Elderly population in Turkey increases by 17 percent over five years

ANKARA

Turkey’s elderly population has risen by 17.1 percent over the past five years, according to statistics released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) on March 16. 

TÜİK stated that the population of people over 65 years old in Turkey had risen to 6,651,503 in 2016, up from 5,682,003 in 2012. 

The proportion of the elderly population in terms of the total population was 8.3 percent in 2016, up from 7.5 percent in 2012. Some 43.9 percent of the elderly population was made up of men and 56.1 percent was made up of women. 

The elderly dependency ratio, made up of the number of elderly people per hundred people of working age, was 12.3 percent in 2016, up from 11.1 percent in 2012. 

The province with the highest proportion of elderly people in 2016 was the Black Sea province of Sinop with 18.1 percent. Sinop was followed by the northern province of Kastamonu with 16.5 percent and the Central Anatolian province of Çankırı with 15.4 percent. The province with the lowest proportion of elderly people was the southeastern province of Şırnak with 3.2 percent, followed by the southeastern province of Hakkari with 3.3 percent and Van with 3.6 percent. 

Meanwhile, in 2016 there were 5,232 centenarians in Turkey. The top three provinces with the highest number of centenarians were Istanbul (680), the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa (237) and Ankara (219), the three provinces with the lowest number of centenarians were the northeastern province of Ardahan (two), the northwestern province of Bilecik (four) and the northern province of Bayburt (seven).

On average, for people aged 65 years old in Turkey, the average remaining life span is 17.8 years, 16.1 years for men and 19.4 years for women. In other words, women are expected to live 3.3 years longer than men on average.