Explore Challenges
- Countryside in Crisis?
- The Energy Water Food Stress Nexus
- Unsustainable Fishing
- Keeping pace with a digital revolution
- Global health in the 21st Century
- Adapting to an urban future
- Educating for tomorrow
- Digital technology in Africa
- Persistent poverty in Britain
- Can the UK ever be sustainable?
- Plastic pollution in the oceans
- Natural disasters: how to improve?
- Not In My Back Yard
- Digital Divide in the UK?
- Importing goods, exporting drought?
- Britain’s ageing population
- Engineering our climate
- The future shape of Capitalism
- Migration: skills and the job market
- Razing the Rainforest
- London under water
- Concreting the countryside
- Future of low carbon energy
- Africa in the 21st Century
Britain’s ageing population
What is the issue?
Many developed nations,
including Britain, are
experiencing the rapid ageing
of their populations.
Adapting to this trend poses
economic, social and political
challenges which will raise the
dependency of older citizens
on those of working age.
Japan, Germany Italy, Spain,
Russia and China all face the
beginning of a similar
demographic fate over the next
few decades.
There are two megatrends causing these demographic changes:
1 Low / declining fertility rate
Women in Britain are having fewer children that previous generations
2 Rising longevity
People are living longer, through improvements in health, diet and preventative care
In 2007 the World Population Ageing report was produced by the United Nations. This report presents the current assessment of the status of the world’s older population and prospects for the future.
It also provides a description of global trends in population ageing and includes key indicators of the ageing process for each of the major areas, regions and countries of the world.
In the coming decades increased pressure will be placed upon both the British pension and the National Health Service (NHS).
With the retirement of the baby boomers, older people will increasingly become dependent on a declining population of working age.
30 years
The increase in average life expectancy in Britain during the 20th century
61%
Projected increase in the number of people aged over 65 in UK by 2032
[Office for National Statistics, 2008]
2007
The year that people in Britain aged over 65 outnumbered those under 16 for the first time ever
What are the options ?
1 Raise the age of retirement
2 Raise productivity growth so those at work contribute more to society and community
3 Sustain or increase levels of migration – to help fill labour /skills gaps
4 Encourage working, taxpaying population to save more