All 545,796 residents counted in the 2021 census, in the four age bands INE publishes. Nearly a quarter of Lisbon is over 65. Those 127,768 older residents just outnumber everyone under 25 put together (126,289), by about 1,479 people.
Children, under 1571,220
Teens and young adults, 15 to 2455,069
Working age, 25 to 64291,739
Older residents, 65 and over127,768
The same city, in five-year bands
Lisboa municipality in five-year bands, 2023. 92,778 people in their twenties, 108,737 in their thirties.
Different source, different basis. This section uses INE's annual estimates, not the census, because the census does not publish five-year bands below national level. The two count differently: the census enumerates, the estimates are built from administrative records. That is why this total is 655,542 against the census 545,796, a gap of 109,746. No city grows 20% in two years. Nothing in this section is comparable with the parish figures elsewhere on the page, and nothing here is subtracted from them.
Lisbon does not raise its young adults. It receives them.
Every five-year band below 20 holds roughly the same number of people: 26,606, 27,207, 27,590, 29,267. Then it jumps. The 20 to 24 band is 38,739 and 25 to 29 is 54,039, roughly double the cohorts below it. People arrive in this city in their twenties.
The largest single band is 30 - 34, at 57,900 people. That is 2.2 times the number of children under 5. Lisbon has plenty of people at the age when families usually form, and less than half as many small children.
Where the older residents are
Older people for every child, by neighbourhood. Colour runs from the
youngest to the oldest, as the scale below shows. Hover or tab to a shape for
the numbers.
More children
More older people0.9 to 2.6 per child
What stands out
Benfica is the oldest neighbourhood in Lisbon on every measure there is.
It has the highest ratio, 2.6 older people per child. It has the largest share of residents aged 65 and over, 29.6%. And it has the most of them in absolute terms, 10,475. No other neighbourhood leads on any of the three.
Misericórdia, which covers Bairro Alto, is second, and fewer than one resident in ten there is under 15 (9.9%, against 13.0% across the city). Santa Maria Maior, the Baixa, is 4th on the same measure while having a smaller share of over-65s than 20 other neighbourhoods. It ranks high because it has the fewest children in Lisbon, not the most old people.
The two youngest have almost nothing else in common. Santa Clara in the north of the city and Parque das Nações on the eastern waterfront are the only neighbourhoods in Lisbon where children outnumber older residents, both at 0.9 per child. Santa Clara has the larger share of children of the two, at 18.9% against 17.7%.
All 24 neighbourhoods, ranked
Older people for every child. The dashed line marks one each, where over-65s and under-15s are equal in number.
But that is not where most older people live
The same neighbourhoods, ordered by how many residents aged 65 and over actually live there. Colour is unchanged from the map, so a long pale bar means somewhere with many older residents and plenty of children too.
More children
More older people0.9 to 2.6 per child
Lumiar looks young on the map and has more older residents than almost anywhere in Lisbon.
It ranks 21st of 24 by ratio, at 1.4 older people per child, yet it is 2nd by headcount with 9,689 residents over 65. Misericórdia is the mirror image: 2nd by ratio, 23rd by headcount, 2,233 older residents. Lumiar has 4.3 times as many older people as Misericórdia, while looking considerably younger.
Both readings are correct, and they answer different questions. The ratio says how concentrated ageing is, which is what the map is good at. The count says how many people are involved, which is what you need if you are deciding where a day centre or a bus route goes. Ranked by ratio the top of the list is the historic centre; ranked by headcount it is the outer neighbourhoods, and the five largest between them hold 36% of everyone in Lisbon over 65.