Population Pyramids and their implications.
by Megha Sharma(@megha0111)
The age-sex structure of a country can be studied through population pyramids. A graphical representation of the age and gender structure of population ideally defines a population pyramid. The horizontal axis represents the population and vertical axis show the age groups, mostly by a gap of 5 years. Two bar diagrams,precisely for males, usually on left side and females on the right side of the graph,adds up to make a population pyramid. This single graph holds the power to show the past, present and future of a country.
The slope of pyramid indicate the death rate while the width of the base is related to birth rate. The area of graph indicates total population, precisely based on age group or sex. Height of graph can indicate life expectancy while the kinks indicate reductions in birth rate or increases in death rate in the past.
This graph helps in distinguishing young dependants, old dependants and working population. As a part of policy making, this graph makes it easy to understand the comparison between developed and developing nation. For making decisions related to policies for future, a critical thinking and sufficient knowledge of the population age structure is being provided by these pyramid graphs. The shape of the pyramid can trace the past trend and also indicate the potential for future development.
For instances, estimation of job opportunities in future can be concluded by analysing the population trend. Similarly, the need of housing, education and food production in future is speculated according to the age-structure shown by the graph. Does a country require more old age homes or a number of schools have to increased? Are the medical services and healthcare to be improved for aged or is the population be incentivized to encourage more births? These questions holds impact over the socio-economic well being of the country. Assessment of the population pyramid can help in reaching out the solutions to these questions.
The population pyramid of China (below) from 1950 to 2050(expected) shows the impact of One-Child-only policy that was introduced in 1979 due to the extreme rise in population.
Image Source
During 1970s, the population of China was exorbitantly rising. One-child policy was applied to around one-third of the population beginning in 1979 in order to curb population growth. Denial of social benefits and fining parents for having more children discouraged the large families. As a result the population over decades decreased relatively.
As shown above in the population pyramid of China, post 2000 i.e almost after 25 years of the declaration of one-child-policy, there were large no. of labor force that was plunged into their 50s and hence unproductive. Since there was lower birth rate post 1979, the working force after 25 years is lesser as compared to the aged population. As a consequence, China decided to drop the one-child-policy in 2015. Births have increased by 7.9% to 17.86 million in 2016, according to China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission.
Another example to assess the population pyramid is Japan. Japan is experiencing a serious thud in their demographic. 27% of the Japanese population is over the age of 65. The population has been decreased by 1.4 million as compared to 2007. the figures shows the future of Japan in danger. The country is undergoing population ageing. Birth rate has been slowing down for 4 decades.
There is a fall in tax revenue due to the shrink in population and increase in non-working force. There is a fall in income tax and other tax revenues, due to which Government of Japan is running out of funds to provide infrastructure to the shrinking population.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan introduced three arrow policy which includes — very easy monetary policy, a short-term fiscal stimulus, and structural reforms to labor and product markets. But due to the high decline in population and population ageing, proposal of charging an inheritance tax along with raising the corporate tax has been put forward in order to cope up with the falling income tax.
Another graph shown below is a population pyramid of Qatar in 2016. This is the strangest of all population pyramid, as the ratio between male and female population has drastic differences. Qatar is the second-most disproportionately male dominating country after its neighbour UAE. They have a proportion of 1 female for every 2 males in the country, which is quite visible as in the graph.
The real answer to this huge ratio difference between male female population lies in Qatar’s migrant population. ‘Qataris’ in workforce are 71,076 while ‘Non-Qataris’ in workforce are 1,199,107(quoted from here). Many of those migrants are men.
The shape of the population pyramid holds various implications which can be used to declare a country as an Economically more developed country or Economically less developed country.
Click on the below link to view the population pyramid of any country from 1950 to 2100.
