By Bahattin Gonultas
ANKARA
Turkey's population, like that of most developing countries, is ageing as a result of increasing life expectancy, urbanization, rising educational levels for women and a decrease in fertility rates, according to recent statistical data analysis.
The figures released last week by the Turkish Statistical Institute show Turkey's elderly population constituted 7.7 percent of the nation's total in 2013. The U.N.'s rankings of ageing populations places Turkey 91st, relatively low compared to the top three: Japan with 24.4 percent, Germany with 21.1 percent and Italy with 20.8 percent.
But the ageing proportion of the population in Turkey is expected by the U.N. to rapidly increase to 10.2 percent in 2023, 20.8 percent in 2050 and 27.7 percent in 2075 according to population projections, placing it among a group of countries with a population considered by the U.N. to be "too old" by 2023.
"The Turkish Statistical Institute’s recently published data once again verified the fact that the Turkish society in the near future would face the problem of ageing population as has been witnessed in many countries across the globe," said Asim Karaomerlioglu, a professor at the Ataturk Institute of Turkey's Bogazici University.
"As of now, Turkey's age distribution structure offers windows of opportunities since the dependent population’s ratio to that of the productive is quite low," Karaomerlioglu said. "Turkey’s governments in the coming two decades must wisely fulfil the economic benefits in order to prepare the country for the ageing era."
While the growth rate of the total population in Turkey was 1.37 percent in 2013, the rate was almost triple that figure at 3.62 percent for the elderly.
"The former emphasis in Turkey about the quantitative requirements of rapidly increasing population should give way to an emphasis on the qualitative restructuring of first the educational and later the economic life."
He stated that the policies regarding the incorporation of ageing population in productive enterprises of all sorts should be given a priority.
The most important source of income for the elderly was "social transfers" and the number of people benefiting from them is increasing with the population's age: 74.7 percent received social transfers in 2011 and 76.6 percent in 2012. This amounted to 71.8 percent of elderly men and 86.3 percent of elderly women.
Karaomerlioglu emphasized that encouraging couples to have more children will be a challenge and would require establishing a more stable and secure economic life.
"Especially important is securing the fundamental necessities of the urban population such as employment and educational opportunities. In other words, an entire economic and educational restructuring should be underway to secure a 'fit' population in the foreseeable future of the country," he said.
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