TOP 20 Countries with Fastest Population Aging (2015–2025)
Between 2015 and 2025, several countries experienced an unusually rapid rise in the share of people aged 65 and over. In a few East and Southeast Asian economies, the older population share increased by roughly 5 to 8 percentage points within a single decade — much faster than in most historical ageing transitions. This article identifies the ten countries where the shift was fastest, explains the demographic forces behind it, and outlines the main economic and policy implications.
Methodology
The ranking is based on the absolute change in the share of the total population aged 65 and over, expressed in percentage points, between 2015 and 2025. This captures how quickly the older share is rising, rather than simply how old a population already is. A country can still rank highly even if it remains relatively young overall, provided the 65+ share is increasing quickly.
Key limitations. The 2025 figures used here are projection-based estimates from the UN 2024 revision, not final census counts. As with any forward-looking demographic series, results depend on assumptions about fertility, mortality, and migration. Data quality also varies across countries, so smaller differences near the lower end of the ranking should be read with appropriate caution.
Top 10 Fastest-Ageing Countries, 2015–2025
The list is dominated by East and Southeast Asian economies, along with a smaller group of Eastern European and Latin American countries. The common pattern is straightforward: fertility fell sharply, life expectancy rose, and large birth cohorts are now moving into the 65+ bracket within a relatively narrow time window.
South Korea has the world's lowest recorded total fertility rate and one of the fastest-rising life expectancies, reaching 84 years on average. The combination means that the retirement-age cohort is swelling just as the number of young entrants to the population shrinks. South Korea crossed the "aged society" threshold (14% over 65) in 2017 and reached "super-aged" status (21%+) around 2024–2025 — a transition that took France over 150 years and Japan roughly 35 years.
Singapore's ageing accelerated sharply as the large "baby boom" cohort born in the 1950s–1960s entered retirement age in the 2020s. While immigration of working-age adults has partially offset labour-force decline, it cannot arrest the structural shift. The government's "Action Plan for Successful Ageing" reflects recognition that social infrastructure — from eldercare to retirement savings — must be built out much faster than in typical OECD economies.
Cuba is the oldest population in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its demographic profile reflects very low fertility — around 1.5 births per woman for decades — and substantial emigration of working-age adults, which accelerates the rise in the old-age share even beyond what natural ageing alone would produce. Public pension expenditure already absorbs a large fraction of the state budget.
Thailand's fertility fell rapidly after a highly effective national family planning programme in the 1970s–1980s. The country now faces a demographic structure it cannot easily reverse: a large cohort born in the 1960s and 1970s is moving into retirement with a pension system that still covers less than half the workforce and a healthcare system under intensifying capacity pressure.
China's one-child policy (1980–2015) created a structural deficit of young cohorts that is now manifesting as rapid ageing. With 1.4 billion people, even a modest rise in the percentage of older adults translates into hundreds of millions of additional retirees. China will almost certainly experience a shrinking working-age population for the next three decades, reshaping its growth model and its role in global labour markets.
Chile's rapid ageing reflects one of the fastest fertility transitions in South America and substantial gains in life expectancy. Its privately managed pension system (established in 1981) has come under strong political pressure because coverage gaps and low replacement rates leave many older workers without adequate income. A major pension reform was debated through 2024, reflecting the urgency of the demographic challenge.
Albania combines a low and falling fertility rate with very high emigration of young adults to Western Europe. The dual effect — fewer births and emigration of people in their 20s and 30s — accelerates the ageing of the resident population beyond what biological factors alone would produce. Net emigration has been so large that Albania's total population may have declined by 15–20% since 1990.
Viet Nam is a particularly striking case because it is ageing rapidly while still at a relatively low income level — around USD 14,000 in PPP terms. The two-child policy pursued from the 1980s onward reduced fertility decisively, and life expectancy has risen sharply. Viet Nam will face the challenge of building comprehensive pension and long-term care systems in a compressed timeframe, with fewer resources per capita than East Asian predecessors like South Korea and Japan.
Poland already had a relatively older population in 2015 because of below-replacement fertility since the late 1980s. The acceleration in 2015–2025 reflects the large cohort born during the post-war baby boom crossing into retirement age. Emigration to Western Europe has shrunk the working-age population further. Poland reformed its pension system in 2017 by lowering the statutory retirement age, a decision that raised actuarial concerns given the demographic trajectory.
Turkey's fertility fell from above 5 in the 1960s to around 2.1 today, and life expectancy has risen substantially. The country is in the earlier stages of the ageing transition compared to top-ranked economies, but the pace of change is accelerating. Turkey's youthful population bulge of the 1980s is now moving through the 40s and 50s, and by the 2040s Turkey will face a demographic challenge broadly similar to that currently confronting Poland or Brazil.
