population ageing

Professor Hafiz Khan PhD is Professor of Public Health & Statistics at the Graduate School, University of West London and an associate research fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing at the University of Oxford, UK. He trained as a statistician and has developed his academic career in the area of public health over the last 25 years. His current research interests include healthy ageing, co-morbidity in later life and long-term care and support provision for older people. He has published important articles on health and population related issues and disseminated research findings through all media. He has co-authored two books, "Research Methods for Business and Social Science", Sage, 2007 and 2014. He is a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and the Royal Society for Public Health and is a member of the academic advisory panel of the UK Commonwealth Scholarship Commission.

In this section I outline key Australian studies of the aged and population ageing to identify relevant research directions and key research findings. I structure this analysis around two key research themes beginning with studies analysing the dynamics of a growing aged cohort and population ageing in Australia and then insights from the new analytical dimensions to examine the aged and ageing in Australia. Australian researchers also contribute to general theoretical and methodological research, and applied research into other countries. Their insights into these issues, where relevant, were included in Section 3.1 above. The focus of this section is research findings relevant to Australia. Like other developed countries, at the national level, the forces contributing to ageing in Australia are well understood. Kippen (2002) provides a summary of these conditions— fertility below replacement level since the mid-1970s, a fall in mortality at older ages (estimated at the time of publication to be 20 and 50 per cent since the early 1970s) and the ageing of the baby boomer cohort born between 1946 and 1966. Additionally, the “ageing of the aged” in Australia, like other advanced economies, is also established (Hugo 2003). More recent studies, including by Davies and James (2012) have incorporated spatial dimensions to examine population age structures at a subnational level. They found a combination of geographic, social and economic conditions contribute to spatial unevenness in Australia, with remoteness/accessibility, size of the population and proportion of the Indigenous people in the population provided good explanatory power of the variability.

Two features of recent economic experience have been the transition to post- Fordism and the ageing of populations. Post-Fordism entails diverse production and consumption, flexible employment, privatisation and a smaller welfare state. Population ageing is predicted to cause financial problems for state pension schemes and could provoke an ageing crisis. Although post-Fordism and population ageing have similar expected consequences, with a stress on welfare retrenchment, they have been discussed as separate topics and few connections have been made between them; the present paper aims to bring them closer together and consider how they are related. Post-Fordism could be seen as resolving the ageing crisis and offering people better work and retirement choices in a new, post-Fordist life course, but this version of events is questionable. An alternative view is that post-Fordism and the ageing crisis are symptoms of the general movement towards privatisation and laissez faire, which is by no means guaranteed to improve the welfare of older people.

sion published its most up-to-date long-term projections in 2001 (EC, 2001). The EC cooperated closely with the OECD and used identical or very si- milar demographic and macroeconomic assumptions. Moreover, the same methodology was applied, which further contributes to the international comparability of our results and those presented by the EC. It was docu- mented that the Czech Republic belongs to the group of fast ageing count- ries. This has consequences for the evolution of pension and health care spending, which are the major items driving public expenditure up. It is apparent from Table 12 that the Czech pension system will be severely hit by population ageing and pension spending will rise rapidly even in com- parison with other countries facing unfavourable demographic develop- ment. This result can be partly attributed to the fact that pension spen- ding continues rising even beyond 2030, while spending increases are contained or even turn negative in other European countries. Dampening demographic pressures in EU countries beyond 2030 and the introduction of pension reforms in many European countries can explain the difference in the pattern of pension spending. In the Czech Republic, a consensus over pension reform has not yet been reached; the reform has been postponed and only minor parametric changes have been phased in. On the other hand, the increase in health care spending can be considered average vis- -à-vis EU countries.

China has experienced rapid fertility decline since the 1970s. The total fertility rate dropped from 5.81 in 1970 to 1.67 in 2005. Meanwhile, China’s life expectancy has increased dramatically as a result of socioeconomic development and advancements in science and medicine. The life expectancy at birth was 40.8 years in 1950 and increased by 2005 to 70.5 and 73.7 years for males and females, respectively. The rapid fertility decline combined with the increase in life expectancy brings a dramatic change in the age structure of population. China is expected to have a fast population ageing in the next two to three decades. The working age population is expected to stop growing and begin to decline while the elderly population aged 65 and over is expected to increase rapidly. But how fast is population ageing in China? The speed of ageing will be influenced by future fertility, mortality and migration. China’s family planning policy has made dominant contribution to the fast fertility decline during past four decades and the possible change of the family planning policy will impact China’s future fertility therefore the future population trends. Furthermore, the health program especially rural health program under reform will make difference to future mortality therefore to the future population trends. Since age structure change has important implications for China’s economic growth and social development, Future trends in population in general and age structure in particular will be of great concern and interest for policy makers and development planning purposes. Providing timely and accurate population projections is thus of crucial importance for planning the development strategy in China. This paper aims to conduct population projections over the period of 2005 to 2050 in China under different fertility and mortality scenarios and examines the speed and scope of population ageing and discusses their implications for China’s social security policies and economic development strategies.  

