Globally, about 25 percent of the population is under 15 years of age and 10 percent is over 65 years of age. Africa has the youngest population worldwide. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than 40 percent of the population is below 15 years, and only three percent are above 65, indicating the low life expectancy in several of the countries. In Europe, on the other hand, a higher share of the population is above 65 years than the population under 15 years. Fertility rates The high share of children and youth in Africa is connected to the high fertility rates on the continent. For instance, South Sudan and Niger have the highest population growth rates globally. However, about 50 percent of the world’s population live in countries with low fertility, where women have less than 2.1 children. Some countries in Europe, like Latvia and Lithuania, have experienced a population decline of one percent, and in the Cook Islands, it is even above two percent. In Europe, the majority of the population was previously working-aged adults with few dependents, but this trend is expected to reverse soon, and it is predicted that by 2050, the older population will outnumber the young in many developed countries. Growing global population As of 2025, there are 8.1 billion people living on the planet, and this is expected to reach more than nine billion before 2040. Moreover, the global population is expected to reach 10 billions around 2060, before slowing and then even falling slightly by 2100. As the population growth rates indicate, a significant share of the population increase will happen in Africa.

In the 2023 edition of the globalization index, Switzerland had the highest index score at 90.75. Belgium followed behind, with the Netherlands in third. Overall, globalization declined in 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak, but increased somewhat in 2021, even though it was still below pre-pandemic levels.

About the index

The KOF Index of Globalization aims to measure the rate of globalization in countries around the world. Data used to construct the 2023 edition of the index was from 2021. The index is based on three dimensions, or core sets of indicators: economic, social, and political. Via these three dimensions, the overall index of globalization tries to assess current economic flows, economic restrictions, data on information flows, data on personal contact, and data on cultural proximity within surveyed countries.

Defining globalization

Globalization is defined for this index as the process of creating networks of connections among actors at multi-continental distances, mediated through a variety of flows including people, information and ideas, capital and goods. It is a process that erodes national boundaries, integrates national economies, cultures, technologies and governance and produces complex relations of mutual interdependence.

In 2024, Monaco was the country with the highest percentage of the total population that was over the age of 65, with ** percent. Japan had the second highest with ** percent, while Portugal and Bulgaria followed in third with ***percent.

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

The average for 2022 based on 195 countries was 18.38 births per 1000 people. The highest value was in Niger: 45.03 births per 1000 people and the lowest value was in Hong Kong: 4.4 births per 1000 people. The indicator is available from 1960 to 2022. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

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

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

Household furnishings, consumer habits, evaluation of country image and general attitude to the EEC.

Topics: 1. Consumption and questions of furnishing: assessment of personal as well as national economic situation in the last 5 years; relative assessment of standard of living in one´s country compared with the rest of the countries; detailed recording of type, age and repeated acquisition of durable economic goods; country image regarding product, price and fashion; judgement on quantitative product offering from foreign countries; residential furnishings; having a yard; type of film used for camera and use of film in the last year; flash pictures.

1. Questions on car: possession of delivery vehicle and car, broken down by number, brand, model, type of car, displacement and year of manufacture; purchased new or used; possession of car radio and kilometers driven annually; getting gas at self-service station; personally conducting car care and use of car shampoo as well as car polish; possession of bicycle.

2. Detailed recording of drinking habits with soft drinks, beer, wine and schnapps.

3. Attitude to the EEC: knowledge about member countries of the EEC; countries that should join the EEC; countries that have obtained the greatest or the least benefit from the EEC; EEC membership for the benefit of the country and to raise the standard of living; most important political objectives of the EEC.

4. Socio-cultural attitudes: attitude to law breakers; social equity; social and ethnic tolerance; general attitude to young people and older people.

5. Attitude to advertising: purchase of a watch during the last five years and price paid for it; activities and maintenance personally carried out in the household; attitude to fashion (scale); social prestige of selected occupations; church attendance on Christmas Day; desire for a life 50 years from now; number of rooms with carpeting.

6. Leisure time and further education: knowledge of a foreign language; television habits and reading habits of magazines; total reading times and whereabouts of the magazines; number of books read and bought in the last year; book price; manner of book acquisition (mail-order or book dealer); pet possession and type as well as extent of obtaining food; participation in further education courses and motives for this; vacation behavior; vacation destinations abroad; package tours; relatives and friends traveling along; trip duration; trip costs; means of transport used; air travel; scheduled or charter flight; frequency of trips to hairdresser; (for women: use of toiletries and cosmetics); (for men: use of washing and shaving utensils; custom-made or off-the-shelf suit; type of business and price of suit last purchased); use or preference for nutrition and semi-luxury foods, tobacco and alcohol; use of dish-washing liquids and household cleansers or cleaning products; use of group washing machines or use of a laundry; age of one´s own washing machine; forms of assets and possession of accounts; second home; Readers´ Digest subscriber.

