Balkan Countries in the World: Aging Process within the Age Structural Transition

Abstract

This article intends to approach the phenomenon of population aging within the conceptual framework of structural transition. In this work the authors put forward a method of defining the variety of evolutionary trajectories – the result of different sets of fertility-mortality interactions – on the global level and hence identify the position of each Balkan country within the worldwide demographic order of the past four decades (1971–2015). The authors then propose a specific index – the structural dissimilarity index – to measure the corresponding transformations inherent to the population age structure and link the results with the prospects that emerge on the basis of the interaction between fertility and mortality. This has finally enabled the authors to formulate some broad assumptions regarding the current and future intensity and trends of structural transformations. For this purpose, the authors have gathered a sample of 142 national populations, including all Balkan countries, with the exception of Montenegro, and employed different techniques such as Partial Order Structuple (Scalogram) Analysis with Coordinates (POSAC) and the cohort-component population projections for the timeframes 1971–2015 and 2015–2060.