the population ageing phenomenon is nothing that we do not un- derstand, and this policy Brief provides a simplistic overview of issues associated with ageing in the European region. population ageing is a phenomenon in which we have a rising share of older people and a fall- ing overall population. this is not a disaster waiting to happen, in fact it is offering us new opportunities to find new ways to continue to live together and continue to prosper. the core message of this policy Brief is that the population ageing can lead to a disaster or it can become an opportunity but it all depends on how well ageing societies prepare for it. the analyses included here go through different policy domains and also discuss ideas about how public policies in the European countries ought to change in the future. the aging population phenomenon is offering us a new setting in which we have to realise and benefit from the full potential of older people. a new social coherence will have to be found in a society in which younger and older people live well and productively with each other. And this phenomenon is actually not just a challenge for public policies but also for the private sector and there is even greater need than ever before for all these key stakeholders to work together for the future.

In fact the main issue for pension funding is not population ageing per se but its combination with changes in birth rates, the structure of employment and the practice of retirement. In a very short space of time there has been a major restructuring of the life course in most EU countries resulting from the truncation of employment prior to pension ages (Kohli, et al, 1991; Walker, 1997, 1999a). In some EU countries this was a trend openly encouraged by public policy. Thus, paradoxically, as longevity has increased, the age at which people exit from economic activity has fallen. Since the 1950s there has been an average increase in longevity in the EU of around 10 years and a parallel decline in the age of final labour force exit of the same magnitude. As Esping-Andersen (1996) has put it, Europe has 'doubled pension benefit years and cut contribution years by around 25 per cent'. The realisation that early exit created problems within employment as well as social protection (and that its benefits in terms of reducing youth unemployment were, at best, only partial) has led most EU governments to abandon or curtail its encouragement (see below).

the nordic countries are widely seen as forming a ‘family’ or a ‘regime’ of welfare states that is characterized by extensive redistribution, high legitimacy for public welfare provi- sion, universal (citizenship- based) and earnings- related social rights, and comparatively low levels of inequality (kautto 2010). they are also argued to share normative founda- tions in the form of widespread support for policies that foster equality of opportunities, a high degree of equality of outcomes, and gender equality (kildal and kuhnle 2005). In the area of benefits and services for older people, this translates into pension systems that cover the entire older population at a relatively generous benefit level (kautto 2012), and long- term care systems that grant older adults with disabilities the right to public assistance. Szebehely (2011: 215) states that the hallmark of the nordic ‘service state’ is extensive provision of high- quality services that are taken up by all sections of the popu- lation, rich and poor alike. What happens when population ageing and extensive welfare state provisions coincide? are these comparatively ‘generous’ welfare states sustainable when confronted with such aged populations and further population ageing?

International migration is shaped by multiple forces, one of which is the need for workers in particular sectors of the economy. Because migration is selective not only with respect to skills and qualifications, but also with respect to age, it has been thought that migration can be used to counterbalance some of the effects of population ageing by, in particular, helping to reduce labour shortages. Actual migration trends have shown that dynamic economies can indeed rely on migrants to satisfy their labour needs, but those needs are not necessarily the result of population dynamics. Economic factors are often more important determinants of the need for additional workers than population trends, which are of long gestation and take a long time to play themselves out. Thus, migrants have not necessarily been flowing to all countries with slowly growing or even declining populations. Whereas many countries experiencing such population trends are important destinations for migrants, not all of them attract enough migrants to counterbalance their emigration flows. Furthermore, migration flows are often volatile, responding as they do to current economic and political developments in both countries of destination and countries of origin. It is therefore by no means certain that migration will necessarily contribute to reduce the effects of population ageing in all the countries that are already far advanced in that process and, even if it does, its effects are likely to be small.

