Median age in Lesotho
The median age in Lesotho is 21.6 years (2024): half the population is older, half younger. That is 9.0 years younger than the world median of 30.6, and makes Lesotho the 142nd oldest of 193 countries.
Key numbers
Lesotho among its neighbours
In plain language
Line up everyone in Lesotho by age. The person in the middle is 21.6. 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 21.6 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 Lesotho is 57.4 years, so a person at the median age has, on a rough reckoning, about 35.8 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 Lesotho?
- 21.6 years in 2024, by the UN World Population Prospects 2024. Half of the people in Lesotho are younger than 21.6 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 Lesotho's population young or old?
- Young. Lesotho is 9.0 years below the world median of 30.6, and ranks 142nd 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 Lesotho compare to Gabon?
- Gabon has a median age of 21.5, 0.1 years younger than Lesotho. The two sit next to each other in the ranking, at 52nd and 51st youngest.
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