Well, it is, kinda... If you are 16 and less than half the population of your country is younger than you, you could be called "old "... Of course such median could be, e.g., a result of a colossal, unprecedent baby boom in the last couple years, but I assume all of us are educated enough to know what such medians truly means...
What do you think it truly means? It doesn't mean that you are old. And in fact all of these countries *have* had unprecedented booms in population. Not because people are having more kids- they are having as many as ever- but more because quality of life is improving (access to clean water, medicine)... but still not very good... in this state between being catastrophically impoverished and on the path toward developing, the death rate remains high while the infant mortality rate starts to drop precipitously. Whenever a country gets to this stage in development there is almost always a population explosion.
Well this is depressing. All of these are starving African countries or poor countries ravaged by war. What's worst, many of these countries at the top (or bottom if you will) have both.
The good news: in almost every measure, whether its GDP, life expectancy, fertility rate, or rate of violence, things are improving rapidly on the continent of Africa.
The "improvement" to fertility rate QM is referring to I think is that it is falling. Either that... or he meant to say infant mortality rate. Fertility and infant mortality are usually inversely correlated, and yes a high fertility rate decreases median age.
I'm surprised that all the countries on the list are in Africa. There is no any war-torn countries or autocratic countries in other continents on the list, like Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea or Haiti.
Because many of these are not only war torn, but also disease ridden. That lethal combination proves to be much worse for these poor African countries than other Asian/middle eastern nations that are only ravaged by war.
Keep in mind that the low median age basically means that there are many children per adult in those country. It's rather related to the high fertility and demographic expansion than to a low life expectancy.
idk how would they even begin to pay for a health care system. it wouldn't be an easy thing for these countries to train competent doctors and build facilities.
That moment when you press 'give up' and then have to conclude that you were wrong in thinking you had tried all countries in Africa south of the Sahara