The global population pyramid

The narrowing of the pyramid just above the base is testimony to the fact that more than 1-in-5 children born in 1950 died before they reached the age of five.1

Through shades of blue and green the same visualization shows the population structure over the last decades up to 2018. You see that in each subsequent decade the population pyramid was fatter than before – in each decade more people of all ages were added to the world population. At a country level “peak child” is often followed by a time in which the country benefits from a “demographic dividend” when the proportion of the dependent young generation falls and the share of the population in working age increases.3

This is now happening at a global scale.

Source: ourworldindata.org