More recently, Börsch-Supan, Ludwig and Winter (2006) used a stylised multi-country overlapping generations model and long-term demographic projections for different sets of countries to project international capital flows over a seventy-year period and they found evidence that population ageing results, at least in an initial stage, in a higher capital stock, but when the Baby Boom generations start to consume their retirement savings the capital stock is expected to decrease. Their simulations suggest that significant effects of capital mobility will occur, even if capital flows are restricted to the OECD (capital flows from fast ageing countries to less fast ageing countries). They also conclude that saving rates, rates of return and international capital flows react substantially less to demographic change once households absorb some part of the demographic shock by lengthening the working period in their lives.

Population ageing is the important problem of our country in recent years. Scholars have done a lot of research on it, but as a result of the census data are difficult to obtain, therefore there are few relevant empirical papers. Cai Fang in 2010 tested the demographic dividend gradually disappear and the arrival of lewis turning point judgment and China is faced with “old before getting rich” situation [4]. Hu Angang, et al. used so low model, from the theoretical and empirical aspects to verify the population ageing and population growth would have a negative impact on economic growth [5]. It is found that China’s ageing population has the characteristics of the unbalanced spatial distribution and the expansion trend of regional differences. Per capita GDP and birth rate are the two most important factors affecting China’s population ageing. The urbanization rate has a great positive impact on middle and western ageing [6].

Population-ageing – a term which in general refers to an increasing life span of an average member of a society – is one of the key stylized facts of the development process. It has had and will have some major impacts on economic and social structures in developing and industrialized economies. This fact is reflected by a large body of literature dealing with it. Well known examples of this literature are development and growth theories related to population growth, e.g. classical theories (like Malthusian development traps) and neoclassical growth theory (ranging from Solow-model to endogenous-growth theories), and most obviously theories of social security and pension systems. As well, these aspects are associated with actual policy making, including development policy (World Bank, UN, etc), population policy (e.g. in China), and major changes in pension and health systems in some industrialized economies. A very general discussion of population-ageing is provided by IMF (2004). The focus of our paper is on economic growth. (To some extent our paper has implications for pension systems as well). For an extensive discussion of models dealing with ageing and economic growth see, e.g., Gruescu (2007); for a short, but still very comprehensive, discussion see, e.g., Mc Morrow and Röger (2003). An overview of empirical studies is provided by, e.g., Groezen et al. (2005).

In 2018, tuberculosis (TB) was still the top infectious killer in the world [1]. The End TB strat- egy aims at a 90% reduction in TB incidence rate by 2035 compared with 2015, but the current global rate of decline of around 2% per year is not on track to achieve this [2]. Latent TB infec- tion risk accumulates over lifetimes while TB transmission is ongoing. The prevalence of latent TB infection is highest in older age groups [3], who not only have had the longest exposure, but were often exposed to higher TB transmission rates in the past. ageing, with associated higher rates of progression [4], thus acts as a demographic driver towards higher per capita TB incidence [5]. In the Western Pacific region, many countries have their highest per capita TB incidence rates among older age groups [1]. Among Western Pacific region countries, China, Hong Kong (China), Japan, Korean, Singapore, and Taiwan are facing both high TB burden and population ageing[6,7].

demand for their output. This is because government is a major purchaser of health and education, and we model government commodity demands as price-inelastic. For example, consider government demand for health. In moving from the basecase to the counterfactual case, we remove age-related increases in government health demand. This accounts for the fall in health output (Table 3, row 100, column 4). As output of health falls, so too does demand for health related occupations. This accounts for the falls in employment in health-related occupations in column 3 of Table 4. However these occupations are used predominantly in health, and thus have few employment prospects outside of this sector. At the same time, holders of health-related skills supply their labour predominantly to health-related occupations. Hence, as demand for health output falls, suppliers of health-related skills bear much of the adjustment via lower wages. The fact that the resulting lower price of health output does not generate much increase in health demand (because demand for health is price inelastic) adds to the downward pressure on health worker wages. The resulting falls in health wages are high: medical practitioners, nursing professionals, miscellaneous health professionals and enrolled nurses experience wage reductions of around 20 per cent (relative to basecase) by 2025. This result tells us two things. Firstly, an adjustment mechanism is missing from our model. For example, we would expect the downward pressure on wages in health-related occupations to be mitigated by factors such as reduced enrollments in courses leading to the acquisition of medical skills, and reduced intake of immigrants with medical skills. For this reason, the wage outcomes cannot be interpreted as forecasts. However they do anticipate adjustment pressure. Recall that we report results as the effects of removing the effects of population ageing. As such, our results for health-related wages indicate a need to increase training of workers with health-related skills in order to reduce age-related cost pressures in health.

