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Data

Old-age dependency ratio

UN WPP

What you should know about this indicator

  • The old-age dependency ratio compares those aged 65 and over with the working-age population (aged 15 to 64).
  • This is a purely demographic measure. It does not count who is actually working or financially dependent — many people aged 15–64 are not in the labour force, and many people over 65 still are.
Old-age dependency ratio
UN WPP
The number of people aged 65 and over per 100 working-age people (aged 15 to 64).
Source
UN, World Population Prospects (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
July 12, 2024
Date range
1950–2023
Unit
%

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Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

United Nations – World Population Prospects

World Population Prospects 2024 is the 28th edition of the official estimates and projections of the global population that have been published by the United Nations since 1951. The estimates are based on all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration for 237 countries or areas. If you have questions about this dataset, please refer to their FAQ. You can also explore data sources for each country or visit their main page for more details.

Retrieved on
July 11, 2024
Retrieved from
https://population.un.org/wpp/downloads/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition.

World Population Prospects 2024 is the 28th edition of the official estimates and projections of the global population that have been published by the United Nations since 1951. The estimates are based on all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration for 237 countries or areas. If you have questions about this dataset, please refer to their FAQ. You can also explore data sources for each country or visit their main page for more details.

Retrieved on
July 11, 2024
Retrieved from
https://population.un.org/wpp/downloads/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition.

United Nations – World Population Prospects - Interim Update

World Population Prospects 2024 is the 28th edition of the official estimates and projections of the global population that have been published by the United Nations since 1951. The estimates are based on all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration for 237 countries or areas. If you have questions about this dataset, please refer to their FAQ. You can also explore data sources for each country or visit their main page for more details.

This is an interim update containing revised medium-variant estimates and projections for Togo.

Retrieved on
March 31, 2026
Retrieved from
https://population.un.org/wpp/downloads/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition.

World Population Prospects 2024 is the 28th edition of the official estimates and projections of the global population that have been published by the United Nations since 1951. The estimates are based on all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration for 237 countries or areas. If you have questions about this dataset, please refer to their FAQ. You can also explore data sources for each country or visit their main page for more details.

This is an interim update containing revised medium-variant estimates and projections for Togo.

Retrieved on
March 31, 2026
Retrieved from
https://population.un.org/wpp/downloads/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

We compute the dependency ratios from the UN's population by age. The total dependency ratio is (population aged 0–14 plus population aged 65 and over) divided by population aged 15–64, multiplied by 100. The youth and old-age ratios use only the under-15 or 65+ numerators, respectively.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Old-age dependency ratio”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from United Nations. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260501-122545/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old.html [online resource] (archived on May 1, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

UN, World Population Prospects (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

UN, World Population Prospects (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Old-age dependency ratio – UN WPP” [dataset]. United Nations, “World Population Prospects”; United Nations, “World Population Prospects - Interim Update” [original data]. Retrieved May 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260501-122545/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old.html (archived on May 1, 2026).

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/age-dependency-ratio-old.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear