Idea
Thinking of about population issues led me to consider the possibilities of establishing actual population pyramids for each nation. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, "a population pyramid, also called an 'age pyramid' is a graphical illustration that shows the distribution of various age groups in a population, which forms the shape of a pyramid when the population is growing." (Wikipedia)
Visually it looks something like this.
Population pyramid of Egypt, the land of pyramids.
Much like we currently present information leading causes of death, this population pyramid could show how old/young/diverse a population is.
Recycling existing data
At the present, we already possess much of the data required for constructing this.
- Easiest to start with is Lifespan (censusid=44),
- which can be combined with the Human Development Index (censusid=68),
- and to a lesser extent perhaps also the Death Rate (censusid=5).
Lifespan (#1) would give an estimate for the top of the pyramid. This doesn't mean no-one grows older. The calculation of life expectancy is a little more complex than that. I would appreciate any expert advice you as reader might have. The image I posted above shows a scale of 5 years at a time. This could also be grouped per decade.
- 100+
90-99
80-89
70-79
60-69
50-59
40-49
30-39
20-29
10-19
0-9
HDI (#2) would help us divide nations into categories. IRL there exist 4 categories of HDI, namely: very high, high, medium, and low. Based on these categories, it should be possible to construct an average population pyramid for each nation.
Questions still to answer:
- Ratio of men vs women
- Child mortaility rate
- Which other factors might influence the pyramid?
Mockup
A final result could look something like this. I re-used one of the existing images that's currently used as a background for the government welfare budget. https://www.nationstates.net/images/charts/govt-wel.jpg I also re-used some of the colours already used in the population pie chart, namely #3c6eab for men and #b33e37 for women. The icon was found online, at The Noun Project. https://thenounproject.com/term/population/152684/