Chart 1. Change in 65+ Population Share, 2015–2025 (Top 10)
The bar chart compares the absolute gain in the share of older persons (aged 65 and over) for the Top 10 fastest-ageing countries. All values are in percentage points and are based on the UN WPP 2024 medium-variant estimate for 2025 minus the 2015 observed value.
Source: UN World Population Prospects 2024. Values rounded to nearest 0.1 pp. Bars show percentage-point change, not the current level of the 65+ share.
Chart 2. Trajectory of 65+ Share for Selected Countries, 2015–2025
The line chart shows the year-by-year evolution of the 65+ share for five of the fastest-ageing countries, illustrating how the pace of change compares between East Asia and other regions. Years shown: 2015, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2025. Values are medium-variant estimates.
Source: UN World Population Prospects 2024. Interpolated values for intermediate years are model-based estimates and should be interpreted as indicative of trend direction, not precise annual counts.
Table 1. Change in 65+ Population Share by Country, 2015–2025
The table below covers all countries ranked by absolute change in the share of the population aged 65 and over between 2015 and 2025 (percentage points). Global total 2025 share of 65+ population: ~10.3% globally. Use the controls to search, filter by region or income group, and switch between the absolute share value and each country's share of the global 65+ population.
| Rank | Country | Region | Income group | 65+ share 2015 (%) | 65+ share 2025 (%) | Change (pp) | Value (mode-dependent) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Korea | East Asia | High income | 13.1 | 21.0 | +7.9 | 21.0%1.52% |
| 2 | Singapore | Southeast Asia | High income | 11.5 | 19.2 | +7.7 | 19.2%0.04% |
| 3 | Cuba | Latin America | Upper-middle income | 14.8 | 21.3 | +6.5 | 21.3%0.05% |
| 4 | Thailand | Southeast Asia | Upper-middle income | 10.7 | 16.9 | +6.2 | 16.9%1.08% |
| 5 | China | East Asia | Upper-middle income | 9.5 | 15.4 | +5.9 | 15.4%20.14% |
| 6 | Chile | Latin America | High income | 11.0 | 16.5 | +5.5 | 16.5%0.31% |
| 7 | Albania | Europe | Upper-middle income | 12.7 | 17.9 | +5.2 | 17.9%0.04% |
| 8 | Viet Nam | Southeast Asia | Lower-middle income | 6.6 | 11.5 | +4.9 | 11.5%1.08% |
| 9 | Poland | Europe | High income | 15.1 | 19.8 | +4.7 | 19.8%0.74% |
| 10 | Turkey | MENA | Upper-middle income | 8.2 | 12.5 | +4.3 | 12.5%1.00% |
| 11 | Bosnia and Herzegovina | Europe | Upper-middle income | 15.4 | 19.1 | +3.7 | 19.1%0.05% |
| 12 | Brazil | Latin America | Upper-middle income | 7.9 | 11.9 | +4.0 | 11.9%2.58% |
| 13 | Iran | MENA | Upper-middle income | 5.7 | 9.4 | +3.7 | 9.4%0.67% |
| 14 | Russia | Europe | Upper-middle income | 13.4 | 17.0 | +3.6 | 17.0%2.06% |
| 15 | Georgia | Europe | Upper-middle income | 14.3 | 17.8 | +3.5 | 17.8%0.07% |
| 16 | Moldova | Europe | Lower-middle income | 10.3 | 14.2 | +3.9 | 14.2%0.06% |
| 17 | Portugal | Europe | High income | 20.3 | 23.5 | +3.2 | 23.5%0.25% |
| 18 | North Macedonia | Europe | Upper-middle income | 13.3 | 16.3 | +3.0 | 16.3%0.03% |
| 19 | Colombia | Latin America | Upper-middle income | 7.2 | 10.1 | +2.9 | 10.1%0.56% |
| 20 | Japan | East Asia | High income | 26.3 | 29.9 | +3.6 | 29.9%3.19% |
| 21 | Sri Lanka | South Asia | Lower-middle income | 8.0 | 11.0 | +3.0 | 11.0%0.22% |
| 22 | Ukraine | Europe | Lower-middle income | 15.8 | 18.4 | +2.6 | 18.4%0.46% |
| 23 | Mexico | Latin America | Upper-middle income | 6.7 | 9.0 | +2.3 | 9.0%1.32% |
| 24 | India | South Asia | Lower-middle income | 5.7 | 7.4 | +1.7 | 7.4%14.00% |
| 25 | Indonesia | Southeast Asia | Upper-middle income | 5.5 | 7.3 | +1.8 | 7.3%2.10% |
| Source: UN World Population Prospects 2024, medium variant. Values rounded to nearest 0.1 pp. "Global 65+ share %" = country's older population as % of world's total 65+ population (approx.). Last updated: November 2025. | |||||||
Note: Japan appears at rank 20 in this table because the ranking criterion is the change (speed), not the absolute level. Japan's 65+ share was already 26.3% in 2015 — the world's highest at the time — limiting the room for further large percentage-point increases.
