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I would expect the least developed nations to have a higher percentage of young people just because you're more likely to die of malaria or HIV or a tiger or so

I would expect the least developed nations to have a higher percentage of young people just because you're more likely to die of malaria or HIV or a tiger or something.

simplexion 11y ago
There has to be a high rate of Tiger deaths in developing nations. It just makes sense!
- MichaelBurge 11y ago
  They don't call them tiger economies for nothing.
zghst 11y ago
More education equals less children. It is more and more acceptable in American society to not have any children in a heterosexual couple. I don't have stats on hand but somewhere I read that 1/3 of US marriages are childless.
goodcanadian 11y ago
It is slightly more subtle than that. Disease tends to kill children (and the elderly) preferentially. People who survive childhood are relatively resilient. In countries with poor healthcare, there may be high birthrates along with high child mortality rates with the net effect being low population growth rates and a fairly broad age distribution. However, once developing countries start to make gains in health, the child mortality rate starts to fall. Birthrates, on the other hand, start to fall with education (i.e. one generation later). The effect is a boom in the number of people surviving to adulthood and a large bulge in the youth population that is being seen in many developing countries.
azernik 11y ago
That really has nothing to do with it. In fact, the problem is the low death rate, without a corresponding low birth rate. The former tends to fall before the latter, causing a population explosion that then levels off; during the period before population stabilizes, you have a disproportionate number of young people. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition] Interestingly, there's also a certain delay - even after fertility rates (children each woman will have over her lifetime by current trends) fall, birthrates (births each year per capita) take a while to fall, and even after birthrates fall population growth takes a while after that to fall as larger cohorts of young people replace smaller dying cohorts of old people. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_momentum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_momentum]. What all this means is that on the one hand, population increase can be very hard to stop on a short-term basis, but also that current fast growth rates shouldn't be extrapolated too far into the future.

I would expect the least developed nations to have a higher percentage of young people just because you're more likely to die of malaria or HIV or a tiger or something.

simplexion 11y ago

There has to be a high rate of Tiger deaths in developing nations. It just makes sense!

MichaelBurge 11y ago
They don't call them tiger economies for nothing.

zghst 11y ago

More education equals less children. It is more and more acceptable in American society to not have any children in a heterosexual couple. I don't have stats on hand but somewhere I read that 1/3 of US marriages are childless.

goodcanadian 11y ago

It is slightly more subtle than that. Disease tends to kill children (and the elderly) preferentially. People who survive childhood are relatively resilient. In countries with poor healthcare, there may be high birthrates along with high child mortality rates with the net effect being low population growth rates and a fairly broad age distribution. However, once developing countries start to make gains in health, the child mortality rate starts to fall. Birthrates, on the other hand, start to fall with education (i.e. one generation later). The effect is a boom in the number of people surviving to adulthood and a large bulge in the youth population that is being seen in many developing countries.

azernik 11y ago

That really has nothing to do with it. In fact, the problem is the low death rate, without a corresponding low birth rate. The former tends to fall before the latter, causing a population explosion that then levels off; during the period before population stabilizes, you have a disproportionate number of young people. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition] Interestingly, there's also a certain delay - even after fertility rates (children each woman will have over her lifetime by current trends) fall, birthrates (births each year per capita) take a while to fall, and even after birthrates fall population growth takes a while after that to fall as larger cohorts of young people replace smaller dying cohorts of old people. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_momentum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_momentum]. What all this means is that on the one hand, population increase can be very hard to stop on a short-term basis, but also that current fast growth rates shouldn't be extrapolated too far into the future.