Aging Trends in Barbados

The aging of the Barbadian population is unusual in several respects. The median population age, as discussed below, is ris­ing rapidly relative to other nations, including those of Europe and North America. Among developing countries, Barbados now has one of the highest proportions of older persons, with 17 percent of the population aged 55 and over and nearly 11 percent having reached or sur­passed age 65. Both figures are consider­ably above the Caribbean average (table 1) and are due in part to a steep decline in fertility since 1970, which has lowered the proportion of the population in younger age groups. At the same time, however, the number of persons aged 55 and over is declining slightly and will remain es­sentially unchanged in the early 1990s. This reflects, to some extent, the aging of cohorts that have been deci­mated by past emigration. Source