It is known that Sierra Leone is a LIC (low income country), therefore its population characteristics are similar to that economic classification. Firstly, it has quite a low life expectancy at birth, which is 58.2; this is most likely due to the country having a vast amount of their population in poverty, with an inadequate supply of food, clean water and healthcare. These factors also affect the dependency ration of Sierra Leone; it has a majority of youth dependency within the population of 77.1% however, a very low elderly dependency at 4.9%. This is to be expected as it has a low life expectancy and its median age is 19. With such a high dependency ratio, more specifically in the youth, this would be a challenge to sustain all of the …show more content…
With a high life expectancy of 77.6 and a moderately high median age of 40.2, this indicates that Poland has access to clean water, healthcare, and high standard of living. Moreover, the dependency ratio in Poland is approximately equal when comparing the youths to the elderly, the youth being 21.5% and the elderly being 22.3% of the population. However, it's high elderly dependency ratio will result in an ageing population. Which will be a challenge for the government, as the more elderly there are in the country, the more the government may have to spend on taking care of them. Such as high costs of medical care, pension, and decline in the workforce. An opportunity can arise from this if the government changes or create new policies to lower the ageing population and benefit from it. For example, raising the pension age means a higher proportion of the population is in the workforce and are paying taxes. This is also an advantage to Poland's economy as more people that are economically active results in an increase of economic growth. Poland has a low total fertility rate at 1.34, which is also associated with the mothers mean age at 27.2 years; this means women are having their first child at a later age. These values indicate that there is a low birth rate in Poland, which could be the result of more women with levels of education, have their own career and uses family planning. Poland has a negative population growth rate, which could mean there is a higher death rate compared to the birth rate, also immigration and emigration could play a role in its falling population growth rate. In between 2000 and 2005, Poland had a rapidly increasing population growth, until 2006 to 2014 it has been decreasing rapidly. However, this decline could have consequences of having a shrinking population. There could be an economic effect where there are fewer people in the working force,