Age and ageing

🔺 Age and ageing

How the population is distributed by age, how much Spain has aged since 1971 and which regions and provinces have the oldest populations.

Population aged 65 and over: Spain 21.6 EU 22.4OECD 19France 22.5Portugal 24.9Germany 23.7Italy 25.1Morocco 8.5US 18.4China 14.9 Japan 30 % of population · 2025 · World Bank (WDI) All countries →

Spain's population pyramid

Compare the shape of the pyramid in two years. Each bar is the percentage of the total population of that age and sex, so pyramids for years with different population sizes can be compared directly.

Pyramid for each region and province, by place of birth

In this territory, as at 1 January 2025: 20.7% aged over 65, a mean age of 44.5 years and 19.3% born abroad. Born abroad is not the same as foreign: 14.1% of the population has foreign nationality.

How Spain has aged

In 2000 Spain had more people over 64 than under 16 for the first time; today there are 148 older people for every 100 young people (ageing index). The dependency ratio reached its low point in 2005 (47.2); the part attributable to older people has risen from 15.9 to 31.7 per 100 people aged 16 to 64.

By autonomous community

By province

The oldest province is Zamora, with 32.7% of its population over 65 and a mean age of 51.9 years; the youngest is Melilla, with 12.7%.

Sources and notes

• INE – Continuous Population Statistics (table 56945): population on 1 January by province, sex and single year of age since 1971. Regional figures are the sum of their provinces.
• INE – Population by place of birth (table 56948): people born in Spain and abroad by province, sex and age group since 2002.
• Definitions from the INE Basic Demographic Indicators: dependency ratio = (under-16s + over-64s) / population aged 16 to 64 × 100; ageing index = over-64s / under-16s × 100. Mean age is calculated from single years of age (the 100-and-over group counts as 100.5), so it may differ by a few tenths from the figure published by the INE.

Data updated 7 minutes ago