Turkey has been ranked the 18th most populous country in the world, with a population of over 85 million, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday, citing data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).
TurkStat on Tuesday released its “World Population Day, 2024” statistics on the occasion of the upcoming day.
World Population Day, which seeks to focus attention on the urgency and importance of population issues, was established by the then-Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme in 1989, an outgrowth of the interest generated by the Day of Five Billion, which was observed on July 11, 1987.
According to TurkStat data, Turkey was the 18th most populous country in the world last year with a population of 85,372,377, constituting 1.1 percent of the world’s total population.
The institute said, citing United Nations population estimates, that the country with the highest population in 2023 was India with 1,428,627,663 people, followed by China (1,425,671,352) and the United States (339,996,563).
While the global average proportion of children in the population was 29.8 percent last year, Turkey’s child population proportion stood at a slightly lower 26 percent, which is still higher than that of European Union member countries.
The statistics on the proportion of the 15-24 age group in the total population in 2023 also showed Turkey higher than that of all EU countries with 15.1 percent, which is just below the world youth population average of 15.5 percent.
TurkStat data further revealed that the global average proportion of people aged 65 or older was 10 percent last year. Turkey’s elderly population, however, stood at 10.2 percent, slightly above the global average and lower than that of the EU countries.
Turkey was higher than the world average in life expectancy at birth, which was 74.8 years for males and 80.3 years for females in the country last year.
In 2023 Turkey’s total fertility rate was 1.51 children per woman, below the average of 1.54 children among the 27 EU member countries and the world average of 2.31 children.
TurkStat recorded a dramatic decline in Turkey’s fertility rate in May, with figures showing that the rate, which stood at 2.38 children per woman in 2001, had decreased to 1.51 children per woman by 2023, remaining below the population’s replacement level of 2.1 children per woman.
The crude birth rate, which refers to the number of live births per thousand people, was 20.3 in 2001. It had declined to 11.2 per thousand people by 2023, the TurkStat data also showed.