Which country epitomizes the world? A study from the perspective of demographic composition

TL;DR

This study analyzes global population structures over time using compositional data analysis, identifying countries that epitomize the world's demographic transition and clustering nations based on structural similarities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using Aitchison distance to examine population structure transitions and identifies key countries representing different demographic periods.

Findings

India, Northern Africa, and South Africa epitomize the 1990s population structure.

South America represents the 2015-2030 period.

Italy and Japan exemplify future population structures.

Abstract

Demographic indicators are an essential element in considering various problems in the social economy, such as predicting economic fluctuations and establishing policies. The literature widely discusses the growth of the world population or issues pertaining to its aging, but has given little to no attention to population structures and transition patterns. In this article, we take advantage of the characteristics of compositional data to examine the transition of the world population structure. Using the Aitchison distance, we examine the similarity of the world population structure from the 1990s to 2080 and that of countries and regions in 2015 and create maps to illustrate the results. Accordingly, we identify the following countries and regions as epitomes of the world population structure through different periods: India, Northern Africa and South Africa, in the 1990s, South America in 2015 to 2030, Oceania and Northern America in 2040, Uruguay and Puerto Rico in 2050 to 2060, and Italy and Japan in the distant future. We then cluster countries based on the similarity of their population structures in 2015 and correspond each cluster to a certain period. We found that Russia and Western Europe gather in a cluster that does not correspond to any period, indicating a recessive population structure.