There are 195 countries in the world with varied amounts of residents per country, making many of us generally assume most countries are fairly equal in their populations or at least that population in the world is related to something like a ratio depending on the size of each country and so on. However, this belief is actually pretty inaccurate and most of us don’t even realize it. A pretty heavy percentage of the billions of humans on this planet are actually specific to certain countries and regions, with a main handful of countries holding over 50% of the population.
It’s pretty crazy to think about that, with such a sheer number of countries existing but billions of the population existing in less than 10 of them. In case you’re curious now what those actual countries and percentages are, here’s the answer to where do most people live in the world.
China
First up in our population list is China, which holds approximately 18% of the world’s population just within its borders. This is a fairly small percentage compared to 100%, but if you think about it technically an even division would put each country at less than 1% of the population and 18% is actually over one billion people. China has a comparable area to the United States to put the country’s size into perspective, but considerably more population.
India
Next in the list is India, which has about 3 million square kilometers of area (compared to China’s 9 million). India holds 17.69% of the world’s population, which is a total of over one billion humans as well. Most people, especially people not living in either India or China, wouldn’t realize or even consider that these two countries each hold over one billion people each but these are our two highest populated countries in the world.
United States
Those of you living in the United States that have been waiting for your spot on this list, here you are. The U.S. is third in world population. This country has over 9 million square kilometers of space in total, although most of us know much of it is unpopulated and there are more popular regions that hold a lot of the population for this country. Over 300 million people reside in the United States, a little over 4% of the population.
Noteworthy Mentions
From here on the population decreases in percentage pretty quickly and becomes a sort of squabbling match between multiple countries that does fluctuate over the years. But, we still want to give you an idea of what countries make the most population in the world. Next up right now (in current order from most to least population) include Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico, and so on.
The specific percentages and numbers can obviously change over time and do depend on the current year, but generally these statistics have stayed very similar or the same for multiple years in a row. In fact for quite a while this is how our world has been divided by population. Generally speaking, we do tend to gravitate towards certain countries on our planet to live in as a whole society for whatever reasons those may be; some being size of the country, quality of life, interests, just being born into the country and staying, and other reasons. It’s quite interesting to truly put into perspective how this can impact the resources and environment of certain countries since many of us don’t actually understand or know how disproportionately this world can be split up at times.