How Many Children Are There in the World?

By the populationclock.org team · Published October 26, 2026 · All figures: UN World Population Prospects 2024, medium variant

The short answer

Summing the UN age-sex tables for 2024 across all 237 countries and territories gives about 2.02 billion people under the age of 15, or 24.7% of everyone alive. About 647 million of them are under five. Put the other way, the world has roughly 3.0 people aged 15 or over for every child, and by 2100 the projection has 5.1.

The striking thing is not the count but its direction. The under-15 total is lower at each later snapshot in the dataset: about 1.97 billion in 2050 and 1.68 billion in 2100. Over the same span world population rises by roughly 2.02 billion. The century ahead adds two billion people and subtracts 336 million children.

The number of children is near its ceiling

The annual birth series, which runs year by year rather than in snapshots, is where this becomes legible. Worldwide births peaked in 2012 at about 146 million and now run near 363,023 a day, a figure we take apart in how many people are born every day. A world past its birth peak cannot keep adding children for long, and the three age snapshots say it does not.

They cannot date the exact maximum, because the dataset carries age structure only for 2024, 2050 and 2100. What they establish is the shape: the peak in the number of children belongs to roughly now rather than to the future. Today’s under-15s include the cohorts born in the peak birth years of the 2010s, which is why their total is higher than the 2050 figure even though annual births barely move between now and then: about 363,023 a day in 2026 against 363,165 in 2050. Only later does the birth count itself fall away, to roughly 301,448 a day by 2100.

That later fall is the part the child count predicts. Today’s under-15s are the parents of the 2040s and 2050s, and there are fewer of them coming up than there were a decade ago, so the births of the second half of the century are drawn from a narrower base. It is why the projection ends the century with roughly 301,448 births a day in a world of more than ten billion people, against 363,023 a day in a world of eight billion. Demographic momentum works in both directions, and in this dataset it has already turned.

Where the world’s children live

Asia holds about 54% of the world’s children today and Africa about 29%. By 2100 the two have swapped rank: Africa about 47% and Asia about 39%. Africa is over-represented among children in both years, as a young population always is, holding 29% of the children against 19% of the people now. The growth behind that is the subject of the African century.

The other regions hold smaller shares than their populations suggest: Latin America and the Caribbean about 7%, Europe about 6%, Northern America about 3% and Oceania about 1% of the world’s children between them, 17% in total. By 2100 two of those four hold a smaller share than they do now, and the ones that gain do so against a shrinking world total rather than by adding many children.

Children are also concentrated in a handful of countries: the ten largest child populations hold about 54% of the world’s under-15s. That list is reordered sharply by the end of the century. DR Congo climbs from 8th to 2nd as its child population roughly doubles, from about 50.3 million to 100 million, while China falls from about 227 million children to 49.6 million, which would be 7.8% of its own population.

The child-heavy country is on its way out

A country where children are a large share of everyone is still common today and nearly gone by 2100. In 2024, 27 countries and territories have under-15s at 40% or more of their population, with Central African Republic the highest at about 49%. By 2100 that count is zero, and the highest child shares anywhere above a million people are Côte d'Ivoire at about 24%, Chad at about 24% and Tanzania at about 23%. At the other end, 41 places are already below 15% children; among those above a million people the lowest is Hong Kong, at roughly 11%. By 2100 the below-15% group numbers 143, which is most of the dataset.

The convergence runs in one direction. Of the 237 entries in the dataset, 176 have fewer children in 2100 than today and 61 have more, and the world’s child share falls from 24.7% to 16.5%. What drives it is the fertility decline traced in the fertility line most of the world is now below, and what it produces is the shift in who supports whom that we set out in the dependency ratio. Even India, which keeps the largest child population throughout, goes from about 357 million under-15s to 207 million.

How much of this should you believe

The near-term count more than the far one, and for a specific reason: almost every child alive in the 2050 column has already been born or will be born to a woman already alive. The 2100 column counts the grandchildren of people not yet born, and it moves with the fertility assumption more than with anything else. Treat the 2024 and 2050 figures as reasonably firm, the 2100 ones as a direction.

Two cautions on reading them. The snapshots cannot date the peak in the number of children, only bracket it, and the 2024 column is itself an estimate rather than a count in places without complete birth registration. What survives both caveats is the thing worth knowing: the generation of children now alive is about as large as any generation of children the world is projected to have. Figures here are summed from the UN World Population Prospects 2024 age-sex tables, medium variant, as described in our methodology.

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