Table 2. Projected 65+ Share in 2050 for the Fastest-Ageing Countries
UN medium-variant projections to 2050 indicate that several of the fastest-ageing countries will reach or exceed a 30% older-population share within a generation. The table below compares the 2025 estimates with the 2050 projection and the implied further change over that 25-year period.
| Country | 65+ share 2025 (%) | 65+ share 2050 (projected, %) | Additional change 2025–2050 (pp) |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Korea | 21.0 | ~38.1 | +17.1 |
| Singapore | 19.2 | ~32.1 | +12.9 |
| Cuba | 21.3 | ~35.0 | +13.7 |
| Thailand | 16.9 | ~30.2 | +13.3 |
| China | 15.4 | ~29.5 | +14.1 |
| Chile | 16.5 | ~27.8 | +11.3 |
| Albania | 17.9 | ~26.0 | +8.1 |
| Viet Nam | 11.5 | ~23.1 | +11.6 |
| Poland | 19.8 | ~30.5 | +10.7 |
| Turkey | 12.5 | ~22.3 | +9.8 |
| Source: UN World Population Prospects 2024, medium-variant projection for 2050. Values are approximate; tilde (~) denotes projection, not observed data. | |||
Analytical Insights: What This Ranking Reveals
The main takeaway from this ranking is not simply that some countries have old populations. It is that several are ageing unusually quickly. When demographic change is compressed into a short period, the pressure on labour markets, pension systems, healthcare, and long-term care also arrives faster.
1. The fertility–longevity compression
Each country in the Top 10 experienced two reinforcing trends simultaneously: a sharp drop in fertility below replacement level and a sustained rise in life expectancy. When both occur in the same generation, the age structure of the population shifts rapidly. The pace is further amplified when a large birth cohort — as occurred across East Asia in the 1960s–1970s and in Eastern Europe after World War II — crosses the 65-year threshold within a narrow window of time.
South Korea is the most extreme case: a total fertility rate that has fallen below 1.0 means each new cohort is barely half the size of the previous one, while life expectancy exceeds 83 years. The arithmetic of this combination is unforgiving — the older population grows faster than any policy response can easily offset.
2. The "greying before getting rich" problem
A critical structural distinction separates the Top 10 into two groups. Countries like South Korea, Singapore and (increasingly) Chile crossed high-income thresholds before the full weight of ageing arrived, giving them stronger fiscal positions and more developed care systems. By contrast, Thailand, Viet Nam, China and Cuba face rapid ageing at income levels significantly below those at which Japan, France or Germany became old. This "greying before getting rich" dynamic constrains the resources available for pension reform, long-term care infrastructure and health spending precisely when demand for all three accelerates.
3. The emigration multiplier
For Albania, Cuba, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, the speed of demographic ageing is amplified by emigration of working-age adults. When young and middle-aged people leave, the denominator of the working-age population shrinks while the numerator of older residents stays put. Countries facing both low fertility and high emigration simultaneously have an extremely limited window to build sustainable social protection systems before old-age dependency ratios reach levels that strain public finances.
4. What does 30% over 65 actually mean?
By 2050, several countries in this ranking are projected to have roughly one in three residents above the age of 65. At a 30% older-population share, old-age dependency ratios typically reach 50–60 (50–60 retirees per 100 workers), assuming stable retirement ages. That means each working person is effectively supporting more than half a retiree through taxes and social contributions — before accounting for the needs of children, healthcare workers or any other form of public service. No large economy has managed this ratio at scale; Japan, which is closest at 49 in 2025, offers a partial preview of the fiscal and labour-market pressures involved.
5. The China effect on global labour supply
China warrants particular attention because of its scale. With 1.4 billion people, a rise in the 65+ share from 9.5% to 15.4% between 2015 and 2025 means that the number of people aged 65 and over in China alone grew by roughly 100 million in a decade. The projected further increase to 30% by 2050 would add another 200 million older Chinese — equivalent to the entire current populations of Brazil and Mexico combined. This demographic pivot will reshape global manufacturing costs, capital flows and the international dynamics of ageing- related industries including pharmaceuticals, medical devices and eldercare services.
