Population composition gives the description of the population defined by characteristics such as age and sex, place of residence, ethnic characteristics, tribes, language, religion, marital status, literacy and education, occupational characteristics, etc.
Age Composition: The age structure of the population refers to the proportion of persons in different age groups relative to the total population.
The population of a nation is generally grouped into three broad categories:
Children (generally below 15 years): They are economically unproductive and need to be provided with food, clothing, education and medical care.
Working Age (15-59 years): They are economically productive and biologically reproductive. They comprise the working population.
Aged (Above 59 years): They can be economically productive though they may have retired. They may be working voluntarily but are not available for employment through recruitment.
Dependency Ratio
The dependency ratio is a measure comparing the portion of a population which is composed of dependents (i.e., elderly people who are too old to work, and children who are too young to work) with the portion that is in the working age group, generally defined as 15 to 59 years.
Sex composition
Sex composition is a very significant indicator of the quality of the population of a country as a human resource.
In fact, primarily it is understood on the basis of the sex ratio.
The Sex Ratio refers to the number of females per 1000 males in a given area at a specified time period.
The Child Sex Ratio is the sex ratio in the age group 0-6 years (child) in a given area at a specified time period.
Divyang composition
The 2011 census shows 207.8 lakh households having disabled persons in the country constituting 8.3 per cent of the total households.
Total households having disabled persons show an increase of 20.5 lakhs from the last census.
Out of the total disabled population of 2.68 crores in Census 2011, 1.46 crores (54.5%) are literates and the remaining 1.22 crores (45.5%) are illiterates.
One decade ago, the percentage of literates among the disabled population was 49.3% and the remaining 50.7% were illiterates.
Working Population Composition
The population of India according to their economic status is divided into three groups: main workers, marginal workers and non-workers.
Standard Census Definition Main Worker is a person who works for at least 183 days in a year.
Marginal Worker is a person who works for less than 183 days in a year.
The work participation rate is defined as the percentage of total workers (main and marginal) to the total population.
Rural-Urban composition
