The number of children in the world is starting to decline, while the number of elderly people is rising fast.
But in some countries where women still have many children, young people still make up most of the population.
Right now, there are about 2 billion children in the world between the ages of 0 and 14.
In the Central African Republic, more than half of the people (56.2%) are younger than 18 years old.
This is the highest percentage of children in any country in the world.
In comparison, the world average number of children in a population is only 28%, which is much lower.
Interestingly, all the top 10 countries with the highest number of children are in Africa and seven of them are in the Sahel region or Central Africa where high birth rates are common.
While, in regions like the Sahel and Central Africa, women still have more than five children on average.
On the other hand, Nigeria is ranked second in the word for having the total number of children under 18.
Nigeria may not have the highest percentage of children compared to other countries with 47.5% under 18, ranking 21st but it has a very large number of children which is about 112.8 million in 2025.
Other countries with the most children in 2025:
Chad-46.74%
Somalia-46.68%
Mali-46.46%
DR Congo-46.09%
Burundi-45.36%
Mozambique-44.75%
Angola-44.57%
Uganda-43.94%
