Where Populations Are Old and Young

Perhaps this Google Ngram says the world is aging?

And yes, the U.S. is growing older:

Old and Young Populations

But so too is the world:

Still, a closer look reveals how much our age varies:

U.S. States

At 45 years old, Maine’s median age is even more than Florida’s. Atlas Obscura hypothesizes that Maine is old because its youth leave looking for better jobs and higher wages. By contrast, North Dakota’s oil and gas industry attracts a younger population. But our youngest state, with a median age of 32, is Utah. There, the reason is large families:

Countries

As always, a closer look reveals more. Through Our World in Data, we can see just how much the world’s old and young populations vary. Their map tells us that Africa’s lower income countries tend to be much younger than their higher income neighbors:

Our Bottom Line: Dependency Ratios

Economically, it all takes us to dependency ratios.

As two of the world’s oldest countries, Japan’s 30% and Italy’s 24% over 65 population take them to an increasing disproportion between the labor force and those who no longer have jobs. As a result, they wind up with more people who collect entitlements like the U.S.’s Social Security that are partially or entirely paid for by those who are employed. Expressed mathematically, we have a ballooning numerator of the aged and a (relatively smaller) denominator of the population ages 15 to 64.

Below, you can see the vast difference between Kenya or Nigeria and the world’s older countries:

And, returning to Google, where you live will probably determine whether your Ngram for Grandma is skyrocketing.

My sources and more: Yesterday, after my Axios newsletter and an Atlas Obscura article converged, I became increasingly curious about old and young populations. But, comparing biology to chronology, we have also seen at econlife that we might be younger than we think.