List of countries by population in 1989

Last updated December 24, 2024

Historical Demographics
Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus
Articles
Demographic history
Historical demography
World population estimates
List of Countries by Population
1939	1989	2000

This is a list of countries by population in 1989, providing an overview of the world population before the fall of the Iron Curtain.

While the population data^[1] is almost exclusively dated 1989, political developments before the summer of 1990 are taken into account, including Yemeni unification and Namibian independence but not German reunification which was finalised only in October, the breakup of Yugoslavia and dissolution of the Soviet Union took place two years later, and the dissolution of Czechoslovakia three years later.

The numbers given in Aktuell '91^[1] are fully compatible with the data given by the U.S. Census Bureau,^[2] where they can be compared, as the US Census Data refers to modern national borders instead of 1989 borders. Similar remarks apply to 1990 estimates in the List of countries by past and future population which also only apply to modern-day national borders. See also Soviet Census (1989) and 1990 United States Census for comparison.

Rank	Country	Population 1989 estimate	Percentage of world's population
–	World population	5,230,452,409^[3]
1	China	1,110,000,000	21.2%
2	India	814,000,000	15.5%
3	Soviet Union Republics Russia – Ukraine – Uzbekistan – Kazakhstan – Byelorussia – Azerbaijan – Georgia – Tajikistan – Moldavia – Kirghizia – Lithuania – Turkmenia – Armenia – Latvia – Estonia –	287,800,000	5.5%
4	United States	250,140,000	4.7%
5	Indonesia	175,000,000	3.3%
6	Brazil	147,500,000	2.8%
7	Japan	123,000,000	2.3%
8	Bangladesh	112,800,000	2.1%
9	Pakistan	107,000,000	2.0%
10	Nigeria	92,800,000	1.8%
11	Mexico	84,900,000	1.6%
12	Vietnam	64,400,000	1.2%
13	United Kingdom Overseas territories Hong Kong – 5,686,000	62,800,000	1.2%
14	West Germany	62,000,000	1.1%
15	Philippines	59,200,000	1.1%
16	Italy	57,500,000	1.0%
17	France	56,000,000	1.0%
18	Turkey	55,400,000	1.0%
19	Egypt	55,000,000	1.0%
20	Thailand	55,000,000	1.0%
21	Iran	55,000,000	1.0%
22	Ethiopia	47,700,000	0.9%
23	South Korea	42,400,000	0.8%
24	Myanmar	39,900,000	0.7%
25	Spain	39,200,000	0.7%
26	Poland	37,900,000	0.7%
27	South Africa bantustans^[4] Transkei – 2,323,000 Bophuthatswana – 1,323,600 Venda – 315,500 Ciskei – 677,800 Territory of South West Africa – 1,760,000 Lebowa – 1,700,000 Gazankulu – 514,300 QwaQwa – 157,600 KwaZulu – 3,400,000 KwaNdebele – 156,400 KaNgwane – 161,100	37,360,000	0.7%
28	Zaire	34,000,000	0.6%
29	Argentina	32,400,000	0.6%
30	Colombia	32,300,000	0.6%
31	Canada	26,200,000	0.5%
32	Morocco	25,400,000	0.4%
33	Sudan	25,000,000	0.4%
34	Tanzania	24,700,000	0.4%
35	Algeria	24,700,000	0.4%
36	Yugoslavia Republics Serbia – Croatia – Bosnia and Herzegovina – Macedonia – Slovenia – Montenegro –	23,800,000	0.4%
37	Kenya	23,700,000	0.4%
38	Romania	23,200,000	0.4%
39	North Korea	22,000,000	0.4%
40	Peru	21,800,000	0.4%
41	Taiwan	20,100,000	0.3%
42	Venezuela	19,400,000	0.3%
43	Nepal	18,800,000	0.3%
44	Iraq	17,600,000	0.3%
45	Sri Lanka	17,500,000	0.3%
46	Malaysia	17,400,000	0.3%
47	Uganda	16,800,000	0.3%
48	Australia	16,800,000	0.3%
49	East Germany	16,400,000	0.3%
50	Czechoslovakia	15,700,000	0.3%
51	Afghanistan	15,500,000	0.2%
52	Mozambique	15,300,000	0.2%
53	Netherlands	14,900,000	0.2%
54	Ghana	14,100,000	0.2%
55	Saudi Arabia	12,700,000	0.2%
56	Chile	12,700,000	0.2%
57	Syria	12,200,000	0.2%
