What is the likelihood to have a biography on Wikipedia? How does this likelihood vary across the 10 major largest editions of Wikipedia? Does country of birth affect the probability of having a biography? Which countries are overrepresented, and do different editions rank them differently? By combining demographic birth data from the United Nations World Population Prospects with biography counts by year and country of birth, this study offers new insights into geographical bias on Wikipedia.

Looking at raw biography counts in English Wikipedia, the United States leads with 333,138 biographies, followed by the United Kingdom (157,303) and Germany (68,469). India ranks 8th with 34,915 biographies and the China 14th with 18,512.^[1] These figures, however, reflect population size and historical documentation practices as much as anything else — to draw meaningful comparisons, they must be weighed against demographic data.

In 2022, I conducted an initial study comparing birth counts by department in metropolitan France, as provided by the French statistical office, with the number of biographies by department of birth.^[2] That was my first attempt to measure the likelihood of having a Wikipedia biography, though the scope was limited to France.

The United Nations World Population Prospects (WPP) turned out to be the perfect dataset for this purpose: it provides birth estimates by year and country going back to 1950, enabling a global measure of the likelihood of having a Wikipedia biography.

I've published a first analysis for the French-language edition of Wikipedia.^[3] My analysis shows that very small and rich countries such San Marino, Monaco, and Andorra lead the ranking with more than 1 biography per 1,000 births and that and that major Asian countries such as People's Republic of China and India are at the very bottom of the rankings, with less than 1 per 100,000.

In this analysis, I propose to measure likelihood to have a biography on a global scale and at the country level for the 10 largest versions of Wikipedia. To my knowledge, this is the first study which computes the likelihood to have a biography at the country level, but I would be happy to learn about previous studies.

This study covers the 10 Wikipedia editions with the highest number of active editors as of 15 March 2026:^[4] English Wikipedia (285,578 active editors), Spanish Wikipedia (44,856), French Wikipedia (39,525), German Wikipedia (38,737), Italian Wikipedia (29,782), Japanese Wikipedia (25,082), Chinese Wikipedia (13,584), Polish Wikipedia (10,183), Dutch Wikipedia (9,190), and Persian Wikipedia (7,882).

Country definitions and ISO codes are drawn from the R package ISOcodes.^[5]

This study uses the 2024 edition of the World Population Prospects, retaining only country, year, and birth count.^[6] Rather than tracking historical borders and former countries, the WPP uses current country definitions, which simplifies long-term cross-country comparisons.

Biography counts were obtained by querying the Wikidata SPARQL endpoint via qlever.dev.^[7] Data were collected between 10 and 15 March 2026.^[8] · ^[9]

All results are produced in an Observable notebook.^[10] People born after 1990 are excluded from the analysis, as they have had less time to meet Wikipedia's notability criteria and are therefore systematically underrepresented in biography counts.

The likelihood of having a biography is measured as the number of biographies per million births, computed for people born between 1950 and 1990. Over this period, the World Population Prospects records a total of 4.7 billion births (4,724,770,005 births) across 219 countries.

Globally, the results reveal stark disparities between countries: the likelihood of having a biography ranges from 7.5 per million births in Ethiopia to 13,340 in San Marino — meaning that while someone born in Ethiopia has roughly a 1-in-130,000 chance of being notable enough to warrant a biography, someone born in San Marino has closer to a 1-in-75 chance. People born in San Marino are almost 2,000 times more likely to have a biography than those born in Ethiopia.

The five countries with the highest likelihood of having a biography in English Wikipedia are San Marino (13,339.6 biographies per million births), Andorra (8,801.7), Liechtenstein (7,710.3), Falkland Islands (6,082.7), and Nauru (5,394.9). All five are very small countries with fewer than 15,000 births recorded over the 40-year period. Browsing the list of biographies by country show that local athletes could explain the relatively high number of biographies for those countries.^[11]

Globally, the top 20 includes a mix of very small countries such as Monaco, Faroe Islands, Cook Islands, Tonga, Cayman Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, Isle of Man, and Greenland, and small or relatively small countries such as Iceland, Luxembourg, Estonia, Norway, New Zealand, Ireland, and Sweden.

The relationship between country size measured by birth count and biographies per million births is negative (correlation coefficient is -0.62). Looking at figure 1 shows that English speaking countries such as New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States of America are far above the regression line, which means that their biographies per million births ratio is high relative to their birth count.

Among large countries (those with more than 10 million births between 1950 and 1990), Western nations dominate the top of the ranking: the United Kingdom leads with 1,359.3 biographies per million births, followed by Canada (1,268.0), the United States (753.4), France (521.4), and Spain (482.8).

Figure 2 shows the geographical distribution of the biographies per million births ratio. Most African countries have a low (below 100) or very low (below 10) ratio.

Latin American countries sit in the middle of the ranking. Argentina (280.5 biographies per million births) and Chile (229.2) are the highest-ranked Latin American countries and both exceed the global average, while Mexico (84.5), Brazil (80.7), and Peru (62.3) fall in the 50–100 range — well below the regional leaders but far from the bottom of the distribution.

