1 million and 66.5 million respectively. Characteristics of Europe's population There are approximately 384.6 million females in Europe, compared with 359.5 million males, a difference of around 25 million. In 1950, however, the male population has grown faster than the female one, with the male population growing by 104.7 million, and the female one by 93.6 million. As of 2024, the single year of age with the highest population was 37, at 10.6 million, while in the same year there were estimated to be around 136 thousand people aged 100 or over.

Throughout the Common Era, Western Europe's population development fluctuated greatly. The population was very similar at the beginning and end of the first millennium, at around 25 million people. The largest decline in this period occurred in the sixth century, due to the Plague of Justinian, which the source claims to have killed around one third of the continent's population (although recent studies dispute this). Similarly, the population fell by almost 17 million throughout the 14th century, due to the Black Death.

Improvements in agriculture and infrastructure then saw population growth increase once more from the 15th century onwards, before the onset of the demographic transition saw a population boom throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

In 2025, the population of Europe was estimated to be approximately 7.4 million, with the most common single year of age being 38, at over 10.6 million. By contrast, there were just 126,350 people aged 99 this year.

This dataset provides values for POPULATION reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

These summary metadata refer to the first results on the main demographic developments in the year of reference.

Member States send to Eurostat the first results on the main demographic developments in the year of reference (T), containing the total population figure on 31 December of year T (further published by Eurostat as Population on 1 January of year T+1), total births and total deaths during year T. This data collection is defined under http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32013R1260&from=EN" target="_blank">Regulation 1260/2013 on European demographic statistics. Countries may also transmit to Eurostat, on voluntary basis, provisional data on total immigration, emigration and net migration during the year (T).

Eurostat's data collection on the above figures is called DEMOBAL and it is carried out in June of each year. Eurostat publishes these first demographic estimates in July of each year in the online database, in the table Population change - Demographic balance and crude rates (demo_gind).

These first demographic estimates may either be confirmed or updated by Eurostat's demographic data collection taking place in December each year (called Unidemo), whereby countries submit detailed breakdowns (e.g. by age and sex) of their yearly population data, including data on migration, both at national and at regional level. The online table Population change - Demographic balance and crude rates (demo-gind) will be accordingly updated. This table includes the latest updates on total population, births and deaths reported by the countries, while the detailed breakdowns by various characteristics included in the rest of the tables of the Eurostat database (Demography domain and Migration, for example the Population by citizenship and by country of birth table) may be transmitted to Eurostat at a subsequent date.

The online table Population change - Demographic balance and crude rates (demo-gind) contains time series going back to 1960; data before 2013 were collected by Eurostat from the national statistical offices on voluntary basis.

The individual metadata files reported by the countries are attached to this metadata file.

The world's population first reached one billion people in 1805, and reached eight billion in 2022, and will peak at almost 10.2 billion by the end of the century. Although it took thousands of years to reach one billion people, it did so at the beginning of a phenomenon known as the demographic transition; from this point onwards, population growth has skyrocketed, and since the 1960s the population has increased by one billion people every 12 to 15 years. The demographic transition sees a sharp drop in mortality due to factors such as vaccination, sanitation, and improved food supply; the population boom that follows is due to increased survival rates among children and higher life expectancy among the general population; and fertility then drops in response to this population growth. Regional differences The demographic transition is a global phenomenon, but it has taken place at different times across the world. The industrialized countries of Europe and North America were the first to go through this process, followed by some states in the Western Pacific. Latin America's population then began growing at the turn of the 20th century, but the most significant period of global population growth occurred as Asia progressed in the late-1900s. As of the early 21st century, almost two-thirds of the world's population lives in Asia, although this is set to change significantly in the coming decades. Future growth The growth of Africa's population, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, will have the largest impact on global demographics in this century. From 2000 to 2100, it is expected that Africa's population will have increased by a factor of almost five. It overtook Europe in size in the late 1990s, and overtook the Americas a few years later. In contrast to Africa, Europe's population is now in decline, as birth rates are consistently below death rates in many countries, especially in the south and east, resulting in natural population decline. Similarly, the population of the Americas and Asia are expected to go into decline in the second half of this century, and only Oceania's population will still be growing alongside Africa. By 2100, the world's population will have over three billion more than today, with the vast majority of this concentrated in Africa. Demographers predict that climate change is exacerbating many of the challenges that currently hinder progress in Africa, such as political and food instability; if Africa's transition is prolonged, then it may result in further population growth that would place a strain on the region's resources, however, curbing this growth earlier would alleviate some of the pressure created by climate change.

Graph and download economic data for Population Growth for the European Union (SPPOPGROWEUU) from 1961 to 2024 about EU, Europe, population, and rate.

