8
POPULATION STRUCTURE AND CHANGE
3 POPULATION STRUCTURE AND CHANGE
SUMMARY. The average household size in Afghanistan is 7.4 persons, of whom on average 3.6 – 48 percent –
are children under ifteen. Some 22 percent of the households accommodate 10 or more persons, accounting for 35 percent of the population. The young age composition contributes to the country’s
high dependency ratio of 104 and is an indication of a high fertility level and a large burden on the country’s economy. Demographic estimates support the picture of continuous decline in the under-
ive mortality rate, from 161per 1,000 live births in the NRVA 2007-08 to 91 in the present survey. The migration context of Afghanistan is particularly complex. With respect to internal migration,
women more often move short distances within the same province, often to marry, whereas men are
more likely to migrate further aield – often to another province – to ind work. The attraction of urban centres is relected in the 2-3 times higher rates of internal migration from rural to urban areas than vice
versa. In addition, mobility within the urban sector is signiicantly higher than within the rural sector. Immigration from other countries is largely family migration, with the age and sex composition of the
immigrants corresponding to that of the resident population of Afghanistan. Recent immigrants come almost exclusively from Pakistan 67 percent and Iran 32 percent and settle equally in urban and
rural areas. Emigration is dominated by young adult men, most of whom move to Iran 76 percent, with smaller numbers going to Pakistan 13 percent and the Gulf states 8 percent alongside other countries.
The available data suggest that the average annual immigration ratio in the seven years preceding the survey and the emigration rate in the twelve months preceding the survey are almost in balance
at 0.4 percent. However, both indicators underestimate true migration levels to an unknown degree. Marriage is almost universal in Afghanistan and is characterized by early marriage for women. However,
signiicant changes are observed in female age at irst marriage. In the age group 30 years and older, 25 percent of women were married at age 15, and at least 80 percent at age 20. For women in the age group
20-24 years the corresponding igures have decreased to, 17 and 65 percent respectively, and for the age group 15-19 years only 6 percent were married at age 15. The observed large spousal age difference is
a prime cause of high levels of female widowhood: 57 percent of women aged 65 and older are widowed. However, the age difference is rapidly decreasing: while women aged 40 years and older have a husband
who is on average 7 years older, the age gap narrows for each younger age group, to around 4 years for women aged 15-19 years.
3.1 Introduction
The last count of the population of Afghanistan was done in the 1979 Population and Housing census. CSO’s estimation of the settled population is based on a constant population growth rate of 2.03 percent since 1979, which results in an
estimate of 25.5 million for January 2012. The nomadic Kuchi population is established at 1.5 million persons.
There can be no doubt that high fertility and mortality, and large-scale international migration – including consecutive massive waves of refugees and, more recently, returnees – made a signiicant impact on the overall size and structure of
the population. In addition, geographic differentiation in fertility and mortality, as well as internal migration and movements of internally displaced persons IDPs have had major effects on the internal distribution of the population.
One of the aims of the NRVA is to examine the structure and distribution of the population and households of Afghanistan, and their underlying dynamics. Section 3.2 focuses on population structure and distribution, whereas section 3.3
addresses household characteristics and marriage patterns. Sections 3.4 and 3.5 elaborate the population processes of, respectively, childhood mortality and migration, the latter distinguishing between international, internal and seasonal
migration and displacement.
3.2 Population structure and distribution
The most striking feature of the Afghan population is its very young age structure see Figure 3.1 and Table 3.1. Some
48.4 percent 13 million is under 15 years of age, whereas elderly of 65 and over represent only 2.5 percent of the total
population. The proportion under 15 would igure the second highest in the world in the 2010 UN population estimates UN
Population Division 2011.
The young age composition contributes to a very high dependency ratio: for every 100 persons in the working age
15-64, there are 104 persons in the less productive ages of under-ifteen and 65 and over, who are dependent for income
and subsistence. This igure implies a signiicant burden for the prime working-age population and the economy at
large, as large economic and social investments in terms of education and health care are concentrated in the youngest
age categories.
Overall, the share of the 0-14 year old population has decreased very little compared to 2007-08 48.6 percent.
However, if the better coverage of household members in the present survey is taken into account, the decrease might well have been around four percentage points.
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-speciic mortality and migration. However, sex-speciic age-misreporting and under-counting or over-counting can also lead to unexpected sex ratios.
Figure 3.1 Population, by age and sex in percentages
30-34 35-39
40-44 45-49
50-54 55-59
60-64 65-69
70-74 75-79
80-84 85+
10 8
6 4
2 2
4 6
8 10
0-4 5-9
10-14 15-19
20-24 25-29
30-34
Percentage Female
Male POPULATION STRUCTURE AND CHANGE
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Quality of age reporting
In countries like Afghanistan, many people are unaware about their exact age or date of birth. This leads to high
incidences of age misreporting, for instance by age heaping and age shifting. Conse-quently, 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
Another common characteristic of many developing countries is the omission of very young children from enumeration
activities. 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 igures. Both age reporting and coverage of young children in the
present NRVA are signiicantly better than in the NRVA rounds of 2005 and 2007-08.
a
The Myers blended index is 20.6 and the Whipple’s index is 223.
