Median age in Afghanistan
The median age in Afghanistan is 17.1 years (2024): half the population is older, half younger. That is 13.5 years younger than the world median of 30.6, and makes Afghanistan the 183rd oldest of 193 countries.
Key numbers
Afghanistan among its neighbours
In plain language
Line up everyone in Afghanistan by age. The person in the middle is 17.1. 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 17.1 is younger 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 Afghanistan is 66.0 years, so a person at the median age has, on a rough reckoning, about 48.9 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 Afghanistan?
- 17.1 years in 2024, by the UN World Population Prospects 2024. Half of the people in Afghanistan are younger than 17.1 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 Afghanistan's population young or old?
- Young. Afghanistan is 13.5 years below the world median of 30.6, and ranks 183rd 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 Afghanistan compare to Uganda?
- Uganda has a median age of 16.7, 0.4 years younger than Afghanistan. The two sit next to each other in the ranking, at 11th and 10th youngest.
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