Pre Release Question 9

Question 9
Q9) What might the population pyramid look like in 50 years time ?
What advantages and disadvantages might this cause ?

A9) Think about the way that the cohorts will 'move up' the pyramid every 5 years.
You can see an animation of this sort of thing at this American site, which allows you to choose any country and see some animated pyramids.
The other great site for looking at trends is WORLDMAPPER, which has some great maps which change the shape of countries to reflect the changes in the particular statistic that is featured on the map, such as POPULATION on the map below:
Copyright: SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan)

If we continue the current trends, there are likely to be:

• many more older people particularly in the 80's and over
• fewer young people (although this may be counterbalanced by the arrival of young migrants)
• fewer people of working age

This produces a problem due to something called the DEPENDENCY RATIO, which is the number of people who are working compared with those who aren't: young or old.

What other changes do you think are likely to happen ?
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