Aging population continues to rise in Turkey

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s elderly population increased by 24 percent in the last five years, indicating that the aging phenomenon is persistently gripping the country, figures by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) show.

Statistics released as part of the country’s “Respect the Elderly Week” show that the population of people over the age of 65 in Turkey rose to 8.25 million in 2021, up from 6.65 million in 2016.

The proportion of the elderly population in terms of the total population was 9.7 percent in 2021, up from 8.3 percent in 2016. The majority of senior citizens are those between the ages of 65 and 74, around the retirement age.

Under the current official population projections, the proportion of the elderly population is expected to be 10.2 percent in 2023, 12.9 percent in 2030, 16.3 percent in 2040, 22.6 percent in 2060 and 25.6 percent in 2080.

Women make up the majority of the elderly population as their lifespan on average is longer than men in Turkey. The figures showed that some 44.3 percent of the elderly population was made up of men and 55.7 percent of women.

The report underlined that the median age was 31.4 in 2016 and 33.1 in 2021. The median age was 32.4 for men and 33.8 for women in 2021.

The elderly dependency ratio, made up of the number of elderly people per hundred people of working age, was 14.3 percent in 2021, up from 12.3 percent in 2016.

The province with the highest proportion of elderly people in 2021 was the Black Sea province of Sinop, with 20.2 percent. Sinop was followed by the northern province of Kastamonu, with 19.2 percent, and the Black Sea province of Artvin, with 17.8 percent.

The province with the lowest proportion of elderly people was the southeastern province of Şırnak, with 3.5 percent, followed by the southeastern province of Hakkâri, with 3.9 percent, and Şanlıurfa, with 4.0 percent.

Meanwhile, in 2021, there were 5,859 centenarians in Turkey, and most were in Istanbul, the country’s most populated city.

The figures also revealed that 1.56 million elderly people live alone in Turkey. According to the statistics, 74.9 percent of the elderly people living alone were women, while 25.1 percent were men.

Burdur, a relatively quiet province located in Turkey’s southwest, has the highest rate of elderly people living alone.

Meanwhile, Turkey ranked 68th among 167 countries by the proportion of the elderly population in 2021, while Monaco, Japan and Italy led the list of countries with the highest elderly population.