Nepal Population Explorer

Population Explorer

Age and sex

How areas compare

About this dashboard

What this shows. The projected resident population of Nepal, its 7 provinces and 77 districts, by single year of age and sex, from the 2021 census base to 2051.

Resident, not total. These are people present in Nepal. Absentee population — the roughly 2.19 million counted by the 2021 census as living abroad — is not included. Nepal’s district totals therefore read lower than a de jure count, and the gap is largest in the districts that send the most migrants. Treat any comparison with a de jure source with that in mind.

Source. National Statistics Office (2025). National Population and Housing Census 2021: Population Projections for Nepal, 2021–2051. First edition. Kathmandu: National Statistics Office. ISBN 978-9937-9844-2-3. Lead analyst: Samir KC. The method is the multi-state cohort-component approach documented in KC, S. et al. (2016).

How the projection works. The projection runs in single-year steps, by single year of age. Each year ages the population forward, applies survival, adds births from age-specific fertility rates, and moves people between districts by domestic migration. Every district is projected in its own right; the national figure is the sum of the districts, not a separate model, which is why the tiers agree. The step is visible in the output itself: the survivors of age 40 in one year are exactly the population aged 41 the next.

Three tiers, three runs. Nepal is projected separately at district, palika and ward level, each at the same annual step, rather than once and then aggregated. This dashboard shows the district run.

Scenario. The reference scenario shown here is the medium variant: the central assumptions for fertility, mortality and migration.

Age groups. Alongside the standard demographic groups, this dashboard carries Nepal’s education stages — early childhood (3–4), basic education (5–12) and secondary (14–17). These follow Nepal’s school structure and are not comparable with other countries’ stages without care.

Two tiers, deliberately. Nepal is projected separately at district, palika and ward level. This dashboard shows districts, because that is the tier policy is written at and the tier where the figures behave: population, births, deaths and international migration all add up cleanly between tiers, and district is the coarsest level at which internal migration means one thing. Below it, a move between two wards of the same municipality becomes a visible flow, so ward-level migration counts are larger without anything having moved differently.

Where ward detail earns its place is in space, not in tables — so the Nepal Population Grid puts ward projections on a 100 m raster, conserving every ward total exactly. Use this dashboard for how many and who; use the grid for where.

Limitations. A projection is not a forecast. It shows what follows from a stated set of assumptions, and the further out it runs the more the assumptions matter relative to the base population. District-level figures are more uncertain than national ones, and migration is the most uncertain component of all.

Credits

Samir KC was lead analyst for the National Statistics Office projections these figures come from. The projections and the NSO report were prepared by Samir KC, Jibesh Acharya, Sambriddhi Malla and Divya Shakya. The population model behind this dashboard is the work of Samir KC and Jibesh Acharya.

The earlier Nepal population dashboard, which this one succeeds, was the responsibility of Divya Shakya, who did much of the work on it, with further contributions from Jibesh Acharya and Ashim Paudel. Much of how these results are presented — the choice of indicators, the scenario comparisons, the way places are compared — comes from that dashboard.

Developed at PSR HUB as part of PopSyM, a population-based systems model for Nepal, within Khoj Nepal — the wider programme of demographic research on Nepal.

How to cite

KC, S. (2026). Nepal Population Explorer: projected population by age, sex and area, 2021–2051. PSR HUB / PopSyM.

The framework is described in K.C., S. (2026), “Population-Based Systems Models for National Planning”, Populations 2(3): 16, https://doi.org/10.3390/populations2030016.

This build

Using the explorer

  • Explore shows the selected area, age group and sex: the headline tiles, the single-year age pyramid with the chosen age group highlighted, the group over time, and all areas of the same tier ranked.
  • Follow a cohort switches the trend to one birth year: the outlined bar in the pyramid is that cohort at the selected year, and the line beside it is the same people at every age.
  • Indicators plots the selected indicator for the area, with its formula and, where it decomposes, the parts beneath it.
  • Picture saves a panel as an SVG with its title and source; Data saves the rows behind it as CSV.
  • Every chart carries its source line, so a snipped image still says where it came from.