Well, it is, kinda... If you are 16 and less than half the population of your country is younger than you, you could be called "old "... Of course such median could be, e.g., a result of a colossal, unprecedent baby boom in the last couple years, but I assume all of us are educated enough to know what such medians truly means...
What do you think it truly means? It doesn't mean that you are old. And in fact all of these countries *have* had unprecedented booms in population. Not because people are having more kids- they are having as many as ever- but more because quality of life is improving (access to clean water, medicine)... but still not very good... in this state between being catastrophically impoverished and on the path toward developing, the death rate remains high while the infant mortality rate starts to drop precipitously. Whenever a country gets to this stage in development there is almost always a population explosion.
Well this is depressing. All of these are starving African countries or poor countries ravaged by war. What's worst, many of these countries at the top (or bottom if you will) have both.
The good news: in almost every measure, whether its GDP, life expectancy, fertility rate, or rate of violence, things are improving rapidly on the continent of Africa.
The "improvement" to fertility rate QM is referring to I think is that it is falling. Either that... or he meant to say infant mortality rate. Fertility and infant mortality are usually inversely correlated, and yes a high fertility rate decreases median age.
Yes, in this case I mean that fertility rates are falling in Sub-Saharan Africa which is a good thing for them. Other countries, such as Japan, could use a higher birth rate.
I'm surprised that all the countries on the list are in Africa. There is no any war-torn countries or autocratic countries in other continents on the list, like Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea or Haiti.
Because many of these are not only war torn, but also disease ridden. That lethal combination proves to be much worse for these poor African countries than other Asian/middle eastern nations that are only ravaged by war.
Keep in mind that the low median age basically means that there are many children per adult in those country. It's rather related to the high fertility and demographic expansion than to a low life expectancy.
Countries that are currently in wars won't have particularly low median ages, because wars both kill children and make people want to wait with procreation. The "sweet" spot is a few years after a war, when people start making children again, and older generations are still depleted.
Afghanistan is very close to being on this list*, and neither Syria nor Haiti are that high either. Not sure why North Korea is so high, but they are well known for falsifying their statistics (for example, they claim to have a 100% literacy rate).
*Which is terrifying not just because it's low but also because it means most Afghans who had some freedom under the US-backed government are too young to have been alive whenever the Taliban first ruled. Now none of those people have futures to look forward to and may spend the rest of their lives (or at least a very long time) with absolutely no freedom. I know this is unrelated to the rest of the conversation, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
That moment when you press 'give up' and then have to conclude that you were wrong in thinking you had tried all countries in Africa south of the Sahara
The south is also doing reasonably well. In fact, Botswana and South Africa are doing better than Egypt and Libya in terms of HDI, and Angola and Namibia aren't that far behind.
The country with the lowest life expectancy in Africa is CAR, at 52.8 years, and the highest life expectancy in sub-Saharan, mainland Africa is Botswana at 69.3 years. The overall life expectancy for Africa is 62 for males and 65 for females, versus the global life expectancy of 70 for males and 75 for females.
I was shocked C.A.R. wasn't one of the answers to the quiz. I even typed it out in full the second time I tried it, just to be sure it really wasn't an answer.
The median age means that if you took all the people's ages in a country and divided them by the number of people living in that country, you would get the median age. It just shows that there are a lot of younger people in these countries and that their life expectancies are lower. It is sad though.
Afghanistan: 19.5
North Korea: 34.6
Haiti: 24.1
Afghanistan is very close to being on this list*, and neither Syria nor Haiti are that high either. Not sure why North Korea is so high, but they are well known for falsifying their statistics (for example, they claim to have a 100% literacy rate).
*Which is terrifying not just because it's low but also because it means most Afghans who had some freedom under the US-backed government are too young to have been alive whenever the Taliban first ruled. Now none of those people have futures to look forward to and may spend the rest of their lives (or at least a very long time) with absolutely no freedom. I know this is unrelated to the rest of the conversation, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
The country with the lowest life expectancy in Africa is CAR, at 52.8 years, and the highest life expectancy in sub-Saharan, mainland Africa is Botswana at 69.3 years. The overall life expectancy for Africa is 62 for males and 65 for females, versus the global life expectancy of 70 for males and 75 for females.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy