Khaberni - Official data reveals a historic decline in the proportion of children within Turkey’s demographic structure, marking 2025 as having the lowest level since records began in 1935.
According to the latest data from the Turkish Statistical Institute, the proportion of children only accounted for 24.8 percent of the total population, a decrease from 25.5 percent the previous year, confirming the continuous downward trend in population growth.
By the end of 2025, Turkey’s population reached approximately 86.1 million people, among them 21.3 million children under the age of 17, reflecting a sharp demographic shift compared to 1970, when children amounted to 48.5 percent of the population, before decreasing to 41.8 percent in the 1990s.
Future projections suggest that the proportion may fall to 14.5 percent by 2100 if the current patterns continue, while the optimistic scenario linked to successful pro-birth policies predicts stabilization at 18.6 percent at the turn of the century.
Despite the numerical decline, children in Turkey face increasing economic and social pressures, with poverty statistics indicating that 36.8 percent of children are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, a rate significantly higher than the country’s overall poverty rate of 27.9 percent.
In the education sector, the number of students in formal education for the academic year 2024-2025 exceeded 17.9 million, with improvements in completion rates, where primary education completion stood at 98.6 percent, and middle education at 96.6 percent, while it fell to 81.3 percent in secondary education, with girls significantly outperforming boys in completing their educational stages.
Compared to European Union countries, Turkey still boasts a younger society, outperforming Ireland, the leader in the EU, with its children’s proportion at 24.8 percent to Ireland's 22.7 percent, while Malta and Italy bottom out the list with rates close to 14 percent.
On the front of positive social transformations, statistics have registered a sharp decline in child marriages for the age group 16-17, dropping from 7.3 percent in 2002 to only 1.5 percent in 2025, reflecting an increasing societal awareness and changes in the legal and social structure.