Some Asian countries perform well above the regional average, including Japan (223.4 biographies per million births), South Korea (157.5), Malaysia (136.8), Taiwan (107.8), and Kazakhstan (106.5), all exceeding 100 biographies per million births. Many of the continent's most populous countries, however, rank near the bottom of the global distribution: India records just 16.5 biographies per million births, Indonesia 14.6, Myanmar 13.5, Vietnam 12.9, North Korea 12.9, Yemen 12.5, Bangladesh 9.8, and China 7.9.

Among large African countries, South Africa is the best ranked with 145.4 biographies per million birth. Other African countries are below 100 biographies per million births. Ethiopia is the last one in the English Wikipedia with only 7.5 biographies per million births.

Globally, the results are similar across the 10 editions of Wikipedia included in the study. The cross-wiki Pearson correlation coefficient of the logarithm of the biography per million births ratio ranges from 0.897 between the Persian edition and the English one to 0.953 between Italian edition and the English edition.^[13]

Since the correlation between the 10 editions of Wikipedia included in the study is very high, countries at the top of the ranking are often the same. San Marino is 1st in the English, German, French, Italian, Chinese and Polish editions, 2nd in the Spanish one, 7th in the Dutsch one, 8th in the Japanese one, and 9th in the Persian edition. Andorra, Liechtenstein, Iceland, and Monaco are always in the top 10 and Nauru is in the top 10 9 times out of 10.

Though the rankings are globally similar across the 10 Wikipedia editions, there are also some notable differences.^[14]

In the Japanese edition, several Asian and Pacific countries rank notably higher than in the English edition: Japan climbs from 102nd to 3rd, the Republic of Korea from 114th to 48th, Taiwan from 129th to 74th, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from 205th to 128th. Pacific island nations also fare better, with Tuvalu rising from 23rd to 4th, Tonga from 15th to 5th, and the Marshall Islands from 91st to 14th. Overall, Asian and Pacific countries are better represented in the Japanese edition than in the English one.

We find the same pattern for the Chinese edition: Taiwan climbs from 129nd to 13th, China from 212th to 117th, the Republic of Korea from 114th to 37th, Japan from 102th to 24th, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from 205th to 121th. Tuvalu rising from 23rd to 4th, and the Marshall Islands from 91st to 14th. Overall, Asian and Pacific countries are meaningfully better represented in the Japanese edition than in the English one.

In the Persian edition, some Middle-East countries are better represented than in the English edition: Qatar goes from 31th rank to 4th, Armenia from 90th to 6th, United Arab Emirates from 50th to 7th, Bahrain from 75th to 16th, Kuwait from 97th to 32th, and the Islamic Republic of Iran from 148th to 46th.

In the Dutch edition, Tuvalu jumps from 23th to 1st, Belgium from 55th to 2nd, Suriname from 63th to 5th, Curaçao from 58th to 12th, and the Netherlands from 181th to 84th. The difference in the Netherlands and Belgium is striking.

The Polish edition is very similar to the English edition. The main difference is the ranking of Poland (from 93th to 10th).

The Italian edition is also very close to the English one. Italy is ranked 9th instead of 80th.

In the French edition, countries with a French-speaking community are noticeably better represented. Switzerland rises from 36th to 10th, France from 64th to 13th, and Belgium from 55th to 14th. The effect extends beyond Europe: Gabon climbs from 113th to 68th, Tunisia from 131st to 75th, and Canada from 28th to 17th.

In the Spanish edition, Spanish-speaking countries are better represented than in the English one. Falkland Islands is 1st vs 4th, Spain 8th vs 71th, Uruguay 9th vs 54th, Argentina 15th vs 95th, Chile 18th vs 101th, etc.

For the German edition, we also find a bonus for German-speaking countries such as Germany (12th vs 72th), Switzerland (11th vs 36th) and Austria (8th vs 44th). One notable difference is Timor-Leste which jumps from 127th position in the English edition to the 44th position in the German one.

This study demonstrates that combining demographic data with biography counts offers a new perspective on the geographic biases of Wikipedia. The gap between the top and bottom of the distribution is striking, and the results appear highly consistent across the 10 Wikipedia editions included in the study.

A cluster of very small countries — San Marino, Monaco, Andorra, Liechtenstein, and Nauru — consistently rank at the top of the distribution, while populous Asian countries such as India and China remain at the bottom.

Further research would be valuable to understanding what drives these disparities. In particular, it would be worth investigating whether the gap stems from differing likelihoods of meeting the notability criteria, or from how those criteria are interpreted across Wikipedian communities.

Another promising direction would be to compare the small countries against major cities such as Beijing, New Delhi, New York, and Rio de Janeiro.

Finally, the analysis could be extended to cover additional Wikipedia editions, as well as other Wikimedia projects such as Wikidata, Wikiquote, and Wikisource (author pages).