Demography: age; sex; marital status; religious denomination; occupational position; employment; company size; household income; possession of durable economic goods; household composition; respondent is head of household; characteristics of head of household; housing situation; residential status; degree of urbanization.

Interviewer rating: social class of respondent; weekday of interview.

Household furnishings, consumer habits, evaluation of country image and general attitude to the EEC.

Topics: 1. consumption and furnishing questions: assessment of personal as well as national economic situation in the last 5 years; relative assessment of the standard of living in one´s country, compared with the other countries; detailed recording of type, age and repeated acquisition of durable economic goods; country image regarding product, price and fashion; judgement on the quantitative product selection from abroad; residential furnishings; having a yard; type of film used for the camera and film use in the last year; flash pictures.

1. questions on car: possession of delivery vehicle and car, organized according to number, brand, model, form of vehicle, displacement and year of manufacture; new purchase or used car; car radio possession and kilometers driven annually; getting gas self-service; personally conducting vehicle maintenance and use of car cleanser as well as car wax; possession of bicycle.

2. detailed recording of drinking habits with softdrinks, beer, wine and schnapps.

3. attitude to the EEC: knowledge about the member countries of the EEC; countries that should join the EEC; countries that have drawn the greatest or the least benefit from the EEC; EEC membership for the benefit of the country and to raise the standard of living; most important political goals of the EEC.

4. socio-cultural attitudes: attitude to law-breakers; social justice; social and ethnic tolerance; general attitude to young people and older people.

5. attitude to advertising: purchase of a watch during the last five years and price paid for it; activities and jobs conducted oneself in the household; attitude to fashion (scale); social prestige of selected occupations; church attendance on Christmas Day; desire for a life 50 years from now; number of rooms with carpeting.

6. leisure time and further education: knowledge of a foreign language; television habits and reading habits with magazines; total reading times and whereabouts of the magazines; number of books read and bought in the last year; book price; manner of book purchase (mail-order or bookstore); pet possession and manner as well as extent of obtaining feed; participation in further education courses and motives for this; vacation behavior; vacation destinations abroad; package tours; relatives and friends traveling along; trip duration; trip costs; means of transport used; trips by airplane; scheduled or charter flight; frequency of trips to the hairdresser; (among women: use of toiletries and cosmetics); (among men: use of washing and shaving utensils; custom-made or off-the-shelf suit; type of store and price of suit last purchased); use or provisions of nutrition and semi-luxury foods, tobacco and alcohol; use of dish-washing liquids and household cleansers or cleaning products; use of communal washing machines or use of a laundry; age of one´s own washing machine; forms of assets and bank account possession; second home; Readers´ Digest subscriber.

Demography: age; sex; marital status; religious denomination; occupational position; employment; company size; household income; possession of durable economic goods; composition of household; respondent is head of household; characteristics of head of household; housing situation; residential status; degree of urbanization.

Interviewer rating: social class of respondent; weekday of interview.

The statistic shows the 20 countries with the lowest fertility rates in 2024. All figures are estimates. In 2024, the fertility rate in Taiwan was estimated to be at 1.11 children per woman, making it the lowest fertility rate worldwide. Fertility rate The fertility rate is the average number of children born per woman of child-bearing age in a country. Usually, a woman aged between 15 and 45 is considered to be in her child-bearing years. The fertility rate of a country provides an insight into its economic state, as well as the level of health and education of its population. Developing countries usually have a higher fertility rate due to lack of access to birth control and contraception, and to women usually foregoing a higher education, or even any education at all, in favor of taking care of housework. Many families in poorer countries also need their children to help provide for the family by starting to work early and/or as caretakers for their parents in old age. In developed countries, fertility rates and birth rates are usually much lower, as birth control is easier to obtain and women often choose a career before becoming a mother. Additionally, if the number of women of child-bearing age declines, so does the fertility rate of a country. As can be seen above, countries like Hong Kong are a good example for women leaving the patriarchal structures and focusing on their own career instead of becoming a mother at a young age, causing a decline of the country’s fertility rate. A look at the fertility rate per woman worldwide by income group also shows that women with a low income tend to have more children than those with a high income. The United States are neither among the countries with the lowest, nor among those with the highest fertility rate, by the way. At 2.08 children per woman, the fertility rate in the US has been continuously slightly below the global average of about 2.4 children per woman over the last decade.

