Armenia is among countries with rapidly aging population

YEREVAN, April 20. /ARKA/. Armenia is among the countries with rapidly aging population, Anna Hovhannisyan, coordinator of demographic programs at UN Population Fund Armenia (UNPFA), told a press conference.

She said according to the UN scale, if a country's share of the elderly population exceeds 7%, that country is considered aging. In Armenia, that proportion is about 14 percent, which means that Armenia is among the aging countries," she said.

Hovhannisyan noted that such a phenomenon is inherent in all those countries where the total fertility index is low and tends to decrease.

"According to UN Population Fund projections, by 2050, the proportion of the elderly population will reach 22-24%. This means that one in four or five in Armenia will be a pensioner," she said.

According to official statistics, Armenia's birth rate in January-February 2022 dropped by 3.4% compared to the same period in 2021. During the same period, 6,030 people died in the country, up 11% from January-February 2021 and 18.5% from the two months of 2020. Thus, the natural increase in the population decreased 6.7-fold compared to the first 2 months of 2021 and 3.3-fold compared to the first 2 months of 2020.

According to UNPFA projections, the decrease in the annual growth rate of Armenia is expected to continue in the coming years, beginning to see a decrease in numbers as soon as the year 2024.

Current projections go out to the year 2050 and believe that the net migration will regularly be at least -5,000 annually and the birth rate will remain below the worldwide average, staying close to 1.51, which is not conducive to growth.

If these factors remain as expected, the annual growth rate should get down to -0.47% by 2050, and the population of Armenia will be roughly 2,971,966 in 2022, 2,907,463 in 2030, 2,818,399 in 2040 and 2,600,184 by 2050.-0-