NUR-SULTAN – The population in Kazakhstan will grow over the next few decades and will reach approximately 24 million people by 2050, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), reports ranking.kz.
Kazakhstan remains the country of children, teenagers and aged people. Photo credit: Turar Kazangapov.
The population has surpassed 19 million driven by the rising birth and life expectancy rate.
In 2020, life expectancy was 71.37 years, compared to 68.45 years 10 years ago, taking into account the infant and child mortality rate, and the death rate among the young.
Alongside the increased birth rate, the prevalence of older people has also increased. In 2010, the share of the population at retirement age was 9.9 percent, whereas in 2020 it reached 11 percent, says energyprom.kz.
At the end of 2020, the proportion of the working age population in the country (from 15 years old to retirement age) was only 58.4 percent of the total population, although it was 58.4 percent a year ago, 61.6 percent – five years ago and 64 percent – in 2011.
Such changes affect the Kazakh labour market. The number of young employees and pre-retirement age employees continues to grow.
According to the Beaujeu Garnier and Rosset demographic ageing scale, Kazakhstan is on the “threshold of old age” mark. The UN forecasts almost every country in the world will experience an ageing population so this is not something special.
In view of an ageing population and the consequent increase in the burden on working ability, Kazakhstan has begun a gradual shift from a distributive pension system to a accumulative pension system since 1998.
Distributive pension system means retired people are paid from the current tax revenue to the budget. In the accumulative system, working people pay contributions that are not spent on the retired people, but are saved up, invested, and then used by these people ahead of schedule or during their retirement.
The accumulative pension system of Kazakhstan reduces the burden on the state budget and fosters an increase of the total pension amount in the future. The full transition to the accumulative scheme will have been completed by 2040.
