Population structure and change
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3.2 Population structure and distribution
3.2.1 General population characteristics
The population size of Afghanistan estimated on the basis of the NRVA sampling procedure is close to 25 million people.
The most striking feature of the Afghan population is its very young age structure see Figure 3.1 and Table 3.1. Some 49
percent 12 million is under 15 years of age, whereas elderly of 65 and over represent less than three percent of the total
population. The proportion under 15 is among the very highest in the world and significantly higher than that of neighboring
countries, ranging from 26 percent in Iran to around 39 percent in Pakistan and Tajikistan UN Population Division 2008.
The young age composition contributes to a very high dependency ratio: for every 100 persons in the working age
15-59, there are 113 persons in the less productive ages of under-fifteen and 60 and over, who are dependent for income
and subsistence. This figure implies a large burden for the prime working-age population and the economy at large. Large
social investments in terms of education and health care are concentrated in the youngest age categories.
The overall sex distribution in the Afghan population is tilted toward males as indicated by the sex ratio – the number of males per 100 females in the population. The NRVA 20078 found a relatively high overall sex ratio of 105 males per 100
females, corresponding to 49 percent females and 51 percent males. The change in the sex distribution from the NRVA 2005 – respectively 54 percent males and 46 percent females, implying a sex ratio of 118 – is most probably due to much
better coverage of the female population in the 20078 round.
Figure 3.1 Population, by age and sex in percentages
Generally, the sex ratio across age groups follows a pattern in which boys outnumber girls at birth
with around 105 to 100, by and large maintain this male pre-dominance in early childhood, to
gradually converge with the number of women at later ages. Around age 50 the male surplus
usually turns into a shortfall, which increases at older ages, resulting in an overall sex ratio
generally close to 100. This pattern results from the usually small excess of boys at birth and
the commonly higher mortality of males over females. Genuine deviations from this pattern
can be caused by variations in the sex ratio at birth and by sex-specific mortality and migration.
However, sex-specific age-misreporting and under-counting or over-counting can also lead
to unexpected sex ratios.
Quality of age reporting
In countries like Afghanistan, many people are ignorant about their exact age or date of birth. This leads to high
incidences of age misreporting, for instance by age heaping and age shifting. Consequently, reported ages in surveys
and censuses should be treated with caution. Different procedures to assess the quality of the NRVA data indicate
that age reporting is highly inaccurate
a
, but significantly better than in 2005.
Another common characteristic of many developing countries is the omission of very young children in the enumeration.
The relatively small 0-4 age group in Figure 3.1 points in this direction. A breakdown by single years of age suggests an
even more pronounced undercount of infants and one-year old children. It is not unlikely that around one million young
children are omitted from the present statistics.
a
Myers’ blended index is 24.4, Whipple’s index is 255, and the UN age-sex accuracy index is 52.
Male Female
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