Population Living in Cities (Degree of Urbanisation), 1950

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Population Living in Cities (Degree of Urbanisation), 1950: every country, as published by UN DESA Population Division.

Country	Population living in cities, Degree of Urbanisation (%)	Population in towns and semi-dense areas (%)	Population in rural areas (%)
Vatican CityVATSouthern Europe	100.000	0.000	0.000
MacauMACEastern Asia	89.123	10.271	0.606
Hong KongHKGEastern Asia	86.152	11.210	2.638
SingaporeSGPSouth-eastern Asia	85.507	14.136	0.357
MaltaMLTSouthern Europe	63.945	26.209	9.846
United KingdomGBRNorthern Europe	55.723	28.401	15.876
UruguayURYSouth America	46.523	33.597	19.880
JapanJPNEastern Asia	43.651	42.584	13.764
Republic of the CongoCOGMiddle Africa	41.880	30.147	27.973
BarbadosBRBCaribbean	41.751	44.994	13.255
ArgentinaARGSouth America	40.710	32.335	26.955
TaiwanTWNEastern Asia	40.123	45.181	14.697
NetherlandsNLDWestern Europe	37.368	39.305	23.327
JamaicaJAMCaribbean	36.090	28.948	34.962
LebanonLBNWestern Asia	35.655	42.240	22.105
North KoreaPRKEastern Asia	35.349	48.137	16.514
KuwaitKWTWestern Asia	34.622	52.572	12.806
Trinidad and TobagoTTOCaribbean	33.545	45.596	20.859
South KoreaKOREastern Asia	33.470	37.603	28.927
MauritiusMUSEastern Africa	32.857	46.121	21.022
GreeceGRCSouthern Europe	32.533	30.622	36.845
RussiaRUSEastern Europe	31.934	39.393	28.673
AustriaAUTWestern Europe	31.300	17.857	50.843
IrelandIRLNorthern Europe	31.051	22.685	46.264
UkraineUKREastern Europe	30.979	35.228	33.793

Neither end is better. The values describe a shape, not a score. The middle country reads 9.148. “Shared” marks a value another country also holds.

Each measure’s ends

• Population in towns and semi-dense areas (%)

  Highest2 share it

  Lowest19 share it

  Middle country: 35.573

• Population in rural areas (%)

  Highest18 share it

  Lowest3 share it

  Middle country: 50.143

• .csv

  For a spreadsheet or code

  222 rows · 8.9 KB · UTF-8, opens in Excel

  Opens with 11 lines of source notes; the table starts on row 13.

  Download population-in-cities-1950-nations-inquiry.csv
• ↗

  The publisher’s original

  UN DESA Population Division’s own file, on its own site.

  WUP2025-F02-Degree-of-Urbanization_percPop_by_category.xlsx

What this site changed: Reshaped into one row per country: regional and income-group totals are left out, only the columns listed are kept, each row gets its ISO 3166 code, and some country names are brought to one spelling. No value is recalculated, rescaled or rounded.

Licence: CC BY 3.0 IGO. The version of CC BY written for intergovernmental organisations. Credit the publisher and say what you changed.

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