These interesting charts showing population age structure in various countries were published recently in the Times Saturday Magazine’s Crunch Time series.
They are similar to the one I lifted earlier to illustrate Population growth but include both sexes & show relative (%) frequencies rather than numbers in ‘000s.
It should also be noted that the vertical scale is not the same for each chart: those for Japan & UK have the scales stretched to go only from 0% to 9%, while that for Uganda is squashed down to go from 0% to 25% over the same distance. The horizontal scales (for age) are the same in each case. The picture would look different if all the scales were the same – a point which I used to enjoy demonstrating at the press of a key when we first got the ability to draw graphs on a teleprinter linked to a computer.
Why did Japan not have a Baby Boom in the 1960s? That must partly explain the recent low birth rates.
The UK looks boringly rectangular – a very settled state, apart from that 1960s boom.
India looks rather like just one half of a bell curve with σ quite large – a combination of high fertility balanced by higher mortality at younger ages?
The astonishing picture for Uganda – reflecting extraordinarily high birth rates & deaths from AIDS looks almost like a negative exponential – spookily, often used to model the failure time of manufactured items such as light bulbs.
They are similar to the one I lifted earlier to illustrate Population growth but include both sexes & show relative (%) frequencies rather than numbers in ‘000s.
It should also be noted that the vertical scale is not the same for each chart: those for Japan & UK have the scales stretched to go only from 0% to 9%, while that for Uganda is squashed down to go from 0% to 25% over the same distance. The horizontal scales (for age) are the same in each case. The picture would look different if all the scales were the same – a point which I used to enjoy demonstrating at the press of a key when we first got the ability to draw graphs on a teleprinter linked to a computer.
Why did Japan not have a Baby Boom in the 1960s? That must partly explain the recent low birth rates.
The UK looks boringly rectangular – a very settled state, apart from that 1960s boom.
India looks rather like just one half of a bell curve with σ quite large – a combination of high fertility balanced by higher mortality at younger ages?
The astonishing picture for Uganda – reflecting extraordinarily high birth rates & deaths from AIDS looks almost like a negative exponential – spookily, often used to model the failure time of manufactured items such as light bulbs.
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