TOPIC 7: POPULATION

COMPOSITION

What is population
composition?

The purpose of studying

population composition

Population composition
characteristics: Age and
Sex Structure
What is Population Composition?

Population composition is the distribution within a

group of people of specified individual attributes
such as sex, age, marital status, education,
occupation, and relationship to the head of
household.
Why Study Population Composition?

For comparison purposes.

Forecasting future employment for development.

Data for fertility and mortality.

Social studies.
 Fertility, mortality and migration affect not only the size of
a population but also its composition.

Every population has a wide variety of demographic

characteristics, such as sex and age.

Changes in the composition of a population can have

important social ramifications.

An unbalanced sex ratio, for example, can affect

peoples opportunities for finding companionship with
the opposite sex, getting married or having children.

Changes in the age composition also have

consequences.
 For example, an aging populace means that there are
fewer workers in proportion to retired people.

This creates problems when it comes to supporting our

retired citizens in the fashion to which they have
become accustomed.

It has also meant that there are fewer young people

enrolled in school which has resulted in school closings
and reduced job opportunities for teachers.
Population Composition Characteristics:
Age and Sex

Age and sex

both are natural process of mankind.

Basic demographic characteristics.

Important for socio-economy as well as politics.

Affects other demographic variables like fertility, mortality,

migration, marital status, human resource planning,
education, housing, medical and health facilities.
 Data used for forecasting number of school going children,
number of schools required, teachers required.

In terms of human resource planning, data useful for long term

planning of workforce in different sectors.

Data also used to forecast number of future voters.

Facilities for different age groups can be provided knowing

the number of people in different age cohort.

Gender/sex structure: number of males per 100 female.

Hence a value of more than 100 or less than 100 means that
there is gender imbalance.

The ideal will be 100.

 Age Structure
Age pyramid shows populations age structure.

The age pyramid is a graph showing the make-up of a

population by sex, with males to the left and females to the
right, and by age, plotted up a vertical scale.

Its name comes from the shape of the graph when the
population has high birth rate and high death rate: it is
broad at the base and narrow at the top.
Example of Age Pyramid
 The Profile of Age Pyramid
There are 3 profiles of age pyramid:

Progressive
Constrictive
Constant
Progressive
Constrictive
Constant
An Ideal Age Pyramid
 Factors Affecting Age Structure

There are many factors that can affect age structure includes:

Mortality
Fertility
Migration
Unforeseen circumstances like war, famine, natural disaster
 Mortality
Death at young age will affect the age structure.
It is important to control infant mortality and child mortality
rate.
Improved maternal health care will ensure that children born
will survive after 5 years of age.
Better life expectancy will also affect age structure.

Fertility
Reduced fertility rate will affect age structure.
Quality of offspring produced will also affect age structure.
Most of the developed countries are showing constant age
pyramid now because of low fertility rate in the last 50 years.

Migration
2 factors regarding migration which will affect age structure:
a. Age group of migrants
b. Total number of migrants
 Unforeseen circumstances
War
loss of younger males
lack of young men of marrying age
Affect fertility
Famine/Natural disaster:
All age group affected
A dip in the population size

Dependency ratio
Dependency ratio (Nisbah tanggungan) : ratio of
population less than 15 and more than 65 which is
supported by those between 15-64.
15-64 is considered as active working age group.
A higher dependency ratio i.e. more than 50 means that
the active working age group need to support a large size
of the population.
NATURAL DISASTER TSUNAMI IN ACHEH 2004
BANDA ACHEH TSUNAMI VICTIMS
 Marriage patterns

Marriage is an important component in demographic studies.

Marriage affect studies on:

Formation of legally married families (religion and

administration).
Factors affecting marriage.
Percentage of married population.
Marrying age.
Women in reproductive age.
Marriage, divorce and remarriage.