04 February 2007
Amazing What You Find While Looking For Something Else II
Today, while looking for something else, I came across this page showing the average age of the population of the OECD nations in 1950, 1975 and 2000. Looking over the table, I was struck by what had happened to Japan during those 50 years. In 1950, Japan was the fourth youngest of the 30 OECD nation, with an average age of 22.3. By 1975, Japan was in the middle, the 15th youngest with an average age of 30.4. The population had aged nearly one full year for every year that had passed. In 2000, Japan was the oldest of the OECD countries at 41.3 years. The United States, by comparison, had moved from 13th oldest to 19th oldest to 21st oldest, and from 30 years old to 28.8 to 35.2.
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6 comments:
IIRC, the Japanese are, on average, the longest lived of any nation on the planet.
I have no idea how much that explains, but it is probably worth taking into account.
Skipper: That is interesting because my wife clicked over to this page on female life expectancy, which shows Japanese women with a world's highest life expectancy at 85.1 years. But what really struck her was how the range has narrowed, from a range of 45.2 (Turkey) to 74.5 (Norway) in 1950 to a range of 73.2 (Turkey) to 85.1.
The increase and the narrowing are illustrated here as well:
TEDTalks: Hans Rosling.
This is from last Feburary. One of the best lectures I've ever seen. The presentation software that Rosling uses has its own website at http://www.gapminder.org.
Thank you very much Joe !!
TED is a great resource.
I love the 'net and my imaginary friends.
My pleasure, Oro. Found it while looking for something else, of course.
Well, it seems that being, on average, the longest lived of any nation on the planet isn't long enough in the tooth to explain very much at all.
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