The earliest point where scientists can make reasonable estimates for the population of global regions is around 10,000 years before the Common Era (or 12,000 years ago). Estimates suggest that Asia has consistently been the most populated continent, and the least populated continent has generally been Oceania (although it was more heavily populated than areas such as North America in very early years). Population growth was very slow, but an increase can be observed between most of the given time periods. There were, however, dips in population due to pandemics, the most notable of these being the impact of plague in Eurasia in the 14th century, and the impact of European contact with the indigenous populations of the Americas after 1492, where it took almost four centuries for the population of Latin America to return to its pre-1500 level. The world's population first reached one billion people in 1803, which also coincided with a spike in population growth, due to the onset of the demographic transition. This wave of growth first spread across the most industrially developed countries in the 19th century, and the correlation between demographic development and industrial or economic maturity continued until today, with Africa being the final major region to begin its transition in the late-1900s.

The number of persons having their usual residence in a country on 1 January of the respective year. When usually resident population is not available, countries may report legal or registered residents.

Key information about European Union population

• The European Union population reached 449.3 million people in Dec 2023, compared with the previously reported figure of 447.7 million people in Dec 2022
• The data reached an all-time high of 449.3 million people in Dec 2023 and a record low of 354.5 million people in Dec 1959

View yearly updates and historical trends for Western Europe Population Outlook. Source: International Monetary Fund. Track economic data with YCharts ana…

Context

Data containing education attainment level, also grouped by age group, sex and geography in Europe. Source is https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database (official European Data Source). Data is downloaded from the source, documented and uploaded to Kaggle.

Content

Original data

The original data is provided in TSV (tab delimited) format.

Data is grouped by sex, age group and geography. Education attainment is given by International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED11).

ISCED11 education levels are the following: X - No schooling
0 - Early childhood education
1 - Primary education
2 - Lower secondary education
3 - Upper secondary education
4 - Post-secondary non-tertiary education
5 - Short-cycle tertiary education
6 - Bachelor’s or equivalent level
7 - Master’s or equivalent level
8 - Doctoral or equivalent level
9 - Not elsewhere classified

Transformed data

For easiness of use, the original data was transformed using Starter Kernel: Population Education Levels in Europe in a csv format; if you want to replicate this process, you are welcome to fork this Kernel and implement your own data analysis.

How to

The data has the temporal information given as columns (per year). In order to further use this data, it would be more easy to pivot first these columns to get instead date/value pairs. This pivot operation can be done using melt from pandas is done in the starter kernel: * Starter Kernel: Population Education Levels in Europe; we convert the year to an integer. Just run this Kernel to put the data in csv format, with yearly data pivoted.

Acknowledgements

All merit for data collection, curation, and initial publishing goes to Eurostat.

Inspiration

You can use this data for various demographic, economic, public health, social aspects, combining with alternative data from Kaggle and other sources.

Historical dataset showing total population for European Union by year from 1960 to 2023.

Actual value and historical data chart for European Union Population Growth Annual Percent

Graph and download economic data for Population, Total for the European Union (SPPOPTOTLEUU) from 1960 to 2024 about EU, Europe, and population.

European Union Population: EU 27 excl UK: Female data was reported at 229,492.073 Person th in 2023. This records an increase from the previous number of 228,870.208 Person th for 2022. European Union Population: EU 27 excl UK: Female data is updated yearly, averaging 223,851.793 Person th from Dec 1984 (Median) to 2023, with 36 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 229,492.073 Person th in 2023 and a record low of 211,789.008 Person th in 1984. European Union Population: EU 27 excl UK: Female data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Eurostat. The data is categorized under Global Database’s European Union – Table EU.G002: Eurostat: Population: by Sex.

The population of Europe decreased by approximately 0.1 percent in 2024, falling to an overall total of approximately 745 million people. Since 1961, Europe's population growth rate has never exceeded one percent, and was even declining in the late 1990s and between 2020 and 2023.

European Union Population: EU 27 excl UK: Age 20 to 24 data was reported at 24,016.829 Person th in 2023. This records an increase from the previous number of 23,881.146 Person th for 2022. European Union Population: EU 27 excl UK: Age 20 to 24 data is updated yearly, averaging 26,569.403 Person th from Dec 2000 (Median) to 2023, with 24 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 29,377.961 Person th in 2000 and a record low of 23,792.976 Person th in 2021. European Union Population: EU 27 excl UK: Age 20 to 24 data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Eurostat. The data is categorized under Global Database’s European Union – Table EU.G001: Eurostat: Population.

Actual value and historical data chart for European Union Urban Population Percent Of Total

Actual value and historical data chart for European Union Population Total