How Many People in the World Are Not Registered?
As of writing, the world population stands at 8,120,568,417 and counting. But what about those who are not counted? There’s a huge population that is simply not counted and is unknown to official governments. And that is… a problem.
Registration, which typically involves recording vital information such as births, deaths, and marriages, is a fundamental aspect of governance that influences everything from social services to political representation. Despite efforts to improve civil registration systems, a considerable number of people still live without official documentation.
This means that many people in the world are not registered, and as such, they cannot get any social services or even be eligible for basic human rights. But how many people are not registered in the world as of 2024?
How many people in the world are not registered in 2024?
The truth is that it’s not easy to know the exact number. After all, they are not counted, so there’s no data on how many people are not registered in the world. It’s all estimations.
An update released in 2017 by the World Bank’s Identification for Development (ID4D) Global Dataset revealed that approximately 1.1 billion people worldwide have no legal documentation, meaning they are not registered. In 2017, the world population reached 7,599,822,404, which means that around 14.4% of the population back then had no legal registration.
Now, with a population of 8,120,568,417 in 2024, we can estimate that 1,169,361,852 people do not have official IDs as of 2024. However, since the report does not provide an accurate figure, we can estimate that, as of 2024, around 1.15 to 1.2 billion people do not have any record of their identity.
Leading countries with unregistered population
From the data above, the leading countries with a population that has no access to legal documentation include:
India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Democratic Congo, Tanzania, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Somalia, Kuwait, Oman, Zambia, and Eritrea.
Of those countries, Nigeria has the highest rate of unregistered population, with approximately 78% of its total population. India has the largest number of unregistered people, with around 215 million, followed by Nigeria with 150 million.
