Do You Know What A Population Pyramid Is?

Posted on | March 10, 2010 | Comments Off on Do You Know What A Population Pyramid Is?

Mike Magee

If you take a look at the map, you can see that Africa, and to a lesser extent for South and Southeast Asia and Central America, have relatively high numbers of individuals who are young. Gary Fuller in 1995 described this as a “youth bulge”1995. Some have suggested that an excess in especially young adult male population was associated with social unrest, war and terrorism. Others have countered since that the “youth bulge” is not purely determinative, that other factors and circumstances including governance, environment, mobility, disease, and opportunity are equally important. Still few deny that high populations of under-employed, under-educated, and under-advantaged youth create a demographic challenge often leading to mass unrest. (1,2)

One easy way to visualize youth bulges is through the population pyramid, a graphical illustration which consists of two side-by-side bar graphs with males on the left and females on the right organized in 5 year cohorts. The X-axis shows population size and the Y-axis shows age.

A range of professionals use these population graphs to define populations by age and sex, to shed light on the extent of development of a nation, and to define how many people of each age range live in the area. Females tend to predominate due to their longer life expectancy. Fertility and mortality levels may be reflected. For example a pyramid with a broad base and a rapidly narrowing point suggests a high birth rate, a high death rate and a short life expectancy – conditions often present in a developing nation with little birth control, a lack of clean water or sanitation, and little access to health care. (CONTINUE…)