ABSTRACT
Formal education through schooling is directed primarily at children. Since Third World populations have a much higher proportion of young people than is the case in more developed countries, the educational needs are proportionately much greater and expenditure of governments on education needs to be proportionately much larger. At its extreme, more than 50 per cent of the population of some African countries is aged 15 years or less, though the range is more typically nearer 40 per cent. In Europe that proportion is less than 25 per cent, and was less than 30 per cent even at the period of maximum growth in the mid-nineteenth century. These proportions are a direct function of population growth. Where rates of population growth are high – typically between 1 and 1.5 per cent p.a. in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, and in excess of 2.5 per cent in Africa – then the contrasts in age structure are exaggerated. Third World countries typically have a large proportion of young people but a small proportion of old people as their ‘dependent’ population, i.e. as a proportion in the main economically active age groups of adulthood.
