In 2021, the largest age group in Australia was 30 to 34 year olds. The group that changed the most since 2016 was 35 to 39 year olds, increasing by 277,133 people. The Age Structure of Australia provides key insights into the level of demand for age based services and facilities such as child care.
The global median age has increased from just over 20 years in 1970 to just over 30 years in 2022. The global population breakdown by age shows that around a quarter are younger than 14 years, around 10% are older than 65, while half of the world population is in the working age bracket between 25 and 65.
Source of observed data: ABS. Wilson, Temple (2022). “The centenarian population, which means those aged 100 and over, will grow at an even faster rate – increasing by 200% from 5,300 in 2021 to 15,900 by 2041”, says Dr Wilson. Image: Population aged 100+ in Australia, 1991-2041.
Yet Australians may be paying for that luxury, not just with the ridiculous cost of living, but with our faces. Our sunburnt country, hot gold hush of noon and pitiless blue skies have little mercy on our pale skin, which is ageing by as much as two decades faster than our counterparts in Europe and America.
“These high UV levels put Australians at particular risk of photo-ageing, especially when combined with Australian's traditionally outdoor, sun-seeking lifestyle and a predominately fair-skinned population.” Facial ageing signs include wrinkles, loss of volume and sagging, and vascular disorders.
In 2021, about 18.24 percent of the U.S. population fell into the 0-14 year category, 64.72 percent into the 15-64 age group and 17.04 percent of the population were over 65 years of age.
When convicts built Reynolds Cottage nearly two centuries ago, the average male height in the colony was 165cm. They couldn't have known that Australians would start growing at a rate of knots: over the past 150 years our average height has soared almost 15cm. Now each generation is 3-4cm taller than the previous one.
The latest demographics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reveal more than 4250 centenarians (people aged 100 years or older) and super-centenarians (people aged 110 years or older) are currently living in Australia.
The 'older old', those aged 85 or over, numbered approximately 400,000 more than Canberra's population. The long tail of the age distribution in the Census also shows that around 28,000 Australians were aged over 95 and about 3,000 were over 100 years old.
The most dangerous age is 70-79 years, when calamities of various degrees of severity "bomb" a subject approximately twice a month.
A study found that a zero to three year age gap might be best.
The African country of Niger has the lowest median age in the world at just 14.8 years (14.5 years for males and 15.1 for females), but many of its neighbors, including Uganda, Angola, Chad, and Mali, are close behind.
This may not come as much of a surprise, but a recent study published by medical journal The Lancet has confirmed that the world's tallest children and teenagers can be found in the Netherlands.
Scientists estimate that about 80 percent of an individual's height is determined by the DNA sequence variations they have inherited, but which genes these changes are in and what they do to affect height are only partially understood.
The fastest growing age group in the U.S. is people over age 85, and the second fastest is people 100 and over (centenarians). Experts predict a twelvefold increase in centenarians by the year 2060, and that a 10-year-old child alive today has a 50% chance of living to be over 100.
Median age of the population in the top 20 countries 2021
Monaco is the country with the highest median age in the world. The population has a median age of around 55 years, which is around seven years more than in Japan and Saint Pierre and Miquelon – the other countries that make up the top three.
Africa has the youngest population in the world. The 23 countries with the lowest median age in Africa are also the countries with the lowest median age worldwide. In 2022, the median age in Niger was 14.9 years, the youngest country. This means that at this age point, half of the population was younger and half older.
Appearance is a useful guide to longevity and can be used to distinguish those who will die young from those likely to live to a great age, researchers say. People who look young for their age enjoy a longer life than those who look older than their years, according to a study of twins.
Australia's older generation (those aged 65 and over) continues to grow in number and as a share of the population.