The global population pyramid: How global demography has changed and what we can expect for the 21st century

In 1950 there were 2.5 billion people on the planet. Now in 2019, there are 7.7 billion. By the end of the century the UN expects a global population of 11.2 billion. The visualization of the population pyramid below makes it possible to understand this enormous global transformation.

Population pyramids visualize the demographic structure of a population. The width represents the size of the population of a given age; women on the right and men to the left. The bottom layer represents the number of newborns and above it you find the numbers of older cohorts. Represented in this way the population structure of societies with high mortality rates resembled a pyramid – this is how this famous type of visualization got its name.

In the darkest blue you see the pyramid that represents the structure of the world population in 1950. Two factors are responsible for the pyramid shape in 1950: An increasing number of births broadened the base layer of the population pyramid and a continuously high risk of death throughout life is evident by the pyramid narrowing towards the top. There were many newborns relative to the number of people at older ages.

https://ourworldindata.org/global-population-pyramid?linkId=67260776