58	Ivory Coast	11,800,000	0.2%
59	Madagascar	11,100,000	0.2%
60	Cameroon	10,900,000	0.2%
61	Hungary	10,600,000	0.2%
62	Cuba	10,600,000	0.2%
63	Ecuador	10,500,000	0.2%
64	Portugal Overseas territories Macau – 337,000	10,300,000	0.19%
65	Greece	10,000,000	0.19%
66	Belgium	9,900,000	0.18%
67	Zimbabwe	9,100,000	0.17%
68	Bulgaria	9,000,000	0.17%
69	Angola	9,000,000	0.17%
70	Guatemala	8,900,000	0.17%
71	Somalia	8,600,000	0.16%
72	Sweden	8,500,000	0.16%
73	North Yemen	8,500,000	0.16%
74	Mali	8,500,000	0.16%
75	Malawi	8,100,000	0.15%
76	Tunisia	8,000,000	0.15%
77	Cambodia	7,900,000	0.15%
78	Zambia	7,800,000	0.14%
79	Senegal	7,700,000	0.14%
80	Burkina Faso	7,700,000	0.14%
81	Austria	7,600,000	0.14%
82	Niger	7,400,000	0.14%
83	Rwanda	7,300,000	0.13%
84	Dominican Republic	7,300,000	0.13%
85	Bolivia	7,000,000	0.13%
86	Switzerland	6,700,000	0.12%
87	Haiti	6,200,000	0.11%
88	Guinea	6,100,000	0.11%
89	Chad	5,700,000	0.10%
90	El Salvador	5,500,000	0.10%
91	Burundi	5,200,000	0.099%
92	Honduras	5,100,000	0.097%
93	Denmark	5,100,000	0.097%
94	Finland	4,970,000	0.095%
95	People's Republic of Benin	4,600,000	0.087%
96	Sierra Leone	4,300,000	0.082%
97	Libya	4,300,000	0.082%
98	Norway	4,200,000	0.080%
99	Paraguay	4,000,000	0.076%
100	Laos	3,900,000	0.074%
101	Jordan	3,900,000	0.074%
102	Nicaragua	3,700,000	0.070%
103	Ireland	3,700,000	0.070%
104	Papua New Guinea	3,600,000	0.068%
105	New Zealand	3,400,000	0.065%
106	Togo	3,200,000	0.061%
107	Albania	3,200,000	0.061%
108	Central African Republic	3,000,000	0.057%
109	Uruguay	3,000,000	0.057%
110	Lebanon	2,900,000	0.055%
111	Costa Rica	2,900,000	0.055%
112	Singapore	2,650,000	0.050%
113	Liberia	2,500,000	0.047%
114	Israel	2,500,000	0.047%
115	South Yemen	2,500,000
116	Jamaica	2,400,000	0.045%
117	Panama	2,300,000	0.043%
118	Mongolia	2,100,000	0.040%
119	Palestine	2,000,000	0.038%
120	People's Republic of the Congo	2,000,000	0.038%
121	Kuwait	1,970,000	0.037%
122	Mauritania	1,800,000	0.034%
123	Lesotho	1,700,000	0.032%
124	United Arab Emirates	1,500,000	0.028%
125	Bhutan	1,500,000	0.028%
126	Oman	1,400,000	0.026%
127	Trinidad and Tobago	1,300,000	0.024%
128	Botswana	1,200,000	0.022%
129	Gabon	1,100,000	0.021%
130	Mauritius	1,050,000	0.020%
131	Guinea-Bissau	929,000	0.017%
132	The Gambia	840,000	0.016%
133	Fiji	758,000	0.014%
134	Swaziland	757,000	0.014%
135	Guyana	730,000	0.014%
136	Cyprus	696,000	0.013%
137	Bahrain	483,000	0.0092%
138	Comoros	460,000	0.0087%
139	Suriname	400,000	0.0076%
140	Equatorial Guinea	389,000	0.0074%
141	Djibouti	383,000	0.0073%
142	Luxembourg	377,000	0.0072%
143	Malta	358,000	0.0068%
144	Qatar	342,000	0.0065%
145	Cape Verde	337,000	0.0064%
146	Solomon Islands	314,000	0.0060%
147	Brunei	267,000	0.0051%
148	Barbados	256,000	0.0048%
149	Iceland	251,000	0.0047%
150	Bahamas	247,000	0.0047%
151	Maldives	202,000	0.0038%
152	Belize	180,000	0.0034%
153	Samoa	169,000	0.0032%
#	Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic	169,000	0.0032%
154	Vanuatu	150,000	0.0028%
155	Saint Lucia	128,000	0.0024%
156	São Tomé and Príncipe	114,000	0.0021%
157	Tonga	108,000	0.0020%
158	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	108,000	0.0020%
159	Grenada	100,000	0.0019%
160	Antigua and Barbuda	86,000	0.0016%
161	Dominica	76,000	0.0014%
162	Seychelles	70,000	0.0013%
163	Kiribati	67,000	0.0012%
164	Andorra	49,000	0.00093%
165	Saint Kitts and Nevis	40,000	0.00076%
166	Liechtenstein	30,000	0.00057%
167	Monaco	29,000	0.00055%
168	San Marino	23,000	0.00043%
169	Tuvalu	9,000	0.00017%
170	Nauru	8,100	0.00015%

