Federico-Tena World Population Historical Database

This website provides an annual series of population data by polity from 1800 to 1938, along with aggregated series for continents and the world. You are welcome to download and use the data, but please cite it as follows:

Federico, G., & Tena-Junguito, A. (2025). World Population 1800-1938. IFCS - Working Papers in Economic History, 2025-1. https://hdl.handle.net/10016/45843

This is a revised version of:

Federico, Giovanni & Tena-Junguito, Antonio (2023). How Many People on Earth? World Population 1800-1938. Working Papers in Economic History 23-01, Instituto Figuerola, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. http://hdl.handle.net/10016/36431

In this new version, we have re-estimated the margin of error and removed estimates of the demographic effects of migration, as well as sections on population shocks and demographic transitions. Additionally, Appendix 2 provides the methodology and sources for a new estimation of all polities from 1800 to 1938, based on historical and 1991 borders, using first-hand sources and country-specific literature.

The updated estimation of all world polities at 1991 borders is available in the upper right corner of this page, along with a quality assessment file detailing the historical series estimates by year.

Upgrades

- As of January 2026, we have implemented the following changes:

1) A new version of the World population at historical borders of 1991 ( “World Population Borders 1991 (2026)”

2) Other changes to version 2026: we have changed the whole Africa series (Africa 2026) with the exception of the next countries : Algeria, Angola, Cape Verde, Ceuta y Melilla, Comoros Mayotte, Egypt, Italian Libia, Mauritius Morocco, Reunion, St. Elena, Sao Tome, Seychelles, South Africa, Spanish Sahara, Tunisia, Zanzibar.  

New Sources in  2026  came from Version 4 of African Population Database 1850-1960 https://www.aehnetwork.org/data-research/african-population-database-1850-1960/  Frankema, E. and Jerven, M. (2014). ‘Writing History Backwards and Sideways: Towards a Consensus on African Population, 1850-present‘ . Economic History Review 67( S1): 907-931.

3) As a result, the aggregate series for Africa  and the World in this version (2026) differ slightly from the previous ones.

-  As of January 2025, we have implemented the following changes:

1) Assesment World Population. We assess the reliability of the series by classifying separately each year/polity observation, following the pioneering work by Durand (1977). We offer a new file Assesment World Population in which we distinguished four classes, from A (good quality censuses or well kept yearly population records) to D (pure conjectures) but we prefer a division in five classes, inspired by the nature of our sources.

2) Other changes

a) we have added estimate for Cayman Islands.

b) we have estimated a separate series for Taiwan, previously a Chinese province, since its conquest by Japan in 1896.

c) we have revised series for Andorra, Bahrain, Germany and Poland.

d) as supplementary information, we have reported also the constituent aggregate series for the Leeward islands, Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. The Leeward islands include Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Montserrat, St. Kitts & Nevis, and the British Virgin Islands, Polynesia includes the Cook Islands, Tonga, French Polynesia, Samoa and others (joint estimate of population in Niue, Tokelau and Wallis and Futuna), Melanesia includes Fiji, New Caledonia, New Hebrides/Vanuatu,  New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands and Micronesia includes Guam, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (nowadays Kiribati and Tuvalu) and ‘German colonies’ (joint estimate of population in Nauru and Caroline islands).

As a result, the aggregate series for Americas, Asia and Europe (and thus for the world) differ slightly from the previous ones.