Sovereign and dependent territory rows of the World Bank “Birth rate, crude (per 1,000 people)” indicator (top 30 by most recent year). Aggregates (region.id === “NA”) excluded.
Chart ready. Press play to start.
How to use this chart
Play/Pause starts and stops the year-by-year animation, the year slider jumps to any year, and the speed selector (0.5×, 1×, 2×) changes playback speed. Each year shows the top 12 entries out of the 30 held in the dataset.
About this ranking
About this metric. “Crude Birth Rate by Country (Time Series)” reformats data published by the World Bank (World Bank indicator code SP.DYN.CBRT.IN). Values are expressed in per 1,000 people.
What to watch. Play from 1960, when Niger topped the chart at 58 births per 1,000 people, and watch the whole field drift downward for six decades. The countries that stay high — Chad, Somalia, the DR Congo — show where the demographic transition has yet to arrive.
Caveats. The crude birth rate divides births by total population, so age structure matters: a country full of young adults posts higher numbers than an ageing one at the same fertility level. For behaviour per woman, read this together with the total fertility rate ranking.
Trends in the data
Only one of these 30 countries has a higher value in 2024 than in 1960: the Central African Republic, up 2.66 from 43.53 to 46.19. A country that ranked 28th of 30 in 1960 — third from bottom — now leads. It reached first place less by rising than by holding its level while everything around it fell steeply. Chad climbing from 24th to 2nd and Somalia from 20th to 3rd follow the same logic.
The largest declines are Côte d’Ivoire (54.65 → 31.56, −23.09) and Malawi (53.73 → 31.14, −22.59), both down more than 40%. Ranked 3rd and 4th in 1960, they now sit 23rd and 26th. Yemen fell from 56.02 to 34.36, moving from 2nd to 12th, and Sierra Leone from 13th to 29th. Even within the single category of “high-fertility countries”, the extent of the half-century decline differs by close to a factor of two.
The 30-country average starts at 48.18 in 1960, peaks at 48.49 in 1968, and then falls steadily to 34.74 in 2024. The 1960s were still a rising phase; the clear decline begins around 1970. The ordering of the demographic transition — infant mortality improving first, fertility following — shows in that delayed turn.
What is striking is that the average fell by nearly 14 while the spread between top and bottom barely moved: 17.23 in 1960 against 16.20 in 2024. The level came down without the dispersion converging. Because a crude birth rate depends heavily on age structure, the same reproductive behaviour produces different values where the share of young people differs. Rather than comparing ranks, it is more rewarding to watch when and how steeply each country’s line bends. A 20-point fall spread over half a century and the same fall compressed into ten years place completely different demands on a society — a sharp decline forces schools and labour markets to be rebuilt in a hurry, while a gradual one spreads the adjustment across generations. Lay all thirty lines on top of each other and the variation in those angles is what stands out.
Trivia quiz
The 'crude birth rate' is births per 1,000 people. What measures the average number of children per woman?
The total fertility rate (TFR); about 2.1 is the replacement level needed to keep a population stable. (Source)
What is the process by which societies move from high to low birth and death rates called?
The demographic transition — from high-birth/high-death, through high-birth/low-death, to low-birth/low-death. (Source)
What is it called when births exceed deaths so population grows on its own?
Natural increase (the opposite is natural decrease). (Source)
Source
World Bank — Birth rate, crude (per 1,000 people) (SP.DYN.CBRT.IN)