The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) published its "Statistics on Children" report on Wednesday, ahead of April 23, which is celebrated as National Sovereignty and Children's Day in Turkey. The statistics paint a bright future for a country where aging concerns worry authorities.
Children constituted 26.9% of the population in 2021, numbering more than 22.7 million, with more boys than girls. The rate is far lower than 41.8% in 1990 but ahead of figures in European Union countries. TurkStat says the average proportion of children in the population was 18.2% in 2021 among EU members and that the countries with the highest child populations were Ireland with 23.9%, France with 21.5% and Sweden with 21.1%, respectively. The countries with the lowest child populations were Italy with 15.8%, Malta with 15.9%, Portugal and Germany with 16.5%.
Projections show the child population in Turkey will gradually drop, becoming around 26.6% in 2025 and falling as low as 19% in 2080. The country's elderly population has increased by 24% in the past five years, with people aged 65 and above constituting 9.7% of the total population in 2021. Turkey once boasted one of the youngest populations in Europe, but the proportion of the elderly population is rapidly increasing. Indeed, projections show it could reach 11% within the next three years and exceed 16.3% by 2040.
Experts tie this change in age structure to advances in public health, better living conditions, increases in welfare levels and life expectancy along with decreasing rates of fertility and mortality with better health care options.
The highest rate of children in the population was recorded in Şanlıurfa, a southeastern province that is among the places with the lowest number of senior citizens and is known for its large households. Children made up 45.2% of the population in Şanlıurfa, ahead of Şırnak and Ağrı, other provinces in the east where large families are more common. Tunceli, one of the least populated provinces in eastern Turkey, had the lowest proportion of children at 17.3%, ahead of Edirne and Kırklareli in the northwest.
The rate of households with at least one child up to the age of 17 was over 45% last year. More than 15% of households had two children. Children up to age 4 made up the majority of the child population, ahead of those between the ages of 5 and 9. In terms of births, TurkStat says that more than 1.1 million babies were born alive in 2020, the latest year with available statistics, and that hospital birth rates rose to 98% the same year. The most popular names given to babies were Yusuf for boys and Zeynep for girls, along with Alparslan and Miraç for boys and Elif and Asel for girls in 2021. Overall, Yusuf, Mustafa and Mehmet are the most popular names for boys in the country while it is Zeynep, Elif and Yağmur for girls.
Another positive development for children was the increase in education levels, with the rate of students graduating from at least one school going up. The high school graduation/completion rate reached more than 73% among children from only 59.7% in 2016, while the highest rate was in primary schools, at 98.6%.
TurkStat also released figures on internet usage among children and said the number of children using the internet between the ages of 6 and 15 exceeded 82% as of 2021 according to TurkStat figures, a big jump from around 50% in 2013.
On so-called "child marriages," figures show that legal marriages for girls aged 16 and 17 dropped to 2.3% of total legal marriages last year. Child labor statistics, however, show that the children, particularly those between the ages of 15 and 17, had a labor force participation rate of 16.4% in 2021, with the rate higher for boys than girls.
As for children in foster care, TurkStat says their number is only 8,459 and that 495 children were adopted in 2021.