6. Ageing and the gender dimension
In all countries on this list, women substantially outnumber men in the 65+ cohort because of their longer life expectancy. This gender gap in longevity has distributional consequences: women more often live alone in old age, are more likely to have had interrupted careers (and thus lower pension entitlements), and are more frequently informal carers for older relatives before themselves reaching advanced old age. Rapid population ageing therefore intensifies pre-existing gender inequalities in retirement income and care — a dimension that headline statistics on the 65+ share tend to obscure.
What This Means for Policy and Planning
Key policy takeaways from the fastest-ageing economies
The 2015–2025 acceleration observed across the Top 10 is not a statistical artefact — it reflects the convergence of demographic forces that have been building for decades. For policymakers, the critical insight is that the window for proactive reform is narrowing. The following priorities apply across different country contexts:
- Pension architecture reform: Countries that entered the rapid-ageing phase with immature or low-coverage pension systems (Thailand, Viet Nam, parts of Latin America) face the most urgent need. Expanding coverage, adjusting retirement ages in line with life expectancy, and building multi-pillar systems are the standard international recommendations — but all require long lead times and political consensus.
- Long-term care infrastructure: Demand for home care, residential care and geriatric health services will rise steeply in every country on this list through the 2030s. Building this infrastructure takes 15–20 years of investment in training, facilities and regulatory standards — investment that must begin well before the full demographic peak arrives.
- Labour market adaptation: Extending healthy working lives, removing age-related discrimination in hiring, and creating conditions for older workers to remain productive are increasingly mainstream policy tools. Countries such as Japan, Germany and Singapore have made measurable progress; others in the Top 10 are at earlier stages of reform.
- Family and community care policy: In countries where formal care infrastructure is limited, families — and overwhelmingly women — absorb the burden of eldercare. Policies that support carers (respite services, paid leave, financial transfers) are a cost-effective bridge while formal systems are built out.
- Fiscal risk management: Ageing creates structural pressure on public finances through pension, health and long-term care spending. Countries with relatively high debt levels and rapid ageing (several Eastern European and Latin American cases) face a compounded challenge. Early fiscal consolidation and accumulation of reserve funds — on the model of Norway's sovereign wealth fund or Singapore's Central Provident Fund — can reduce long-term vulnerability.
- Healthy ageing investment: The real goal is not simply to have more older people but to have more older people in good health. Preventive health programmes, early management of non-communicable diseases, and age-friendly urban environments reduce the dependency burden and extend the productive contribution of older cohorts.
The countries in this Top 10 are, in a meaningful sense, early-warning systems for the rest of the developing world. Their successes and failures in managing rapid ageing during the 2020s and 2030s will provide a practical policy library for dozens of countries that will face similar challenges later in the century.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about the methodology, the data and the broader context of population ageing.
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South Korea has recorded the largest absolute increase in the share of people aged 65 and over during 2015–2025, rising from approximately 13.1% to 21.0% — a gain of around 7.9 percentage points in a single decade. Singapore ranks second with a comparable trajectory of +7.7 pp. Both economies combined very low fertility with a large post-war birth cohort simultaneously entering retirement age in the early-to-mid 2020s.
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In this ranking, "fastest ageing" refers to the largest absolute increase in the share of the population aged 65 and over (in percentage points) between 2015 and 2025. This approach captures the speed of structural change, not the absolute level of oldness. A country can have a relatively young population overall and still rank high if its older cohort is growing very rapidly. An alternative approach — measuring the relative growth rate of the 65+ population — would produce a somewhat different ranking favouring countries that started from a very low base.
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East Asian economies like South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and China combined very low fertility rates — often well below 2.1 births per woman — with rapid improvements in life expectancy from the 1970s onward. Large birth cohorts from the 1960s–1980s are now entering the 65+ bracket simultaneously, compressing demographic change into a short window. In China, the explicit one-child policy (1980–2015) created an especially pronounced deficit of younger cohorts. In South Korea and Singapore, very high education and housing costs have driven fertility to record lows without any formal demographic policy.
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Japan already had one of the oldest populations on Earth in 2015 (around 26.3% aged 65+), so its absolute change over 2015–2025 is smaller than for countries that began from a younger baseline. Japan remains the world's most aged large economy by current share — approximately 29.9% in 2025 — but the speed of change, our ranking criterion, is greater in South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and China. Japan's ageing peaked in rate-of-change terms in the 1990s–2000s; it is now in the more gradual later phase of the demographic transition.
