Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
JOURNAL OF GEOGRAPHY-COGRAFYA DERGISI, sa.44, ss.231-250, 2022 (ESCI)
Although aging studies carried out in Turkey often deal with the changing trends in various indicators on global and national scales, aging patterns at the sub-national level have been neglected. This article aims to determine population's aging trends in Turkey on a local scale from a spatial-temporal perspective. The study has chosen districts as the spatial unit and 2010 and 2020 as the temporal indicators, as these dates depict detailed up-to-date trends. The indicators of numeric aging, structural aging, and annual average elderly population growth rate have been calculated and mapped. The findings show that numeric aging occurs in the central districts of the provinces and metropolitan cities and that structural aging differs between Eastern and Western Turkey as well as between the coastal and mainland sections of the country at the regional level, while these differences occur more between the central and peripheral districts within provinces at the local level. In addition, the study indicates the elderly population to have increased at a higher rate than the national population growth rate in most districts over the 10-year period. These results indicate that taking the numeric and structural spatial trends of aging policies and practices (even the rates of change) in all areas affected by aging and taking action accordingly are urgent necessities.