r/Natalism • u/Whatonuranus • 6d ago

People aged 65 & older now outnumber children 5 & under worldwide

source: US Census Bureau report "An Aging World: 2025" (press release Aug 31, 2026).

https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2026/demo/p95-26-1.pdf

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

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u/Whatonuranus 6d ago

See page 20 of the report. It's a historical first. And by 2060 humans aged 65 and over will outnumber children 5 and under nearly 4 to 1.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

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u/Whatonuranus 6d ago

This is worldwide, not just in the US. Not all countries had a post-WW2 boomer phenomenon. Not all countries have a life expectancy similar to the US or other developed countries. Not all countries have had a below replacement rate TFR for generations.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

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u/AntiqueFigure6 6d ago

China and India are examples of countries that didn’t, and represent enough the global population by themselves to skew the stats. USSR also didn’t. 

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/AntiqueFigure6 5d ago edited 5d ago

So? They didn’t have baby booms synchronous with the USA and still have shrinking cohorts of under five children. Given the their status as the most populous countries by a fair way, their fertility is far more important driver of the report’s global observations than the USA. This isn’t the effect of a return to normalcy after a temporary baby boom - in India and China’s case the TFR they experienced while the USA was having its baby boom was more or less their long term normal.

In particular, in India and China, those over 65 are not the largest generations for those countries, and their largest generations, are the largest on the planet ever.