In 2023, life expectancy in Kazakhstan reached a record high of 75.09 years. As stated in a study from Ranking.kz, at the beginning of 2024, the number of adults over the age of 60 in the country exceeded 2.7 million, an increase of 4.2% year-on-year.
Life expectancy in Kazakhstan has steadily increased for many years, except in 2020 and 2021, when it declined due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2022, this indicator began to rise again. The highest life expectancy was recorded in Almaty (78.28 years), Astana (78.09 years), Shymkent (76.32 years), and the Mangistau (75.84 years) and Atyrau (75.29 years) regions.
By the beginning of 2024, the number of older people in the total population had reached 13.6%, up from 12% in 2020, and 9.8% in 2010. International and Kazakhstani experts predict that the population’s demographic aging will intensify by 2050; the share of people over 60 will reach 16.7%, which means that every sixth resident of the country will be over 60 years old.
Population aging has led to a decrease in the potential support ratio of the working-age population (25 to 64 years old) to the number of people over 65 years old. This ratio fell from 7.7 in 2012 to 5.49 in 2023. The ratio will drop to 4 by 2050, significantly increasing the working-age population’s burden.