In the present study, we have explained data relating to population ageing among SC population in India and West Bengal. Population pyramids on SC population for India and West Bengal in censuses 2001 and 2011 have been presented here. Remarkable shrinkages of pyramids on SC population over years 2001–2011 indicates a decline in fertility leading to an increase in the proportion of elderly population. Proportion of population aged 0–14 years decreased over year 2001–2011, but there are increasing trends in population for other age-groups. Sex ratios of elderly among SC population in West Bengal are generally higher than those in India meaning that more elderly females are living in West Bengal than India. Per cent of working elderly among SC population is lesser than that among ST population in India and West Bengal. Per cent of working elders among SC population in West Bengal is very low compared to that in India. Per cent of working female elders among SC population is 7.7 whereas that figure in Indian context is 28.5. Among elders belonging to SC population, about 60, 80, 40 per cent person, male and females respectively are currently

With respect to the three main demographic variables—fertility, mortality and net-migration—the model allows them to change over time. Demographic change is assumed to be exogenous. Changes in population size, age-structure and sex-structure are driven by a set of precise assumption relating to future level of fertility, mortality and net-migration. Therefore the modelling of changing demography is integral part of the model. The methodology followed is analogous to “building in” a cohort- component population projection structure to the model. This feature makes it ideal for studying the impact of a variety of what can be termed “demographic shocks”, such as different rates of population ageing.

Within the normal working ages some capable individuals who are expected to be economically active are not part of the registered labour force. A relatively small group has enough unearned income to make economic activity superfluous. Numerically greater are members of households with one or more individuals already working, whose employment is not needed as the household's sole income source. This group is mostly female and undertakes extensive informal economic activity, including informal care of the elderly. The absence of informal care from national accounts can give a biased impression of the consequences of population ageing, overemphasising formal provision (Williams 1985). Much of the 'burden' of the elderly is carried by capable individuals who are themselves dependent according to an employment-based definition; ironically, their economic inactivity stems from an activity highly pertinent to the matter in hand. A wider perspective of economic activity is essential for a comprehensive treatment of population ageing.

By introducing exogenous constraints, mainstream economics is more amenable to the modelling of social and institutional influences on behaviour, and also to the advocacy of policy intervention. The purer individualism of the economic approach is often allied to laissez-faire opinions, as is evident in the writings of the Chicago School and the New Right. A thoroughgoing laissez-faire would trust markets to make the necessary adjustments for population ageing, so there would be no call for policy responses. Mainstream economics is less sanguine about the economy's self-adjusting properties, and leaves more openings for policy intervention to offset market failure. There remains a residual doubt about policy, however: if constraints are introduced as rigidities preventing market clearing, then it can easily be concluded that constraints should be removed to restore an efficient market-clearing equilibrium. Mainstream economics has the same basic formulation of the economy as neoclassical theory, and can be criticised as being an 'imperfectionist' version of neoclassical economics. 3 Many mainstream economists espouse

In Bangladesh as in other regions of the world, the population ages 60 years and older is growing faster than the total population. Growth in the elderly population relative to other age groups challenges existing health services, family relationships and social security. With continued population ageing, the loss of cognitive function will potentially cause enormous social and economic burden on families, communities and, to the country. Using the census and secondary data, the paper investigates that increasing longevity and declining fertility are combining to convert the population age structure from young to old. This combination is resulting implications on the family health care and unmet need of health care services in the public sector. The support index shows that there will be fewer persons to support elderly population in future with implications in traditional family care. The care index shows the cost of burden for long term care associated with the shift in the population age structure. As a consequence Bangladeshi societies will confront population aging without traditional kin support.

Migration has also been a factor contributing to population ageing, although like mortality, its overall impact has been very small. Figure 5 shows the trend in net migration—the difference between immigrants and emigrants—for the period 1951- 2001. Throughout most of this period, the number of emigrants was larger than the number of immigrants, leading to population loss. However, the current situation is effectively one of balance where the number of immigrants is equal to the number of emigrants. Immigrants and emigrants tend to share many common socio-economic characteristics, with a main one being age. On average, both immigrants and emigrants tend to come from the younger age groups. In other words, in most of this period, Scotland lost more young people than it gained, which clearly contributed to population ageing. However, the scale of net migration has not been particularly large when measured relative to the total size of the population. More specifically, in this period net migration never exceeded one per cent of the total population (and rarely reached one-half of a per cent). Even though Scotland has historically been a net loser of people,