ANKARA
Young people will make up a smaller share of Turkey's population in the future.
The proportion of the young population in the age group of "15-24" (12 million 782 thousand 381 persons) was 16.5% of the total population of Turkey in 2014, according to statistics released by the Turkish Statistics Institute on Thursday.
The percentage of the young population from the total population was estimated to drop to 15.1 percent in 2023, to 11.7 percent in 2050 and to decrease to 10.1 percent in 2075. Turkey's population is projected to reach 84.25 million in 2023.
Turkish politicians, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are calling on citizens to have more than one child for economic growth.
Erdogan has many times spoken about the importance of human capital, advising citizens to have more than three children for economic growth.
“One child means bankruptcy for the country, two means skidding. Three children are okay, but we need four to five to carry the country forward,” Erdogan said.
Young males make up 51.2 percent of Turkey's young population, in the age group between 15-24, and 48.8 percent are young females in the same age bracket.
The schooling rate in higher education increased by 1.4 percent to 39.9 percent among the 12.8 million young people of age 15-24 in Turkey, and the number of young females in higher education is near 41 percent.
The proportion of Internet usage by young people in the age group of "16-24" increased to 73 percent in 2014 from 68.7 percent in 2013.
The percentage of young people who were hopeful about their own future decreased to 78 percent in last year from 83.9 percent in 2013. More than 61 percent of young people said that they felt happy in 2014, down from 65.1 percent in 2013.
