Half of the families in Albania have people over 60 years old

Half of the families in Albania are inhabited by people who are over 60 years old, according to the preliminary detailed data of the 2023 Census.

In the entire country, 755,950 family units were counted, where 49% of them are dominated by people of retirement age.

More detailed data show that 195,000 families had people in the age group of 60-69 years old, which make up 26 percent of the total number of family units and is the dominant group.

122,249 households had persons aged 70-79 and accounted for 16 percent of total households.

53,000 families had people over 80 years old and these constituted 7% of the total family units.

In contrast, families with younger age groups are very few. For example, there are only 30,000 families in the 20-29 age group, which is only 4 percent of the total number of families.

Only 80 thousand families have in their composition the age group of 30-39 years or 10.6 percent of the total.

As can be seen from the data of family units by age group, an increase in the number of them that are made up of people over 50 years old is noticed.

The structure of Albanian families shows that the phenomenon of aging has progressed faster than in the official indicators. The 2023 Census data show that the average age of the population reached 42.5 years, increasing by 7 years from 2011, where this indicator was 35.5 years.

The influencing factors of births, deaths and international and internal migration brought about the change in the structure of the population, in the 2023 Census.

The population pyramid based on the 2023 Census is very narrow at the bottom due to declining births and is widening in the middle and top due to the increase in the elderly population.

The data show that one in five individuals (19.7%) are 65 or older, compared to one in nine individuals (11.3%) in the 2011 Census and 7.5% in the 2001 Census.

The transition to an older population is also seen in dependency ratios. The youth dependency ratio decreased to 24.0% from 30.4% estimated in the 2011 Census, and the elderly dependency ratio increased to 30.4% from 16.7% in 2011.

Low birth rates and the downward trend, combined with the emigration of the population of reproductive age brought about the narrowing of the base of the population pyramid./Monitor