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A "super-aged" society is conventionally defined as one where more than 20% (some sources use 21%) of the total population is aged 65 and over. This threshold is used by the UN, WHO and OECD alongside the earlier thresholds of "ageing" society (7%+ aged 65) and "aged" society (14%+). By 2025, South Korea, Cuba and Portugal have crossed or closely approached the 20–21% threshold, and Japan has been above it for several years. Several others in the Top 10 are projected to cross it before 2035.
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Population ageing tends to slow labour-force growth and reduce national saving rates, which can dampen potential GDP growth over the medium term. At the same time it increases demand for healthcare, long-term care and pension expenditure, raising the public spending burden per worker. Countries that respond with higher labour productivity, longer working lives, better capital allocation and investment in automation can partially offset these headwinds. The net effect is country-specific: some high-income economies have managed sustained growth despite ageing through productivity gains; lower-income ageing economies face a more difficult trade-off.
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The primary source is the United Nations World Population Prospects 2024 revision, which provides age-structured population estimates by country from 1950 to 2100 under multiple scenarios. Values for 2015 are taken from the observed historical series; values for 2025 are from the medium-variant projection. These are cross-checked against the World Bank indicator SP.POP.65UP.TO.ZS, which draws on the same underlying UN data. Where the two sources differ slightly due to rounding or revision timing, the UN WPP 2024 value takes precedence.
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Immigration of working-age adults can temporarily slow the rise in the old-age dependency ratio by expanding the working-age denominator. Singapore and, to a lesser degree, South Korea and Chile rely on managed immigration as a partial demographic buffer. However, the effect is partial and time-limited: immigrants also age, and the volumes needed to fully offset rapid demographic ageing in countries like South Korea or China would require levels of net migration that are politically and logistically unrealistic under any realistic scenario. Most demographic modelling treats immigration as a complement to domestic structural reform, not a substitute for it.
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No country in modern demographic history has returned to replacement-level fertility once it fell substantially below 2.1 for an extended period. While pro-natalist policies — paid parental leave, child subsidies, housing support, flexible work arrangements — can raise fertility modestly (Hungary raised its total fertility rate from around 1.2 to 1.6 over a decade through aggressive state support), closing the gap to 2.1 is a different order of magnitude. The UN medium-variant scenario assumes that most fast-ageing countries will remain below replacement level through mid-century. Even if birth rates rose meaningfully today, the effect on the 65+ share would emerge only gradually and would not solve near-term ageing pressures.
Primary Data Sources and Technical Notes
The figures and rankings in this article are compiled from openly available international datasets. They are harmonized and lightly rounded for comparability. For formal statistical or policy work, the underlying source databases and methodological notes should always be checked directly.
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United Nations — World Population Prospects 2024Age-structured population estimates and projections by country, 1950–2100, including the share of the population aged 65 and over used to construct the 2015–2025 changes and 2050 projections. The medium-variant scenario is used throughout unless stated otherwise.
https://population.un.org/wpp -
World Bank — World Development Indicators (SP.POP.65UP.TO.ZS)Annual time-series data on the share of the population aged 65 and over by country, derived from UN Population Division data. Used as a cross-check for level estimates and to verify consistency across countries.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.65UP.TO.ZS -
UN DESA — World Social Report 2023: Leaving No One Behind in an Ageing WorldProvides policy context on the implications of population ageing for sustainable development, covering health systems, pensions, labour markets and income inequality in ageing populations.
https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/world-social-report.html -
UNFPA — AgeingThematic overviews, policy briefs and global factsheets on the scale and speed of population ageing, the concept of "super-aged" societies and implications for social protection and health systems.
https://www.unfpa.org/ageing -
World Health Organization — Ageing and HealthBackground on healthy ageing, functional ability in older age, and health-system reforms required as the share of older persons rises, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ageing-and-health -
OECD — Pensions at a Glance (2023 edition)Comparative data on pension systems, old-age income adequacy and fiscal sustainability for OECD and selected partner countries. Informs the policy discussion on pension architecture in fast-ageing economies.
https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-pensions-at-a-glance_19991363.html -
Our World in Data — Ageing PopulationLong-run data visualisations and contextual analysis on global demographic change, including the share of older persons over time by country and region.
https://ourworldindata.org/age-structure
When reproducing or extending the data, always verify you are using the most recent revision of the UN and World Bank datasets, and document the exact vintage of the data in your notes or metadata.