Birth Rate by Country (2024)

Global Birth Rate Trends

The crude birth rate counts live births in a year per 1,000 people. It depends both on how many children women have and on how many people are of childbearing age, so young populations have higher birth rates than older ones with the same fertility rate.

29 of the 217 countries have rates of 30 or more, mostly young and fast-growing populations in sub-Saharan Africa. The highest are Central African Republic (46.2), Chad (43.3), Somalia (42.3) and Niger (41.4). At the other end, 60 countries are below 10, typically ageing societies; the lowest are San Marino (4.2), South Korea (4.7), Hong Kong (4.9) and Macao (5.3). Italy (6.3), Japan (5.7) and South Korea (4.7) are among the countries whose populations are already shrinking.

The average of the 217 countries is 17.2 per 1,000 and the median 13.4; both count every country equally, so neither is the world birth rate, which weights countries by population. See also: death rate by country and the most populous countries.