Countries with a larger share of elderly people relative to GDP tend to import less per person.
Comparing Population ages 65 and above, total, per unit of GDP with Imports of goods and services (BoP, current US$), per capita across 185 countries, 2018–2025.
- Rank correlation
- -0.85
- Holding size constant
- -0.77
- Countries compared
- 185
- Period
- 2018–2025
What might link these
This may reflect that economies with higher dependency ratios have fewer working-age earners to drive demand for foreign goods, or that such countries are often less integrated into global trade. A careful reader should note that the relationship could be driven by a third factor such as overall income level or trade policy, which influences both age structure and import volumes.
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. The main risk is that unmeasured confounders like national income or trade openness could produce the observed association without a direct link.
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.