Brief Review of World Demographic Trends - Trends in Age Distributions

Abstract

This report focuses on one demographic trend: Age Distributions. The basic findings of this report are: 1) in all regions, the largest group is the adults (15-59 years old), 2) in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean, there are more children than there are seniors, while, recently, in Europe there are more seniors than children, and in Northern America there will soon be more seniors than children, 3) in almost all regions, the proportion of the population who are children is declining while the proportion who are seniors is increasing. Sub-Saharan Africa is an exception. There are almost as many children as there are seniors, and the proportions of the population who are seniors and children have not yet changed.Changes in age distributions have many implications for society. For example, a larger proportion of younger people means more people who have yet to attain adulthood and who can be expected to have more children, which means continued population growth. So, Sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest proportion of children, also has the highest population growth rates (as seen in previous reports), and can be expected to continue to have the highest population growth rates. Similarly, Europe and North America, which have the lowest proportion of children, also have the lowest population growth rates, which can be expected to continue to be low. Also, since most regions have declining proportions of children, most regions have declining population growth rates and will likely continue to have declining population growth rates.