Difference between age
and sex composition in points ???
Answers
Answer:
The age structure of a population refers to the number of people in different age groups.
A larger size of population in the age group of 15-59 years indicates the chances of having a larger working population. On the other hand, if the number of children in the population is high, the dependency ratio will be high. Similarly, a growing population in the age group of 60 plus indicates greater expenditure on the care of the aged.
There are three types of age structures, viz., (i) the West European type in .which children constitute less than 30 per cent, and 15 per cent of the population are old; (ii) the North American type where 35-40 per cent of the population are children and ten per cent, old people; and (iii) the Brazilian type where 45-55 per cent of the population are children, and old people constitute only four-eight per cent of the total population. The type of age structure has a direct influence on the future of a nation, since both extremes, i.e., old age dependency as well as young age dependency proves to be a severe burden on the economy of a country.
Demographers use population pyramids to describe age distribution of populations. A population pyramid is a bar chart/graph in which the length of each bar represents the number (or percentage) of persons in an age group. We may take the youngest segment of the population at the base, and move on to the older segments till the oldest comes at the top.
The principal factor contributing to a change in the age distribution of a population is the rate of fertility: a change in fertility affects the number of people in the single age group of age zero, or the newly born. Hence a decline or increase in fertility has a significant effect at one end of the age distribution and can thereby influence the overall age structure. This means that youthful age structures correspond to highly fertile populations, typical of developing countries. The older age structures are those of low-fertility populations, more common to the industrialised nations.
2. Sex Composition:
Another structural feature of populations is the relative numbers of males and females. Defined as the number of females per 1000 males in the population, sex ratio is an important social indicator of the equity prevailing between males and females at a given point of time. Factors influencing the sex ratio are, mainly, the differentials in mortality, sex selective migration, and sex ratio at birth and, at times, the sex differential in population enumeration.
By nature, slightly more males are born than females (a typical ratio being 105/106 males for every 100 females). However, males experience higher mortality at virtually all ages after birth. By implication, during childhood males outnumber females of the same age; the different decreases as age increases; at some point in the adult life span, the numbers of males and females become equal; as higher ages are reached, the number of females becomes quite large.
India shows an uneven composition of population as compared to most of the developed countries. The reasons put forward for such a state of affairs are: high maternal mortality, female infanticide, sex-selective female abortions, neglect of the girl child leading to a higher mortality among girls at a young age, and change in sex ratio at birth.
The sex composition of the population in India is a matter of concern, being much lower than 950 for a long time.
It is interesting to note that rural-urban differentials in sex ratios in the US and in Western European countries are just the opposite of those in developing countries, such as India. In developing countries, the males outnumber the females in urban areas and the females outnumber the males in rural areas.
In the western countries, reverse is the case. There, farming in rural areas remains largely a masculine occupation. In the western countries, there is an influx of females from rural areas to avail of the vast employment opportunities in urban areas.