Dependency ratio

The dependency ratio measures the number of people typically outside the workforce due to age, children and older adults, relative to the working-age population, expressed per 100 working-age people. It is usually split into a youth dependency ratio (population under 15) and an old-age dependency ratio (population 65 and over), with the two often reported separately as well as combined.

dependency ratio = (population under 15 + population 65 and over) / population 15-64 × 100. Age cutoffs vary somewhat by country and statistical agency, but the 15-64 working-age convention is the most common. A rising old-age dependency ratio is the standard way to describe an aging population and the pressure it places on pension and healthcare systems, while a high youth dependency ratio is typical of younger, faster-growing populations, which is often visible directly in a population pyramid.

Governments and international agencies use the dependency ratio to plan for pension systems, healthcare capacity, and labor policy, and it is tracked alongside fertility rate, life expectancy, and migration flows to project how a population's age structure will shift. Its main limitation is that it assumes everyone in the "working-age" band actually works and everyone outside it does not, which is not literally true; the labor force participation rate captures actual workforce engagement and is a better measure of real economic burden than age alone.