Do Population 65+ and Women's political empowerment go together across countries?

Across 168 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = +0.62, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives +0.68.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

Comparing each country only with itself across 1990-2025, and setting aside what happened worldwide in each year, the link is -0.136 (174 countries, 6,182 country-years). Using year-to-year changes, it is -0.025.

Does Population 65+ cause Women's political empowerment?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Population 65+ vs. Women's political empowerment

Fades after adjusting for income

Across 168 countries, Population 65+ and Women's political empowerment rise and fall together at r = +0.62 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) leaves r = +0.48, which could easily be chance (q = 0.17, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike).

Comparing countries across the middle half of women's political empowerment, 0.625 to 0.873 points, population 65+ is 6.31% of population higher at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 3.71% of population.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.617p = 5.7e-19 · 168 countries

After adjusting for national income+0.476p = 8.3e-11 · likely range [+0.35, +0.59]

p, allowing for regions0.021standard error 0.152 · 7 regions

Check for luck (q)0.168across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Population 65+ · % of populationlink with income +0.76 · high

Women's political empowerment · index (0-1)link with income +0.54 · moderate

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	+0.617	5.7e-19	168
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	+0.681	2.8e-24	168
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	+0.476	8.3e-11	168
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	+0.493	1.3e-11	168

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 168 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.141 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.440 (without QAT) to +0.502 (without AFG). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: QAT (-0.035).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	21	+0.07
Europe & Central Asia	49	+0.65
Latin America & Caribbean	23	+0.36
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan	21	+0.69
Sub-Saharan Africa	46	+0.10

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	56	-0.22
Middle third	56	+0.42
Richest third	56	+0.77

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	99	+0.29
Muslims	48	+0.42

By last european coloniser

	n	r
France	25	-0.10
Never a European colony	21	+0.53
Spain	19	+0.44
United Kingdom	49	+0.48

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.521 after dropping 2 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 36years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

The link shows up within countries over time (r = -0.136) but mostly disappears in year-to-year changes (r = -0.025). That points to slow trends particular to each country, not the two measures moving together from year to year.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.476for comparison

Within countries+0.291each country vs itself

…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.136q = 0.036 · 174 countries

Year-on-year changes-0.025q = 0.181

The direction flips. Comparing each country only with itself gives +0.29. Also taking out what happened to the whole world each year gives -0.14. So the first figure was picking up a trend both measures share with worldwide progress, not a link between them.

Read with care.

Almost all of the second indicator's variation is between countries, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

6,182 country-years (one country in one year), 174 countries, 1990–2025, about 36 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 13% for Population 65+, 9% for Women's political empowerment. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

Same year (lag 0): -0.136. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The data

	% of population	index (0-1)	Years
Japan JPN	30%	0.844	2025
Italy ITA	25.1%	0.929	2025
Portugal PRT	24.9%	0.811	2025
Greece GRC	24.4%	0.896	2025
Finland FIN	24.2%	0.932	2025
Germany DEU	23.7%	0.942	2025
Hong Kong SAR, China HKG	23.7%	0.801	2025
Croatia HRV	23.6%	0.913	2025
Serbia SRB	23.1%	0.864	2025
Bosnia and Herzegovina BIH	22.9%	0.821	2025
France FRA	22.5%	0.929	2025
Bulgaria BGR	22.2%	0.907	2025
Slovenia SVN	22.2%	0.94	2025
Latvia LVA	22.2%	0.95	2025
Estonia EST	21.8%	0.941	2025

World Bank, World Development Indicators
Coppedge, M. et al., V-Dem Dataset, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project

Sources

Population 65+

Population ages 65 and above (% of total)

World Bank · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

Women's political empowerment

Women's political empowerment index

V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

Women's civil liberties, their part in civic groups, and their political representation. It is built from its own set of questions, not from the parts of the democracy indices, so it is not tagged as measuring the same thing. Still, read its links with them carefully. Whether women take part in politics is partly built into whether real political participation exists at all. So a strong link with general democracy measures is closer to definitional (true by how the terms are defined) than to a finding about the world.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Population 65+ and Women's political empowerment

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Population 65+ changes Women's political empowerment, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.