Higher youth dependency links to lower male senior population per GDP
Comparing Age dependency ratio, young (% of working-age population) with Population ages 65 and above, male, per unit of GDP across 209 countries, 2025–2025.
- Rank correlation
- +0.60
- Holding size constant
- +0.44
- Countries compared
- 209
- Period
- 2025–2025
What might link these
A younger population may reduce the relative economic burden of elderly males, or vice versa. However, reverse causation or shared drivers (e.g., fertility rates) could blur interpretation.
Why this is not proof of anything
This is a correlation across countries, not an experiment. It cannot show that either indicator causes the other, and both may simply follow a third thing. Correlation alone cannot distinguish cause from shared underlying trends.
The second figure above repeats the measurement with national population and income held constant. It is the more conservative number: a relationship that largely disappears there was mostly telling you that larger, richer countries have more of most things.
How this was measured
Both indicators were ranked across every country reporting each, and the two rankings compared — ranks rather than raw values, because a handful of very large countries can otherwise manufacture a relationship on their own. The calculation is arithmetic over figures already published on this site; the commentary above is drafted from the two indicator names and the resulting coefficients.