Tuesday, 09 Jun, 2026
High demographic dividend is very important for any country for its economic development. Image Source: IANS
It is very important to take a look at the population composition as it is a very important factor which influences politics, economic and the society
Demographics is one of the most important tool to understand and study the composition of population in a particular country. In a country like India, which is very diverse in nature in terms of age groups, castes, gender, religions, cultures, languages, food habits, living geographical conditions etc, it is very important to take a look at the population composition as it is a very important factor which influences politics, economic and the society. For example: high demographic dividend is very important for any country for its economic development. Demographic dividend, as defined by the United Nations Population Fund, is "the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population is larger than the non-working-age share of the population.”
India Tracker takes a look at the gender wise percentage of population in India.
Source: Sample Registration Survey Bulletin, Office of the Registrar General of India
The above chart clearly indicates that India has a very high demographic dividend as 66.3% male population falls under the age group of 15-59 years and 66.8% of the total female population in India falls under the same age group. This factor is very beneficial for India as the maximum population is working and this yields high economic output. The least percentage of population falls under the age group of 65+ which means that the senior citizens constitute least percentage of population. Out of the total population of males in India, only 4.9% are senior citizens and in case of the total female population, only 5.4% fall under the category of senior citizens. The distribution of population in the 0-4, 5-9 and 10-14 age-groups is similar for both males and females. In the age-group 0-14, Male population is about one percent more than Female, whereas in the older age-groups 15-59, 60+, 15-64 and 65+, percentage of Females are more than that of Males by 0.5, 0.6, 0.6 and 0.5 percentage points.
Experts are of the view that though India has an advantage of demographic dividend and though the demographic dividend is high in females, the advantage remains underutilized as most of the women in the working age group do not work and are involved in the household work. The government has been working in an effective direction to utilize this advantage by making employment and economic opportunities available to the women at their doorstep especially in the rural areas of the country.
