Where in the world are most babies born?
The share of world births, by continent
| Year | Asia | Africa | Europe | Americas | Oceania | World births |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 CE | 71% | 7% | 14% | 8% | 0% | ~9.29M |
| 1000 | 65% | 12% | 11% | 11% | 0% | ~13.2M |
| 1500 | 62% | 12% | 16% | 10% | 0% | ~20.2M |
| 1800 | 69% | 9% | 19% | 3% | 0% | ~39.7M |
| 1900 | 60% | 10% | 22% | 8% | 0% | ~65.5M |
| 1950 | 62% | 12% | 13% | 12% | 0% | 91.8M |
| 2000 | 59% | 24% | 5% | 12% | 0% | 136M |
| 2024 | 49% | 35% | 5% | 10% | 1% | 132M |
The two big shifts
Asia has led for the whole period. It was the centre of human population long before it was the centre of anything else, and no century on this timeline has it below half of world births until recently. Its share is now falling — not because fewer babies are born there in absolute terms than in 1950, but because fertility has dropped sharply across East and South Asia.
Africa is the story of the present century. Its share has gone from 12% in 1950 to 35% today, and on the UN's medium projection it keeps climbing. That is a change in the geography of human birth without precedent on this map — the continental shares moved less in the previous eighteen centuries combined.
Europe has shrunk. It accounted for about 22% of world births in 1900 and 5% today — a smaller share than at any point in the record, despite a larger population than it had then.
Continents are the United Nations' own groupings, and every figure is for land inside present-day borders. For years before 1800 that is a cartographic convenience rather than a description of how the world was organised — see how borders are handled.
Related questions
- Which country has the most babies?
- Where were most babies born 1,000 years ago?
- 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.