Talk:Population pyramid

The comment that I've placed below was in the article. I don't see the relevance of the link between youth crime and islam on a page writing about population pyramids. SuzanneKn (talk) 19:17, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Samuel Huntington has adapted youth bulge theory as the foundation of his clash of civilizations model:

"I don’t think Islam is any more violent than any other religions,[...] but the key factor is the demographic factor. Generally speaking, the people who go out and kill other people are males between the ages of 16 and 30".^[1]

1. [1]

   'So, are civilizations at war?', Interview with Samuel P. Huntington by Michael Steinberger, The Observer, Sunday October 21, 2001.

Wouldn't it be interesting to also put the names of the age groups, e.g. youth = up to the age of 25 according to the UN, and then babies, kids, youth, young adults, adults, active retired, elderly, or so ?--OLPC - Sven AERTS (talk) 22:15, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

This section needs some sources, and to shed the original research. It should also be balanced with a summary from Baby boom, which is a mainstream term for the expansion phase. Note that the "youth bulge" leads to what is called a "demographic dividend":, so this should be mentioned too. It also equates to stage 2 of the demographic transition model.

Here are some sources:

• McIntosh, Malcolm (5 April 2009). "The battle of the youth bulge". The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• Sciolino, Elaine (9 December 2001). "Radicalism: Is the Devil in the Demographics?". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• Ajami, Fouad (6 January 2008). "Sunday Book Review: The Clash". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• Whelton, Clark (5 October 2007). "A Demographic Theory of War: Population, power, and the 'slightly weird' ideas of Gunnar Heinsohn". The Weekly Standard. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• THERBORN, GÖRAN (March–April 2009). "NATO'S DEMOGRAPHER". New Left Review. Retrieved 2009-04-30.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
• Beehner, Lionel (27 April 2007). "The Battle of the 'Youth Bulge'". Council for Foreign Relations. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• Caldwell, Christopher (6 January 2007). "Youth and war, a deadly duo". Financial Times. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• ATTENHOFER, JONAS (10 April 2007). "'Youth bulge' violence". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• Mercado, Juan (24 April 2008). "2010 dividend". Cebu Daily News. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• Clonan, Tom (22 September 2008). "US generals planning for resource wars". Irish Times. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• Heinsohn, Gunnar (29 November 2007). "Battle of the Youth Bulge: Demography may explain Pakistan's political turmoil". The Weekly Standard. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• Jaffe, Sam (27 December 2002). "Can American Pop Ease Mideast Hatreds?". Business Week. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• Taylor Martin, Susan (11 May 2008). "Is lack of democracy tied to a young population?". St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
• Hedegaard, Lars (May 2007). "Interview: A Continent of Losers". Sappho. Retrieved 2009-04-30.

Fences and windows (talk) 14:04, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

On second thoughts - shouldn't we create Youth bulge, as it is a notable concept, and avoid overemphasising this theory on this page? Fences and windows (talk) 14:06, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Not being an adept in statistics, I cannot help much to improve by contributing information here. BUT as a user, I would appreciate if someone defined how "MEDIAN AGE" is calculated before going on to use the term freely in articles about Ageing and Population Growth etc. (where I found the term). Gernot H. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GernotHir (talk • contribs) 10:13, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I wikilinked median correctly,so now you could look it up without having to type. Mangoe (talk) 17:53, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

A world population pyramid (structure by age and sex) would be a great addition to the article. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 21:54, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

In population pyramids the fertility of reproductive age classes is represented by the lowest age class. Mortality is represented by the curve of the pyramid if you lay it on its side. A population is growing if fertility is greater than mortality. The pyramids themselves do not tell you if fertility is greater than mortality, so we cant tell if a population is growing from the shape of the pyramid. In fact, the stage one pyramid is an example of a population with high fertility and high mortality, and probably is not growing. This should not be a surprise since it is the population pyramid that one would expect for what is usually represented as the situation of most societies for most of time during which population growth rates were very low. Therefore, the label "expanding" is wrong and misleading. It is doubly suspicious because the STage 2 pyramid is also labeled as "expanding". This pyramid shows a smooth rather than concave sided pyramid. This indicates that infant mortality has decreased, but we don't know if the population is expanding or contracting from the pyramid because we don't know if mortality is greater than fertility. What we do know is that countries in Stage 2 of the demographic transition have lower infant and child mortality rates and have this shape pyramid. The pyramid is associated with Stage 2 populations, but does not assure us that the population is expanding or contracting just by its shape. The stage 3 pyramid is a population with some fertility rate and a very low mortality rate until old age. The label of this one appears to be acceptable as "stationary" because the age groups are likely to remain the same through time as long as the age specific mortality rates stay the same. The article should point out that as long as mortality rates are low and fertility rates constant, that this represents a stable age distribution, but by my reasoning above, the pointy and smooth pyramids could also represent a stable age distribution too. The stage 4 pyramid appears to be labeled acceptably. There is no pyramid for countries that have had varying mortality and fertility in the last 50 years, such as China. Someone please give a reasonable mathematically sound explanation of why I am wrong or please change the article and the pyramid figure labels.

Also, I find the youth bulge hypothesis to be silly as an explanation of wars. There were European wars in spite of plagues that reduced populations. It might be advocated as a contributing cause, but it didnt cause Sweden, or any of the other countries that have passed through the demographic transition to go to war. Avram Primack (talk) 06:10, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I presume you talk about File:DTM Pyramids.svg. I've left a note on the image creator's talk page at commons:User_talk:NikNaks#error_in_image. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:38, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't follow the majority of this, as it seems to be mainly an issue of clarity rather than a particular error. The SVG image is simply a redrawing of this one, and I believe, and was taught in high school geography, that these were "typical" representations of pyramids for countries in those stages of the DTM. They are not meant to show every possibility - China in the paragraphs above, for instance, is not a "model" case - but just the basic structure of what one might expect them to look like in a perfect model.

The labels were not my doing, and were added later without my knowledge, and I have no idea how to edit or remove those, I'm afraid. I don't see why they are necessary at all, given that the article should do the explaining, not the image.

If there are still problems, I will monitor this page, so if there is a glaring error I don't appreciate, or if you'd like new drawings of particular cases for the article, do please say so and I'll see what I can do. NikNaks _{talk - gallery} 14:56, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

What would a population pyramid for ZPG look like? Seems to me it should approximate a Gaussian distribution with low birth rates matching death rates at the high end and a bulge in the middle at the average age. Population pyramids are a statistical description of age distribution in a particular population. Any inference of human behavior from them is nonsense. Virgil H. Soule (talk) 20:47, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

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I would suggest adding some more examples of population pyramids in different stages of the demographic transition model. You can also talk about the replacement level or dependency ratios.

SOURCES: US Census Bureau, Demographic Internet Staff. “International Programs, International Data Base.” Information Gateway - U.S. Census Bureau, 27 June 2011, www.census.gov/data-tools/demo/idb/informationGateway.php.

“Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100.” PopulationPyramid.net, www.populationpyramid.net/world/2016/.

DataFinder | U.S. and World Data by The Population Reference Bureau, www.prb.org/DataFinder.aspx.

“Databases.” United Nations, United Nations, www.un.org/en/databases/index.html.

Boucher, Lauren. “What Are the Different Types of Population Pyramids?” Population Education, 11 Mar. 2018, populationeducation.org/what-are-different-types-population-pyramids. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alicia DiFrancia (talk • contribs) 02:01, 15 March 2018 (UTC)