The document discusses various population structures and trends, including sex ratios, age distributions, median ages, and population pyramids. It notes that while many less developed regions still have relatively young populations, more developed regions are aging rapidly as fertility declines and lifespans increase. Several challenges of an aging population are mentioned, such as increasing old-age dependency ratios, strain on pension and healthcare systems, and needing to adapt community infrastructure for the needs of older residents.

1. Population Structure
08.04.2021
Gülçin Con Wright

2. Concept Map
Sex ratio
Age-dependency ratio
Population pyramid
Median age

3. Sex ratio
• With more than 3 males per 1 female, Qatar
has highest sex ratio, Nepal has lowest gender
ratio of 84.55 (per 100 females).
• Child sex ratio and overall sex ratio should be
differentiated.
• At birth, sex ratio should be almost equal, only
with slightly more male babies than female
ones.
• However, in many countries, child sex ratio is
flawed towards more male babies – son
preference.
• As population ages, though, we see overall sex
ratio to be flawed towards females because
females live longer than males on average.

4. Flawed Sex ratio Example

5. Turkey – Age
& Sex
Distribution in
2020
0-14 years: 23.41% (male 9,823,553/female 9,378,767)
15-24 years: 15.67% (male 6,564,263/female 6,286,615)
25-54 years: 43.31% (male 17,987,103/female
17,536,957)
55-64 years: 9.25% (male 3,764,878/female 3,822,946)
65 years and over: 8.35% (male 3,070,258/female
3,782,174) (2020 est.)

6. Median Age
• Median age is an important indicator for
demographers because it also shows
whether a population is aging or not.
• Increasing median age would hint to
population age (lower fertility rates and
increasing life expectancy).
• Turkey’s median age is still not that high
(below 40 is considered as not old). Half of
Turkey’s population is still below 32.2.
• For male/female it ranges from 14.5/15.1
years in Niger to 53.7/57.0 years in Monaco
(2020).

7. Population Pyramids – LDR vs. MDR

8. Population Pyramids – Across Time

9. Population Pyramids – Across Time

10. Population Cohorts – Baby Boomers

11. Population Cohorts – Baby Boomers
• Countries outside of the US and Western
Europe did not experience the kind of
baby boom at the end of WWII.
• It is not reasonable to talk about Baby
Boomers in Turkey.
• Other than their demographic
characteristics, cohorts also have distinct
social, economic, and political
characteristics.
• Not much discussions on specific cohorts
in Turkey.

12. Population Aging
• With decreasing fertility rates and
increasing life expectancies, the world
population is aging.
• However, the phenomenon of population
aging is also not equally distributed.
• We can easily notice that LDRs still have
a fairly younger population whereas
MDRs already have an older population or
will have an old population by 2050.

13. Problems associated with Population
Aging
• Old age dependency ratio would increase.
• Pension system would be broken since the working age population would shrink and not be
able to support a huge older cohort.
• A huge burden would be placed on the healthcare systems since older ages and increasing
life expectancy also come with chronic diseases and disabilities.
• The whole infrastructure of the communities has to also be altered according to the needs
of an older population.
• What types of changes in infrastructure would you project?