Some countries change with a bang—through elections, upheavals or sudden crises. Morocco is changing more discreetly, through arithmetic. The country’s latest demographic portrait, published in December 2025 by the Haut-Commissariat au Plan (HCP) and drawn from the 2024 General Population and Housing Census (RGPH 2024), reads less like a statistical annex and more like a political fact: Morocco is entering the age of longevity.
Start with the headline number. In 2024, Morocco counts about 5.027m people aged 60 and over, roughly 13.8% of the population. The striking part is not the level—many countries are older—but the speed: the number of older people rose by 58.7% between 2014 and 2024, far outpacing overall population growth. Demographic transitions rarely ask for permission; they simply gather momentum.
The HCP uses an indicator that makes the shift easy to picture. In 2024, Morocco has about 52 older people for every 100 children under 15—up from roughly 37 a decade earlier. Another ratio—the “old-age dependency” measure—has climbed to 22.8% (older people compared with those aged 15–59). These are not just technocratic metrics. They foreshadow pressure on family budgets, healthcare systems and any social contract built around a youthful labour force.
Ageing is not evenly distributed
Like most big transformations, Morocco’s is geographically uneven. The HCP describes a clear urbanisation of ageing. Nearly 63.7% of older Moroccans now live in cities, and the growth of the elderly population has been markedly faster in urban areas than in rural ones over the past two decades. The overall shares are close—about 14% aged 60+ in urban areas versus 13.4% in rural areas—but the trajectories differ, shaped by migration patterns, access to services, and the long tail of earlier rural exodus.
Regional gaps are sharper still. The Oriental (about 16.1% aged 60+) and Béni Mellal–Khénifra (15.2%) sit above the national average, while Dakhla-Oued Eddahab remains conspicuously young (4.8%). One policy, one tempo, one set of assumptions—none will fit the whole map.
A female old age—and a more precarious one
The report also confirms a pattern familiar across the world: old age is increasingly feminine. Women make up 51.2% of those aged 60+, and their share rises with age. Yet the social implications are distinctly Moroccan. The gulf in marital status is stark: about 90.5% of older men are married, compared with 52.1% of older women. Widowhood affects 37.6% of older women but only 4.1% of older men.
That translates into living arrangements—and loneliness. 9% of older people live alone; among women, the figure is 12.5%, versus 5.2% for men. The numbers are not (yet) Scandinavian. But the direction matters. As households shrink and urban life weakens traditional solidarities, the family can no longer be treated as an inexhaustible welfare state—especially for older women.
The compounding effect of inequality
Ageing does not erase the past; it concentrates it. Education is an instructive example. According to the HCP, 58% of older Moroccans cannot read or write. The gender divide is immense: literacy is 57.2% among older men and 27.4%among older women. The territorial divide is equally blunt: 55.1% literacy in urban areas versus 18.9% in rural ones. In a state that is digitising services and rights, low literacy becomes a barrier not only to culture, but to care, entitlements and autonomy.
Economic security shows a similar stratification. Only 19.2% of older people describe themselves as retired; among men the figure is 32.4%, among women 6.7%. And retirement is overwhelmingly urban (26.8% in cities, 5.9% in rural areas). Meanwhile, the overall activity rate for those 60+ is just 16.1%, with older men far more likely to work than older women. Where work continues, it often does so in precarious forms: among working seniors, self-employment is prominent, reflecting the weight of informality and the absence of universal pension protection.
Health, inevitably, becomes the centre of gravity. The HCP reports that 18.5% of older people live with a disability, rising steeply with age (around 38% among those 75+). Health insurance coverage has improved to 69.2%, but gaps remain by sex and residence—lower among women and in rural areas—and coverage declines among the oldest. A small but troubling detail sits in the data: 3.2% of older people report receiving no treatment at all. In demography, the margins often speak loudest.
Housing: a stabiliser—until it isn’t
One might expect the housing story to be uniformly bleak. It is more nuanced. The majority of households with older people are homeowners (81.6% nationally; 91.3% in rural areas). That offers stability. But “owning” does not always mean “equipped”. In rural areas, only 54.3% of homes have running water; 39.8% have a washroom; and just 7.7% are connected to public sanitation. Ageing “in place” is an attractive slogan—until the place is physically unfit for ageing.
The future is already on the calendar
The most sobering pages of the report are the forward-looking ones. By 2050, the HCP projects roughly 9.7m Moroccans aged 60+, around 22.9% of the population—close to one in four. The old-age dependency ratio could rise to 39.4%. Those figures do not predict doom; they predict an agenda. A society that lives longer must decide how it will finance that longevity, how it will organise care, and how it will prevent the burdens of ageing from falling—quietly, predictably—on women and rural families.
Morocco’s ageing is not a crisis. It is a transition—one that rewards countries that prepare early, and punishes those that treat demography as a backdrop. The HCP has done the country a service by turning a slow-moving reality into a readable set of facts. The question now is whether policy, markets and communities will match that clarity with action.