Which county has the most Facebook users? There are more than 383 million Facebook users in India alone, making it the leading country in terms of Facebook audience size. To put this into context, if India’s Facebook audience were a country, then it would be ranked third in terms of largest population worldwide. Apart from India, there are several other markets with more than 100 million Facebook users each: The United States, Indonesia, and Brazil with 196.9 million, 122.3 million, and 111.65 million Facebook users respectively. Facebook – the most used social media Meta, the company that was previously called Facebook, owns four of the most popular social media platforms worldwide, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram. As of the third quarter of 2021, there were around 3.5 billion cumulative monthly users of the company’s products worldwide. With around 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social media worldwide. With an audience of this scale, it is no surprise that the vast majority of Facebook’s revenue is generated through advertising. Facebook usage by device As of July 2021, it was found that 98.5 percent of active users accessed their Facebook account from mobile devices. In fact, almost 81.8 percent of Facebook audiences worldwide access the platform only via mobile phone. Facebook is not only available through mobile browser as the company has published several mobile apps for users to access their products and services. As of the third quarter 2021, the four core Meta products were leading the ranking of most downloaded mobile apps worldwide, with WhatsApp amassing approximately six billion downloads.

Description of sample population (unweighted).

As of February 2025, India was the country with the largest YouTube audience by far, with approximately 491 million users engaging with the popular social video platform. The United States followed, with around 253 million YouTube viewers. Brazil came in third, with 144 million users watching content on YouTube. The United Kingdom saw around 54.8 million internet users engaging with the platform in the examined period. What country has the highest percentage of YouTube users? In July 2024, the United Arab Emirates was the country with the highest YouTube penetration worldwide, as around 94 percent of the country's digital population engaged with the service. In 2024, YouTube counted around 100 million paid subscribers for its YouTube Music and YouTube Premium services. YouTube mobile markets In 2024, YouTube was among the most popular social media platforms worldwide. In terms of revenues, the YouTube app generated approximately 28 million U.S. dollars in revenues in the United States in January 2024, as well as 19 million U.S. dollars in Japan.

In 2022, the state with the highest median age of its population was Maine at 45.1 years. Utah had the lowest median age at 32.1 years. View the distribution of the U.S. population by ethnicity here.

Additional information on the aging population in the United States

High birth rates during the so-called baby boom years that followed World War II followed by lower fertility and morality rates have left the United States with a serious challenge in the 21st Century. However, the issue of an aging population is certainly not an issue unique to the United States. The age distribution of the global population shows that other parts of the world face a similar issue.

Within the United States, the uneven distribution of populations aged 65 years and over among states offers both major challenges and potential solutions. On the one hand, federal action over the issue may be contentious as other states are set to harbor the costs of elderly care in states such as California and Florida. That said, domestic migration from comparably younger states may help to fill gaps in the workforce left by retirees in others.

Nonetheless, aging population issues are set to gain further prominence in the political and economic decisions made by policymakers regardless of the eventual distribution of America’s elderly. Analysis of the financial concerns of Americans by age shows many young people still decades from retirement hold strong concern over their eventual financial position.

The countries with the lowest life expectancy worldwide include the Nigeria, Chad, and Lesotho. As of 2023, people born in Nigeria could be expected to live only up to ** years. This is almost ** years shorter than the global life expectancy. Life expectancy The global life expectancy has gradually increased over the past couple decades, rising from **** years in 2011 to **** years in 2023. However, the years 2020 and 2021 saw a decrease in global life expectancy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, life expectancy can vary greatly depending on the country and region. For example, all the top 20 countries with the lowest life expectancy worldwide are in Africa. The countries with the highest life expectancy include Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Japan. Causes of death The countries with the lowest life expectancy worldwide are all low-income or developing countries that lack health care access and treatment that more developed countries can provide. The leading causes of death in these countries therefore differ from those of middle-income and upper-income countries. The leading causes of death in low-income countries include diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, as well as preterm birth complications, which do not cause substantial death in higher income countries.

Men born in Chad have the lowest life expectancy in the world as of 2024, reaching only 53 years. The lowest life expectancy for women in the world in 2024 was for girls born in Nigeria, with only 55 years. Except for Afghanistan, all the countries with the lowest life expectancy in the world are in Africa.

