Turkey: Who wants to live forever?
It may sound like a story from the Arabian nights, but it comes down to little more than rapid economic development: People in Turkey are living longer and longer
© Plainpicture
To put it more technically: Turkey realized the highest longevity gains in Europe since the. Back then, life expectancy at birth stood at 44.2 years for women and a meager 38 years for men.
(World Population Prospects: The Revision) while men can look forward to 71.7 years. In combination with a falling fertility rate, this will bring significant demographic change to Turkey’s population. The nation will be one of the fastest aging societies in Europe. Life expectancy often follows income, wealth and employment patterns
NOT A ONE WAY ROAD
Until the, future developments of life expectancy were commonly explained by the convergence theory. During most of the and early, countries that already had relatively long-lived populations such as Switzerland and Sweden only saw below average improvement in life expectancy gains. Based on that insight, demographers at the time assumed that life expectancies around the globe would converge to be largely identical at a given point in the future.
This trend turned around in the late, when populations enjoying high levels of life expectancy realized the highest gains. Life expectancy proved not to converge but to follow welfare indicators such as income, wealth and employment. This lead to the social polarization theory which stipulated that rich “old” nations gain longer lives faster than poor “young” countries which lag behind in those indicators.
The impact of economic factors on life expectancy in Europe is best described by the example of Eastern Europe. After the break-up of the Soviet Union and the ensuing economic demise, most succession states were falling behind in terms of their longevity improvements. While the gap in life expectancy at birth between German and Ukrainian men (67.6 years versus 66.7 years) amounted to less than a year in the late, it has risen to about 15 years today (World Population Prospects: The Revision) .
As a late, but fast modernizer, Turkey managed to escape that trajectory. Driven by rapid social and economic progress, life expectancy increases followed the same patterns as in other catch-up nations in Asia. Moreover, Turkey was able to maintain the speed of longevity gains in the decade since the millennium. In fact, increases in life expectancy in Turkey were so high between and that for every three years lived since birth in terms of chronological age only two years of lifetime were consumed.
IN THE FAST LANE
Yet increasing life expectancy is not the only trend affecting the composition of the Turkish population. In the early, Turkish fertility stood at 6.62 children per woman (World Population Prospects: The Revision) . Today, only 2.05 children are born per woman. With the current population living far longer than their parent generation and their cohort being smaller, Turkey faces rapid aging.
Once 7% of a population is 65 years or older, the country is considered to be “aging”. If the share of older people exceeds 14%, the country is seen to be “aged.” Turkey, a young country until recently, will transform from an aging to an aged nation within just 25 years . By, it will be “super-aged” (share of older population exceeds 21%).
In short, Turkey is likely to experience population aging that resembles Japan’s demographic change in speed and magnitude. The nation will have only a short period of time to adapt to the challenges and monetary as well as social costs associated with such transitioning.
Its rapidly changing demographic structure is depicted by an increase in the old-age dependency ratio and the median age. It becomes even more striking when compared to other countries.
