how many people live in the world

One way to understand the distribution of people across the world is to reform the world map, not based on the area but according to population.

This is shown here in a population cartogram: a geographical presentation of the world where the size of the countries is not drawn according to the distribution of land, but according to the distribution of people. The cartogram shows where in the world the global population was at home in 2018.

The cartogram is made up of squares, each of which represents half a million people of a country’s population. The 11.5 million Belgians are represented by 23 squares; the 49.5 million Colombians are represented by 99 squares; the 1.415 billion people in China are represented by 2830 squares, and the entire world population of 7.633 billion people in 2018 is represented by the total sum of 15,266 squares.

As the size of the population rather than the size of the territory is shown in this map you can see some big differences when you compare it to the standard geographical map we’re most familiar with. Small countries with a high population density increase in size in this cartogram relative to the world maps we are used to – look at Bangladesh, Taiwan, or the Netherlands. Large countries with a small population shrink in size (look for Canada, Mongolia, Australia, or Russia).

You can find more details on this cartogram in our explainer: ‘The map we need if we want to think about how global living conditions are changing‘.

Which countries are most densely populated?

Our understanding of the world is often shaped by geographical maps. But this tells us nothing about where in the world people live. To understand this, we need to look at population density.

On the map, we see the number of people per square kilometer (km2) across the world.

Globally the average population density is 61 people per km2, but there are very large differences across countries.

Many of the world’s small islands or isolated states have large populations for their size. Macao, Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Gibraltar are the five most densely populated. Singapore has nearly 8,000 people per km2 – more than 200 times as dense as the US, and 2000 times as Australia.
Of the larger countries1, Bangladesh is the most densely populated with 1,252 people per square kilometer; this is almost three times as dense as its neighbor, India. It’s followed by Lebanon (595), South Korea (528), the Netherlands (508) and Rwanda (495 per km2) completing the top five.
If you hover the mouse on the bracket from 0 to 10 on the legend then you see the world’s least densely populated countries. Greenland is the least dense, with less than 0.2 people per square km2, followed by Mongolia, Namibia, Australia, and Iceland. In our population cartogram, these are the countries that take up much less space than on a standard geographical map.

If we want to understand how people are distributed across the world, another useful tool is the population cartogram: a geographical presentation of the world where the size of the countries are not drawn according to the distribution of land, but according to the distribution of people.

Here we show how the world looks in this way. When we see a standard map we tend to focus on the largest countries by area. But these are not always where the greatest number of people live. It’s this context we need if we want to understand how the lives of people around the world are changing.