Turkey’s elderly population increased by 24 percent in five years

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Turkey’s elderly population, including 65 years and over, increased by 24 percent in the last five years and reached 8.2 million in 2021, according to a report titled “Elderly Statistics, 2021” by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK).

While the elderly population consisted of 8.3% of the total population in 2016, it increased to 9.7% in 2021.

According to TÜİK's projection, the proportion of elderly population is expected to be 11.0% in 2025, 12.9% in 2030, 16.3% in 2040, 22.6% in 2060 and 25.6% in 2080.

“Turkey is in the process of demographic transition, which is called the global aging process. Turkey’s shape of age structure changed with advances in public health, better living conditions, increases in welfare level and life expectancy along with decreasing rates of fertility and mortality,” the report said.

According to the report, the median age, one of the indicators of an aging population, was 31.4 in 2016 and 33.1 in 2021. The median age was 32.4 for males and 33.8 for females in 2021.

The median age is the age of the person in the middle when the ages of all people in the population are sorted from the new-born baby to the oldest.

Turkey became 68th among 167 countries by the proportion of the elderly population in 2021.

While the northern province of Sinop became the province with the highest proportion of the elderly population with 20.1%, the southeastern province of Şırnak became the lowest with 3.5%.

While the proportion of the illiterate elderly population decreased by five percent in the last five years and became 15.6%, the poverty rate among elderly became 21.9%.

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