Related Research Articles

After registering steady increases during the Soviet period, the population of Armenia declined from its peak value of 3.633 million in 1992 to 2.986 million in 2017.

The demographics of North Korea are determined through national censuses and international estimates. The Central Bureau of Statistics of North Korea conducted the most recent census in 2008, where the population reached 24 million inhabitants. The population density is 199.54 inhabitants per square kilometre, and the 2014 estimated life expectancy is 69.81 years. In 1980, the population rose at a near consistent, but low, rate. Since 2000, North Korea's birth rate has exceeded its death rate; the natural growth is positive. In terms of age structure, the population is dominated by the 15–64-year-old segment (68.09%). The median age of the population is 32.9 years, and the gender ratio is 0.95 males to 1.00 female. Since the early 1990s, the birth rate has been fairly stable, with an average of 2 children per woman, down from an average of 3 in the early 1980s.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. During its existence, it was the largest country by area, extending across eleven time zones and sharing borders with twelve countries, and the third-most populous country. An overall successor to the Russian Empire, it was nominally organized as a federal union of national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR. In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), it was a flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Demographics of Ukraine</span>

According to the United Nations, Ukraine has a population of 37.9 million as of 2024.

Demographic features of the population of Uzbekistan include population growth, population density, ethnicity, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations, and other aspects of the population. The nationality of a person from Uzbekistan is Uzbekistani, while the ethnic Uzbek majority call themselves Uzbeks. Much of the data is estimated because the last census was carried out in Soviet times in 1989.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winneshiek County, Iowa</span> County in Iowa, United States

Winneshiek County is a county located in the U.S. state of Iowa. As of the 2020 census, the population was 20,070. The county seat is Decorah.

According to data from the 1989 Soviet census, the population of the USSR was made up of 70% East Slavs and 17% Turkic peoples, with no other single ethnic group making up more than 2%.

Transnistria, officially known as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and locally as Pridnestrovie, is a landlocked breakaway state internationally recognized as part of Moldova. It controls most of the narrow strip of land between the Dniester river and the Moldova–Ukraine border, as well as some land on the other side of the river's bank. Its capital and largest city is Tiraspol. Transnistria is officially designated by the Republic of Moldova as the Administrative-Territorial Units of the Left Bank of the Dniester or as Stînga Nistrului.

Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 83 million annually, or 1.1% per year. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 8.1 billion in 2024. The UN projected population to keep growing, and estimates have put the total population at 8.6 billion by mid-2030, 9.8 billion by mid-2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. However, some academics outside the UN have increasingly developed human population models that account for additional downward pressures on population growth; in such a scenario population would peak before 2100. Others have challenged many recent population projections as having underestimated population growth.

The post-Soviet states, also referred to as the former Soviet Union (FSU) or the former Soviet republics, are the independent sovereign states that emerged/re-emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Prior to their independence, they existed as Union Republics, which were the top-level constituents of the Soviet Union. There are 15 post-Soviet states in total: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Each of these countries succeeded their respective Union Republics: the Armenian SSR, the Azerbaijan SSR, the Byelorussian SSR, the Estonian SSR, the Georgian SSR, the Kazakh SSR, the Kirghiz SSR, the Latvian SSR, the Lithuanian SSR, the Moldavian SSR, the Russian SFSR, the Tajik SSR, the Turkmen SSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Uzbek SSR. In Russia, the term "near abroad" is sometimes used to refer to the post-Soviet states other than Russia.

Russian Americans are Americans of full or partial Russian ancestry. The term can apply to recent Russian immigrants to the United States, as well as to those who settled in the 19th-century Russian possessions in northwestern America. Russian Americans comprise the largest Eastern European and East Slavic population in the US, the second-largest Slavic population generally, the nineteenth-largest ancestry group overall, and the eleventh-largest from Europe.

Lithuanian Americans refer to American citizens and residents of Lithuanian descent or were born in Lithuania.

