This Country Has the Youngest Population

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 11, 8:25AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

This Country Has the Youngest Population — © Niger (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Mathieu Dessus

The population throughout many countries in the world has aged over the past decade. People tend to live longer because of better medical care and healthier habits. However, some nations, particularly underdeveloped ones, have not benefited from these as much as highly developed nations. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic may drop the average age of some populations, or even reduce them.

As populations age, a critical problem emerges. This has started to happen in China, the world’s largest nation at over 1.3 billion people. People who retire have to be replaced in China’s massive workforce. There are not enough children to replace those reaching age 70 and older. The aging population also puts a financial burden on the government as more and more people need retirement benefits.

In some nations, the problem of aging populations does not exist. The percentage of the population under 14 in several nations is over 40%.

To identify the countries with the youngest populations in the world, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the percentage of each country’s population ages 65 and older, total population and age dependency ratio (the ratio of those older than 65 to the working-age population) from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators for 2019.

[nativounit]

In addition to their economic struggles, many of the countries on this list are plagued with civil unrest and sometimes outright war, as well as environmental issues such as drought and desertification. Many have suffered substantially from COVID-19 as well. Yet, it would be wrong to see only the challenges they face. Countries with young populations can be vibrant, energetic and quick to seize the opportunities that come their way.

Niger has the youngest population of any nation in the world. The population that was 14 and under in 2019 was 11,618,566. That was 49.8% of the total population of 23,310,715. The age dependency ratio was 104.8 younger individuals per 100 working-age residents, which put it at number one out of 193 countries.

Click here to see all the countries with the youngest populations in the world.
[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.