Statizoid

Malawi vs Sri Lanka: Do more people live in urban or rural areas?

Malawi
17.6%
in 2025
Sri Lanka
20.5%
in 2025
Malawi rank
232nd
Sri Lanka rank
230th

Do more people live in urban or rural areas? over time

  • Malawi
  • Sri Lanka
05101520100015122025

How they compare

Sri Lanka currently reports 20.5% against 17.6% in Malawi, a difference of 2.9%.

That makes Sri Lanka's figure about 1.2 times Malawi's.

The two have swapped places 2 times across 108 shared years of data; in 1000 it was Sri Lanka ahead.

Malawi ranks 232nd and Sri Lanka ranks 230th of 238 countries.

Individual pages

About this data

Indicator
Do more people live in urban or rural areas?
Unit
%
Source
HYDE (2023); United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Licence
CC BY 4.0 (Our World in Data)
Coverage
239 places, 24,444 data points, 1000–2025
Last refreshed

Share of the population living in urban areas, combining UN estimates with modelled historical data.