Turkey: Rate of children in population falls

ISTANBUL

Turkey was home to 22.87 million children -- 27.5% of the total population 83.15 million -- as of the end of 2019, the country's statistical authority said on Friday.

The previous year, children made up 28% of the population, while this was 48.5% in 1970 and 41.8% in 1990, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said in a report.

"According to population projections, the proportion of child population is foreseen to be 27% in 2023, 25.6% in 2030, 23.3% in 2040, 20.4% in 2060, and 19.0% in 2080," it added.

The ratio of children in the EU population is 18.6%, with Ireland at the top of the bloc with 24.5%, followed by France with 21.7%.

"The countries with the lowest proportion of child population were Italy with 16%, Malta with 16.2% and Germany with 16.4%, respectively," the report underlined.

Child dependency set to fall

The ratio child dependency -- the number of children in the 0-14 age group per 100 people at the 15-64 age group -- was recorded at 34.1% in Turkey as of the end of last year. The ratio was 34.5% in the previous year.

The child dependency rate is expected to decrease to 33.5% in 2023, 29.9% in 2040, and 28% in 2080, according to TurkStat.

In 2019, the most popular names in Turkey were Yusuf for boys and Zeynep for girls.

While the net rate of enrollment in school at the lower secondary school level was 93.3%, school enrollment for children at age five was 75.2% in the 2018-2019 school year.

The net schooling ratio at the primary school level was 91.5% last year, the institute noted, adding that there was no significant difference between girls and boys.

The number of children last year engaged in economic activities was 720,000, it said.

Life expectancy at birth was 78.3 years for the overall population, while for males it was 75.6 years and 81 years for females, it added.