Population Growth Calculator
What happens if a country's current growth rate simply continues? Pick a country, drag the year and the rate, and see. The maths and the caveats below apply to every result it produces.
Project a Population
Worked Example: India to 2050
Applying India's current growth rate of +0.89% for 24 years. This example is prerendered, so it is here whether or not the calculator above has loaded.
| Year | Population |
|---|---|
| 1950 | 346,278,821 |
| 1960 | 435,990,338 |
| 1970 | 545,864,268 |
| 1980 | 687,354,025 |
| 1990 | 864,972,221 |
| 2000 | 1,057,922,733 |
| 2010 | 1,243,481,564 |
| 2020 | 1,402,617,695 |
| 2030 | 1,516,498,604 |
| 2040 | 1,656,510,123 |
| 2050 | 1,809,448,278 |
Global Context
How India sits against the world total, now and in 2050.
The Twelve Largest Countries to 2050
Each country's current growth rate, held constant.
| Country | 2026 | Growth rate | 2050 projection |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇮🇳 India | 1.46B | +0.89% | 1.81B |
| 🇨🇳 China | 1.41B | −0.17% | 1.35B |
| 🇺🇸 United States | 341.8M | +0.52% | 387.3M |
| 🇮🇩 Indonesia | 285.7M | +0.79% | 344.7M |
| 🇵🇰 Pakistan | 255.2M | +1.56% | 370M |
| 🇳🇬 Nigeria | 237.5M | +2.06% | 387.7M |
| 🇧🇷 Brazil | 212.8M | +0.38% | 233.3M |
| 🇧🇩 Bangladesh | 175.7M | +1.22% | 234.9M |
| 🇷🇺 Russia | 143.5M | −0.11% | 139.8M |
| 🇪🇹 Ethiopia | 135.5M | +2.55% | 248M |
| 🇲🇽 Mexico | 131.9M | +0.83% | 160.7M |
| 🇯🇵 Japan | 123.4M | −0.49% | 109.6M |
How the Calculation Works
The formula
Future population = current × (1 + rate)years. Growth compounds: a steady 2% adds more people every year, because the 2% applies to a larger base each time.
Doubling time
Years to double = ln(2) ÷ ln(1 + rate). The familiar “rule of 70” is an approximation of the same thing: 70 divided by the percentage growth rate.
Why this is not a forecast
Holding today's growth rate fixed for decades is the one thing demographers are confident will not happen. Fertility, mortality and migration all move. Constant-rate projections run high for fast-growing countries and low for ageing ones — compare any result here against the UN projections.
What the rate includes
The growth rate here is total population change — births minus deaths, plus net migration. For several countries the whole of current growth is migration, which is the component most sensitive to policy and least stable over decades.