SOC246H1 Lecture : Class 3 Notes
Document Summary
Four reasons that population aging is an issue of wide interest: population aging is unprecedented in human history. Unprecedented drop in mortality, especially infant mortality; average age has gone up as well: population aging is pervasive. Started in the western world and spread. Not limited to solely western nations anymore; se asia, latin. America, etc : population aging is enduring there is no prospect of a reversal, population aging has profound consequences, basic terms and concepts. The number of people in each age group in any given population; the age breakdown. Graphically it tends to look like a population pyramid. The mean is not normally used in aging because it is easily skewed by outliers. The median is typically used for age structures. 65 is the usual arbitrary cutoff point. Dependency ratio carves the population into two groups, those who are dependent and active; they take under 15 and over 65 as dependents and the rest active.
