Youth

Global Median Age 2021

Young Global South

90 percent of young people in the world live in the Global South. Youthful populations are most prominent in Sub-Saharan Africa, the very place where Christianity has grown most in the past century. Islam in Africa also benefits from Africa’s high birth rates.

Although their populations will age in the coming decades, in 2022 Latin America, Asia, and Oceania also possess far greater number of people under 15 than those over 65 years old. North America and Europe, by contrast, possess a smaller share of youth. These aged contexts are the very places where Christianity is experiencing its greatest rate of decline.

Global Youth Dependency

Proportion Of Regional Population

Youth Dependency

Young dependency ratio is the ratio of the number of young people at an age when they are generally economically inactive, (i.e. under 15 years of age), compared to the number of people of working age (i.e. 15-64). The data shows the number of dependents per 100 working age people.