CONTENTS
HIGHLIGHTS
October, 1995 |
Growing Numbers, Diverse Needs Young people ages 10 to 19 number more than 1 billion, comprise nearly one-fifth of the world population, and are growing in number. Virtually all of this growth is occurring in developing countries, with sub-Saharan Africa leading the way. Although fertility is now falling in many regions of the developing world, the large numbers of children born in the late 1970s and early 1980s are now reaching early adulthood, and some are already having children themselves. Even if these people have fewer children than their parents did, the number of young adults in developing countries will increase by over 20% over the next 15 years (488) (see Table 1). In some developed countries, in contrast, the number of young adults is expected to decrease. In the world as a whole, the number of young adults is expected to grow to more than 1.2 billion in 2010 (488) (see Table 1). Another way to look at the place of young adults in the world population is through median age—the age that half of the population is below and half is above. The median for the entire world is 25—that is, half of the world's people are under age 25. For developing countries as a whole the median age is 23, whereas for developed countries it is 35 (497). Some developing countries have very young populations. In Latin America, for example, the median age is 20 in Bolivia, 18.7 in El Salvador, and 18.1 in Guatemala. In Africa median ages are even lower—in Nigeria, 17.5 and in Zambia, 15.1—that is, half of the population is under age 15 (172). |