Nigeria has the largest population in Africa. As of 2025, the country counted over 237.5 million individuals, whereas Ethiopia, which ranked second, has around 135.5 million inhabitants. Egypt registered the largest population in North Africa, reaching nearly 118.4 million people. In terms of inhabitants per square kilometer, Nigeria only ranked seventh, while Mauritius had the highest population density on the whole African continent in 2023. The fastest-growing world region Africa is the second most populous continent in the world, after Asia. Nevertheless, Africa records the highest growth rate worldwide, with figures rising by over two percent every year. In some countries, such as Chad, South Sudan, Somalia, and the Central African Republic, the population increase peaks at over 3.4 percent. With so many births, Africa is also the youngest continent in the world. However, this coincides with a low life expectancy. African cities on the rise The last decades have seen high urbanization rates in Asia, mainly in China and India. African cities are also growing at large rates. Indeed, the continent has three megacities and is expected to add four more by 2050. Furthermore, Africa's fastest-growing cities are forecast to be Bujumbura, in Burundi, and Zinder, Nigeria, by 2035.

In 2023, the population density of Vietnam was around 303 people per square kilometer of land area. In that year, Vietnam's total population reached approximately 100.3 million. The country is among those with the highest population density in the Asia Pacific region, ranking 11th in 2020. Population density in Vietnam In comparison, Vietnam’s population density is roughly twice as much as China and Indonesia. The average population density in the world is at 59 inhabitants per square kilometer. The largest population within the country can be found in the Red River Delta and the Mekong River Delta. The most populated city is Ho Chi Minh City with roughly nine million inhabitants. Population growth in Vietnam Vietnam’s total population was forecast to surpass 100 million by 2050. Traditionally, Vietnamese families had an average of six children, while today, the birth rate is at two children per woman. This is due to an improving economy and higher living standards. In 2020, the population growth in Vietnam reached 0.90 percent, down from about three percent in the 1960s.

As of January 2025, ** percent of social media users in the United States aged 40 to 49 years were users of Facebook, as were ** percent of ** to ** year olds in the country. Overall, ** percent of those aged 18 to 29 years were using Instagram in the U.S. The social media market in the United States The number of social media users in the United States has shown continuous growth in the past years, and it is forecast to continue increasing to reach *** million users in 2029. As of 2023, the social network user penetration in the United States amounted to an impressive ***** percent, meaning that more than nine in ten people in the country engaged with online platforms. Furthermore, Facebook was by far the most popular social media platform in the United States, accounting for ** percent of all social media visits in 2023, followed by Pinterest with **** percent of visits. The global social media landscape As of April 2024, **** billion people were social media users, accounting for **** percent of the world’s population. Northern Europe was the region with the highest social media penetration rate with a reach of **** percent, followed by Western Europe with **** percent and Eastern Asia **** percent. In contrast, less than one in ten people in Middle Africa used social networks. Facebook’s popularity is not limited to the United States: this network leads the market on a global scale, and it accumulated more than three billion monthly active users (MAU) as of 2024, which is far more any other social media platform. YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp followed, all with *** billion or more MAU.

Since 1789, 45 different men have served as President of the United States, and the average age of these men when taking office for the first time was approximately 57 years. Two men, Grover Cleveland and Donald Trump, were elected to two non-consecutive terms, and Donald Trump's victory in 2024 made him the oldest man ever elected as president, where he will be 78 years and seven months old when taking office again. Record holders The oldest president to take office for the first time was Joe Biden in 2021, at 78 years and two months - around five months younger than Donald Trump when he assumes office in 2025. The youngest presidents to take office were Theodore Roosevelt in 1901 (42 years and 322 days), who assumed office following the assassination of William McKinley, and the youngest elected president was John F Kennedy in 1961 (43 years and 236 days). Historically, there seems to be little correlation between age and electability, and the past five presidents have included the two oldest to ever take office, and two of the youngest. Requirements to become president The United States Constitution states that both the President and Vice President must be at least 35 years old when taking office, and must have lived in the United States for at least 14 years of their life. Such restrictions are also in place for members of the U.S. Congress, although the age and residency barriers are lower. Additionally, for the roles of President and Vice President, there is a "natural-born-citizen" clause that was traditionally interpreted to mean candidates must have been born in the U.S. (or were citizens when the Constitution was adopted). However, the clause's ambiguity has led to something of a reinterpretation in the past decades, with most now interpreting it as also applying to those eligible for birthright citizenship, as some recent candidates were born overseas.