64 thousand elderly people live alone

2024-07-02 13:45:00, Sociale CNA

Photo taken from Google

The 2023 census data reported that across the country, about 64,000 people over 60 lived alone.

According to the census data, the majority of the population, 88.1 percent, lived in Family Units, traditional composition of family nuclei (child, spouse, cohabitant and parents).

From the rest of the population (11.9 percent), 7.6 percent of them declared that they had no family ties and 4.3 percent of the population lived alone.

Of the 103,000 people who lived alone, 62.5 percent of them were 60 years old or older (64,375 people).

The most frequent family nuclei consisted of married or cohabiting couples with children, 52.2 percent, followed by married or cohabiting couples without children, 37.5 percent, while single parents with children accounted for only 10.3 per hundred of them.

Census 2023 data show that one in five individuals (19.7 percent) are 65 or older, compared to one in nine individuals (11.3 percent) in the 2011 Census and 7.5 percent in the of 2001.

The transition to an older population is also seen in dependency ratios. The youth dependency ratio1 decreased to 24.0 percent from 30.4 percent estimated in the 2011 Census, and the elderly dependency ratio increased to 30.4 percent from 16.7 percent in 2011.

Analyzed at the district level, Kukësi and Gjirokastra hold opposite positions in terms of dependency ratios: Kukësi has the highest youth dependency ratio (31.8 percent) and the lowest elderly dependency ratio (19.9 percent).

Meanwhile, Gjirokastra has the lowest youth dependency ratio (19.0 percent) and the highest elderly dependency ratio (46.1 percent). The average age of the population is 42.5 years, from 35.3 years in the 2011 Census.

The influencing factors of births, deaths and international/internal migration brought about the changing structure of the population in the 2023 Census.

Analyzing the 50-69 age group in the population pyramid, an expansion is observed that corresponds to a period of births between the mid-1950s and 1970s. Albania during this period was characterized by an increase in birth rates, known as "baby boom".

Low fertility rates and the downward trend, combined with the emigration of the reproductive age population, resulted in a narrowing of the base of the population pyramid. The birth rate below the replacement level since 2001, the increase in life expectancy, as well as migration remain the main factors of population aging./Monitor