Eighth Billion

A life simulation built on UN data

You get one life. Which one would you have got?

Every year about 132 million people are born. Their country, their sex, their family's income — none of it was their choice. Draw a real birth and live it out, year by year, from published life tables.

Be bornOr explore the 237 countries first

Free · Real UN data · 237 countries · No signup

The single number

132.1 million

people were born in 2023. You could have been any one of them.

Life expectancy at birth69.2% of girls and 58.7% of boys born in 2023 are alive at 70, weighted by each country's own births.0%50%100%050100

Birth-weighted, 237 locations. UN WPP 2024 life tables.

Babies born worldwide since you opened this page

0

Live counter of births worldwide since the page loaded

4.2 births per second, from 132,110,261 births in 2023.

Today's country

A baby born in Syrian Arab Republic in 2023 had a 1 in 253 chance of being born there.

521,601 of the 132,110,261 babies born worldwide in 2023 were born there.

Be born in Syrian Arab Republic

All 237 countries

How it works

  1. 01

    We draw a birth

    Country, sex, urban or rural, family income quintile, and birth year — each drawn from that year's actual distribution.

  2. 02

    You make the choices

    School, work, where to live, health. A handful of decisions per life, each with consequences that stay within what the evidence supports.

  3. 03

    The record stays

    At the end you get a complete record: every event, every source, and the comparison to 999 people born the same second.

A sample life

Born in Japan in 1966. Finished upper secondary. Moved to Osaka at 20. Married at 26. Two children. Died at 78 of a non-communicable disease.

Every line above is generated from a seed and a life table, not written by hand. Yours will be different.

Draw yours

Explore the data

The oddsThe odds of being born in each country, and how we calculate them.Life expectancyLife expectancy by country and sex, 1950 to 2023.Child mortalityHow many children die before five, and how fast that changed.PopulationWho lives where, and how that shifted in 74 years.Birth rateBirths per 1,000 people, and what makes them rise or fall.DataDataset, sources and licences

Frequently asked questions

Is this a prediction about my life?
No. It draws a birth from published national statistics and plays it forward using that country's life table. It cannot know anything about you, and it does not try to.
Where does the data come from?
UN World Population Prospects 2024 for births, life tables, and population; World Bank World Development Indicators for income, urbanisation, education, and cause-of-death composition. Every figure on the site names its source and year.
Do my choices matter?
A little, and the size of that effect is bounded and disclosed. Place of birth matters far more than any decision the game offers — that is the point, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
Do you store my data?
No. There is no account and no server copy. Finished lives are stored in your browser only, and you can export them as a link.
Why 237 countries and not 172?
Every location the UN publishes with an ISO-3 code and at least one birth in 2023 is included. Truncating the list would silently change the odds for everyone else.
Is it free?
Yes. There is no signup, no paywall, and no advertising.

Ready to draw your life?

One click. No account. About two minutes if you read every line.

Be born

Eighth Billion simulates the odds of a birth. It does not predict any person's life, health, or lifespan.