Population Characteristics: Age Composition, Population Pyramids, Gender/Sex Composition, Literacy Rates

At a Glance

• Age groups 0 to 14, 15 to 59, 60 and over
• Sex ratio Females per 1,000 males
• Pyramid types Expanding, constant, declining
• Literacy (India, 2011) 74.04 per cent
• Dependency ratio Dependants per 100 workers
• Exam link UPSC Prelims, Geography: Population and Demography

Where Does It Fit?

This topic follows the pattern of distribution and describes who the people are in terms of age, sex, schooling and work. It leads to the topic on theories of population growth, which tries to explain the changes in these characteristics. Previous topic: Global Population Distribution and Density Patterns. Next topic: Theories of Population Growth: Malthusian Theory, Marxian Theory, Demographic Transition Theory.

What Is the Sex Ratio and Why Does It Matter?

In short: the sex ratio shows how many women there are for every thousand men, and it reflects the status of women in a society.

The sex ratio is the number of females per thousand males. Biologically, slightly more boys than girls are born, but women live longer, so the ratio is usually near parity or in favour of women in developed countries. Sex ratios are lower in South and West Asia, including India, China and Pakistan, because of the neglect of girls, sex-selective abortion and maternal mortality. In Canada and Western Europe, males outnumber females in rural areas and females outnumber males in cities, because many women move to town for jobs. In countries such as Nepal, Pakistan and India it is the opposite, because male migration dominates the cities, and women’s participation in farm work is high.

• India in 2011: the overall ratio was 943, and the child sex ratio, for children aged 0 to 6, was 919, the lowest since independence. Keralam (Kerala) had the highest, 1,084, followed by Puducherry, and Haryana had the lowest, 879, among the larger states.
• More recent data: the National Family Health Survey of 2019–21 estimated 1,020 women per 1,000 men in the population, the first time the survey found more women than men, and a sex ratio at birth of 929 for the births of the five years before the survey. These are survey estimates and are not the same as the census count.
• Policy: the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994 bans sex determination, and the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme, launched in 2015, targets the child sex ratio.

What Is Age Structure, and What Do the Pyramids Show?

The dependency ratio is the number of dependants, children and the elderly, per hundred persons of working age. A high ratio means a heavy burden on workers. The age-sex pyramid, a graph with age groups on the vertical axis and males and females on each side, has typical shapes.

India’s pyramid, at the 2011 census, had about 29 per cent of its people below 15, about 63 per cent in the working ages and about 8.6 per cent aged 60 and over. The median age is about 28 years. India is thus in a demographic window, and the working-age share is expected to peak in the 2040s, which means that a demographic dividend can be gained only through jobs, skills and women’s participation in work, as in Theories of Population Growth: Malthusian Theory, Marxian Theory, Demographic Transition Theory. The elderly share is rising: the United Nations Population Fund’s India Ageing Report 2023 projected that persons aged 60 or more will form around one-fifth of the population by 2050, and the southern states are ageing faster than the north.

What Is the Occupational Structure?

• Primary activities: agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining, which extract natural resources.
• Secondary activities: manufacturing and construction.
• Tertiary activities: trade, transport, communication and services.
• Quaternary activities: research, information technology and knowledge services, and the highest level of services.

The share of the working population in each sector is an indicator of development: a primitive economy has most workers in the primary sector, because only a developed economy with industries and infrastructure can employ many people in the secondary, tertiary and quaternary sectors. In India about 46 per cent of the workforce was in agriculture in the 2023–24 Periodic Labour Force Survey, whereas agriculture contributes only about 15 to 18 per cent of the economy’s output, which indicates low productivity and underemployment. The services sector provides more than half of the output but a smaller part of the jobs. Women’s participation in the labour force has increased in recent years, mostly in agriculture and self-employment, to around two-fifths of women aged 15 and above in the survey, a figure that varies by survey and definition. As an analytical point, the mismatch between where the workers are and where the output is produced, and between the young population and the available jobs, is the central structural problem of the Indian demographic dividend.

What Do Population Pyramids Show?

The age-sex pyramid has age groups on the vertical axis, usually in five-year bands, and the share of males on the left and females on the right. India’s pyramid is moving from an expanding towards a constant shape. The shape tells planners about future needs: schools for broad bases and pensions and health care for broad tops. The related stages of change are in Theories of Population Growth: Malthusian Theory, Marxian Theory, Demographic Transition Theory.

What Are the Literacy Rates?

• Definition: in the Census of India, a person aged 7 years or above who can read and write with understanding in any language is literate.
• World: the global adult literacy rate is about 87 per cent, but about 750 million adults, mostly women, cannot read and write. Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have the lowest rates.
• India: Census 2011 gave a literacy rate of 74.04 per cent, with male literacy around 82 per cent and female around 65 per cent. Keralam has the highest rate and Bihar the lowest among the states in 2011. Later surveys put the rate higher, at about 77 to 80 per cent, and the Census of 2027 will give the latest figure.
• Link: literacy, especially of women, is closely tied to lower fertility, better child health and higher income, as in Concept of Human Resources.

The values for later years should be checked in the latest official surveys.

Why Is This Topic Important?

• Facts Sex ratio and pyramids asked
• Policy Women, ageing and jobs
• Data Census versus surveys

What Came Next?

The next topic describes theories of population growth: Malthusian, Marxian and the demographic transition theory. Next topic: Theories of Population Growth: Malthusian Theory, Marxian Theory, Demographic Transition Theory.

Key People and Terms

• Sex ratio Females per thousand males
• Child sex ratio Females per thousand males aged 0 to 6
• Dependency ratio Dependants per hundred workers
• Age-sex pyramid Graph of age and sex structure
• Median age Age that divides the population into two equal halves
• Quaternary activity Knowledge-based services

Exam Corner

Mains Angle

Questions link composition with development and policy. These points add depth.

• Women Sex ratio and work
• Age Dividend and ageing
• Jobs Structural mismatch