The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) released the 2021 "Population and Housing Census" figures on Monday. Figures indicate minor changes in the overall population, highlighting the fact of the "aging" phenomenon and showing the country hosts more homeowners than tenants, at a time of rising housing costs.

The country’s population stood at more than 84.6 million in 2021, based on figures from Dec. 31, 2021, TurkStat said. The institute highlighted that the population had a tendency to increase for decades, since 1927, the year in which the most concrete population figure is available, at more than 13.6 million people. Yet, the aging concerns are here according to TurkStat figures, which show the population growth rate dropped to 12.7 per thousand in 2021 from 21.1 in 1935. Another interesting trend is an almost equal population of men and women, compared to the first years of the Republic of Türkiye where there were more women than men, something attributed to a succession of wars the country was embattled in.

"Population pyramids" or graphs showing change in the population’s age and gender statistics demonstrate the reality of an aging population, something TurkStat linked to "the developments in the health care field and the improving living standards and welfare level, the decrease in fertility and mortality rates and the increase in life expectancy at birth." "As a result, the elderly population and median age increased and the share of children and youth in the total population decreased. Although Türkiye still had a younger population compared to countries having a proportionally elderly population, the elderly population was quite high quantitatively," the Institute said.

The median age was 21.2 in 1935 and rose to 33.1 in 2021. This age was 23.4 for women in 1935 and rose to 33.8 in 2021 while a dire change was spotted for men, from 19.1 to 32.4.

The proportion of the working-age population aged 15-64 increased from 54.7% in 1935 to 67.9% in 2021. On the other hand, while the proportion of the child population aged 0-14 was 41.4% in 1935, it showed a decreasing trend over the years and declined to 22.4% in 2021. The proportion of the elderly population aged 65 and over, which was 3.9% in 1935, became 9.7% in 2021.

Other figures show the proportion of unmarried people was higher among men while the proportion of widowed and divorced people was higher among women.

A striking figure is literacy among women. While the rate of illiterate women was 90.2% in 1935, it declined to 4.2% as of last year. For men, it decreased to 0.8% in 2021, from 70.7% in 1935. Yet, figures also show that the proportion of male higher education graduates is still higher compared to females.

On internal migration, statistics show more than 2.7 million people migrated across Türkiye’s 81 provinces in 2021.

On the place of birth, TurkStat says those born in Bulgaria ranked first among those who were born abroad and reside in Türkiye. They were followed by German-born people, Iraqi-born people and people born in Syria. The number of foreigners residing in Türkiye was more than 1.7 million people in 2021. Iraqis took first place at 18% among foreigners, followed by Afghan and Iranian nationals.

Statistics also show that the proportion of one-person households increased, while the proportion of one-family and extended-family households decreased. The average household size was 3.23 persons.

The majority of households were owners of their own home while the share of those living in rental accommodation was announced as 27.6% by TurkStat.