Life expectancy in Morocco

Back in the 1960s Life expectancy at birth in Morocco averaged around 62 years. Now it has made a leap to 73.1 years.

The number of 60-year-olds and over has moved from 833,000 to 2.4 million over the intervening decades, an annual rise of 2.3%. Incidently October 1 is celebrated in Morocco as the International Day of Older Persons.

It is forecast that the number of older persons will grow by 3.5% yearly between now and 2030, compared to 0.9% for overall population, and will reach 5.8 million by 2030. This will make that older age group 15.4% of the population as against 8.1% now.

One interesting cause for the demographic shift is that the average number of children per woman declined from 7.2 to 2.4 between the start of the 1960s and 2010.