This article lists current estimates of the world population in history. In summary, estimates for the progression of world population since the Late Middle Ages are in the following ranges:

The 1989 Soviet census, conducted between 12 and 19 January of that year, was the final census carried out in the Soviet Union. The census found the total population to be 286,730,819 inhabitants. In 1989, the Soviet Union ranked as the third most populous in the world, above the United States, although it was well below China and India.

Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south. Yerevan is the capital, largest city and financial center.

In world demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently alive. It was estimated by the United Nations to have exceeded eight billion in mid-November 2022. It took around 300,000 years of human prehistory and history for the human population to reach a billion and only 218 years more to reach 8 billion.

After World War II, emigration restrictions were imposed by countries in the Eastern Bloc, which consisted of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. Legal emigration was in most cases only possible to reunite families or to allow members of minority ethnic groups to return to their homelands.

Many countries and national censuses currently enumerate or have previously enumerated their populations by race, ethnicity, nationality, or a combination of these characteristics. Different countries have different classifications and census options for race and ethnicity/nationality which are not comparable with data from other countries. In addition, many of the race and ethnicity concepts that appear on national censuses worldwide have their origins in Europe or in the views of Europeans, rather than in the views of the locals of these countries.

References

1 2 Jahrgang, Siebter (1990). Aktuell '91 – Das Lexikon der Gegenwart, Harenberg Lexikon Verlag (1990). ISBN 3611001309.
↑ https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/region.php?N=%20Results%20&T=13&A=separate&RT=0&Y=1989&R=1&C=AF ^{[ dead link ‍]}
↑ "GeoHive – World Population 1950–2050". Archived from the original on 2016-11-19. Retrieved 2016-02-20.
↑ Sally Frankental; Owen Sichone (1 January 2005). South Africa's Diverse Peoples: A Reference Sourcebook. ABC-CLIO. p. 187. ISBN 978-1-57607-674-3. Archived from the original on 12 December 2013. Retrieved 18 September 2013.

External links

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[aktuell-1] 1 2 Jahrgang, Siebter (1990). Aktuell '91 – Das Lexikon der Gegenwart, Harenberg Lexikon Verlag (1990). ISBN 3611001309.

[2] ttps://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/region.php?N=%20Results%20&T=13&A=separate&RT=0&Y=1989&R=1&C=AF ^{[ dead link ‍]}

[3] "GeoHive – World Population 1950–2050". Archived from the original on 2016-11-19. Retrieved 2016-02-20.

[FrankentalSichone2005-4] Sally Frankental; Owen Sichone (1 January 2005). South Africa's Diverse Peoples: A Reference Sourcebook. ABC-CLIO. p. 187. ISBN 978-1-57607-674-3. Archived from the original on 12 December 2013. Retrieved 18 September 2013.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

v t e Lists of countries by population statistics
Global	Current population United Nations Demographics of the world
Continents/subregions	Africa Antarctica Asia Europe North America Caribbean Oceania South America
Intercontinental	Americas Arab world Commonwealth of Nations Eurasia European Union Islands Latin America Middle East
Cities/urban areas	World cities National capitals Megacities Megalopolises
Past and future	Past and future population World population estimates 1 1000 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 1939 1989 2000 2005 2010 2015 Population milestones
Population density	Current density Past and future population density Person-to-arable land ratio
Growth indicators	Population growth rate Natural increase Net reproduction rate Number of births Number of deaths Birth rate Mortality rate Fertility rate Past fertility rate
Life expectancy	World Africa Asia Europe North America Oceania South America world regions past life expectancy
Other demographics	Age at childbearing Age at first marriage Age structure Dependency ratio Divorce rate Ethnic and cultural diversity level Ethnic composition Immigrant population Linguistic diversity Median age Net migration rate Number of households Religion / Irreligion Sex ratio Urban population Urbanization
Health	Antidepressant consumption Antiviral medications for pandemic influenza HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate Infant and under-five mortality rates Maternal mortality rate Obesity rate Percentage suffering from undernourishment Health expenditure by country by type of financing Suicide rate Total health expenditure per capita Total healthcare spending as % of GDP Body mass index (BMI)
Education and innovation	Bloomberg Innovation Index Education Index Global Innovation Index International Innovation Index Literacy rate Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) Tertiary education attainment World Intellectual Property Indicators
Economic	Access to financial services Development aid donors Official Development Assistance received Employment rate Irrigated land area Human Development Index by country inequality-adjusted planetary pressures–adjusted HDI Human Poverty Index Imports Exports Income equality Labour force Share of income of top 1% Number of millionaires (US dollars) Number of billionaires (US dollars) Percentage living in poverty Public sector Unemployment rate Wealth inequality
List of international rankings Lists by country

List of countries by population in 1989

Contents

See also

Related Research Articles

References

External links