drawing pyramid plot using R and ggplot2

I did it with a little workaround – instead of using geom_bar, I used geom_linerange and geom_label.

library(magrittr)
library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)

population <- read.csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/andriy-gazin/datasets/master/ageSexDistribution.csv")

population %<>% 
  tidyr::gather(sex, number, -year, - ageGroup) %>% 
  mutate(ageGroup = gsub("100 і старше", "≥100", ageGroup), 
     ageGroup = factor(ageGroup,
                        ordered = TRUE,
                        levels = c("0-4", "5-9", "10-14", "15-19", "20-24",
                                   "25-29", "30-34", "35-39", "40-44", 
                                   "45-49", "50-54", "55-59", "60-64",
                                   "65-69", "70-74", "75-79", "80-84",
                                   "85-89", "90-94", "95-99", "≥100")),
     number = ifelse(sex == "male", number*-1/10^6, number/10^6)) %>% 
  filter(year %in% c(1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015))

png(filename = "~/R/pyramid.png", width = 900, height = 1000, type = "cairo")

ggplot(population, aes(x = ageGroup, color = sex))+
  geom_linerange(data = population[population$sex=="male",], 
                 aes(ymin = -0.3, ymax = -0.3+number), size = 3.5, alpha = 0.8)+
  geom_linerange(data = population[population$sex=="female",], 
                 aes(ymin = 0.3, ymax = 0.3+number), size = 3.5, alpha = 0.8)+
  geom_label(aes(x = ageGroup, y = 0, label = ageGroup, family = "Ubuntu Condensed"), 
         inherit.aes = F,
         size = 3.5, label.padding = unit(0.0, "lines"), label.size = 0,
         label.r = unit(0.0, "lines"), fill = "#EFF2F4", alpha = 0.9, color = "#5D646F")+
  scale_y_continuous(breaks = c(c(-2, -1.5, -1, -0.5, 0) + -0.3, c(0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2)+0.3),
                 labels = c("2", "1.5", "1", "0.5", "0", "0", "0.5", "1", "1.5", "2"))+
  facet_wrap(~year, ncol = 2)+
  coord_flip()+
labs(title = "Піраміда населення України",
   subtitle = "Статево-вікові групи у 1990-2015 роках, млн осіб",
   caption = "Дані: Держкомстат України")+
  scale_color_manual(name = "", values = c(male = "#3E606F", female = "#8C3F4D"),
                 labels = c("жінки", "чоловіки"))+
  theme_minimal(base_family = "Ubuntu Condensed")+
theme(text = element_text(color = "#3A3F4A"),
    panel.grid.major.y = element_blank(),
    panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
    panel.grid.major.x = element_line(linetype = "dotted", size = 0.3, color = "#3A3F4A"),
    axis.title = element_blank(),
    plot.title = element_text(face = "bold", size = 36, margin = margin(b = 10), hjust = 0.030),
    plot.subtitle = element_text(size = 16, margin = margin(b = 20), hjust = 0.030),
    plot.caption = element_text(size = 14, margin = margin(b = 10, t = 50), color = "#5D646F"),
    axis.text.x = element_text(size = 12, color = "#5D646F"),
    axis.text.y = element_blank(),
    strip.text = element_text(color = "#5D646F", size = 18, face = "bold", hjust = 0.030),
    plot.background = element_rect(fill = "#EFF2F4"),
    plot.margin = unit(c(2, 2, 2, 2), "cm"),
    legend.position = "top",
    legend.margin  = unit(0.1, "lines"),
    legend.text  = element_text(family = "Ubuntu Condensed", size = 14),
    legend.text.align = 0)

dev.off()

and here’s the resulting plot: