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Population, Midyear 2022: 38,454,327
Population Density (Number of Persons per Square Kilometer): 4.23
Life Expectancy at Birth, 2022: 82.85
Projected Population, Midyear 2030: 41,008,596
Percentage of Total Population Aged 65 and Older, Midyear 2022: 19.03%
Projected Percentage of Total Population Aged 65 and Older, Midyear 2030: 22.84%
Projected Percentage of Total Population Aged 65 and Older, Midyear 2050: 25.46%

Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2023). Data Portal, custom data acquired via website. United Nations: New York. Accessed 12 May 2023.

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Population, 2021: 38,155,000
Annual Population Growth Rate, 2020-2030: 0.7%
Life Expectancy at Birth, 2021: 83
Share of Urban Population, 2021: 82%
Annual Growth Rate of Urban Population, 2020-2030: 0.9%
Gini Coefficient, 2010-2019: 30
Palma Index of Income Inequality, 2010-2019: 1.1

Note: Gini coefficient – Gini index measures the extent to which the distribution of income (or, in some cases, consumption expenditure) among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. A Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality.
Palma index of income inequality – Palma index is defined as the ratio of the richest 10% of the population’s share of gross national income divided by the poorest 40%’s share.

Source: United Nations Children’s Fund, The State of the World’s Children 2023: For every child, vaccination, UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight, Florence, April 2023.

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Life expectancy at birth, 2021: 81.6
Share of the population aged 65 and over, 2021: 18.5
Share of the population aged 65 and over, 2050: 23.6
Share of the population aged 80 and over, 2021: 4.6%
Share of the population aged 80 and over, 2050: 8.6%

Source: OECD (2023), Health at a Glance 2023: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, doi.org/10.1787/7a7afb35-en.

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“Although it has a large land mass, Canada’s population was just over 37.5 million in 2019, up from 36.5 million in 2017 (Statistics Canada, 2019a). The two largest cities are Toronto and Montreal, with 6.3 million and 4.1 million inhabitants, respectively, living in the cities and surrounding areas, and are defined as “census metropolitan areas” (Statistics Canada, 2019b) (see Table 1.1). In contrast, the country’s capital city, Ottawa, and its surrounding area, has a population of 1.4 million. Although Canada has one of the lowest human population densities in the world (approximately 4.0 persons per km2) (Table 1.2), most of the population is concentrated in southern urban centres that are close to the USA border. A relatively small number of Canadians live in the immense rural and more northern regions of the country. Most new immigrants live in Canada’s largest cities and international immigration is the main driver of population growth in cities, accounting for nearly 80% of population growth in 2016/17 (Statistics Canada, 2018a). In 2016, about 6% of the population identified as Indigenous (Statistics Canada, 2018b), though this is an undercount because: some First Nations communities refused to participate in the census; there are some mobile and sometimes poorly housed populations that are missed by the census; and some people may choose not to self-identify as Indigenous in the census (Smylie & Firestone, 2016; Rotondi et al., 2017).”

Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.

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World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other nations.

Page last updated August 5, 2025 by Doug McVay, Editor.