How many babies are born each year?
The number has already turned
The world's population is still rising, so it is easy to assume the number of babies born each year is rising too. It is not. Annual births peaked in 2012 at about 146 million and have been drifting down ever since.
Population keeps growing anyway, because people are living longer and because the large generations born in the 1980s and 1990s are still of childbearing age. A population can grow for decades after the number of births starts falling — demographers call it population momentum.
Where those births happen
| # | Country | Births | Share of world |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 23,200,000 | 17.5% |
| 2 | China | 8,830,000 | 6.7% |
| 3 | Nigeria | 7,560,000 | 5.7% |
| 4 | Pakistan | 6,890,000 | 5.2% |
| 5 | Indonesia | 4,470,000 | 3.4% |
| 6 | DR Congo | 4,470,000 | 3.4% |
| 7 | Ethiopia | 4,160,000 | 3.1% |
| 8 | United States | 3,650,000 | 2.8% |
| 9 | Bangladesh | 3,470,000 | 2.6% |
| 10 | Brazil | 2,570,000 | 1.9% |
How far back does this go?
The map estimates annual births for every year from 0 CE. In the year 1, about ~9.29 million babies were born worldwide — roughly one fourteenth of today's figure, from a world population of about ~231.4 million. Those early numbers are modelled, not recorded, and carry an uncertainty of roughly a third either way.
Related questions
- How many babies are born every day?
- Which country has the most babies?
- How have births changed through history?
Figures on this page are generated from the same dataset the map draws, and update whenever it does. See the methodology for how each era is estimated and how much it should be trusted.