Median age in Japan
The median age in Japan is 49.4 years (2024): half the population is older, half younger. That is 18.8 years older than the world median of 30.6, and makes Japan the 1st oldest of 193 countries.
Key numbers
Japan among its neighbours
In plain language
Line up everyone in Japan by age. The person in the middle is 49.4. 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.
Japan has the oldest population in our data. Italy is next at 47.8. Decades of low birth rates and long lives put the midpoint this high. Life expectancy at birth in Japan is 84.7 years, so a person at the median age has, on a rough reckoning, about 35.3 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 Japan?
- 49.4 years in 2024, by the UN World Population Prospects 2024. Half of the people in Japan are younger than 49.4 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 Japan's population young or old?
- Older than most. Japan is 18.8 years above the world median of 30.6, and ranks 1st 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 Japan compare to Italy?
- Italy has a median age of 47.8, 1.6 years younger than Japan. The two sit next to each other in the ranking, at 193rd and 192nd youngest.
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Compare your age in JapanAlso by country: Average height by country, Average BMI by country, Life expectancy by country and Average income by country.