Median age in Australia
The median age in Australia is 38.0 years (2024): half the population is older, half younger. That is 7.4 years older than the world median of 30.6, and makes Australia the 53rd oldest of 193 countries.
Key numbers
Australia among its neighbours
In plain language
Line up everyone in Australia by age. The person in the middle is 38.0. That is the median: it says nothing about how old the oldest are or how many babies were born last year, only where the midpoint falls.
A median of 38.0 is older than the world's 30.6. For scale, the youngest country here, Central African Republic, has a median of 14.4 and the oldest, Japan, 49.4. Life expectancy at birth in Australia is 83.9 years, so a person at the median age has, on a rough reckoning, about 45.9 years ahead of them.
The 2024figure is the UN's medium-variant number; its estimates end in 2023. For a year this close the projection barely differs from an estimate, since everyone counted has already been born.
Questions
- What is the median age in Australia?
- 38.0 years in 2024, by the UN World Population Prospects 2024. Half of the people in Australia are younger than 38.0 and half are older. The median is not the average age; it is the midpoint, so a handful of very old people do not move it.
- Is Australia's population young or old?
- Older than most. Australia is 7.4 years above the world median of 30.6, and ranks 53rd oldest of the 193 countries here. The youngest country, Central African Republic, has a median of 14.4; the oldest, Japan, 49.4.
- How does Australia compare to New Zealand?
- New Zealand has a median age of 37.5, 0.5 years younger than Australia. The two sit next to each other in the ranking, at 141st and 140th youngest.
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Compare your age in AustraliaAlso by country: Average height by country, Average BMI by country, Life expectancy by country and Average income by country.