The declining percentage of the working-age people

Abstrakti

Economically advanced countries currently have a distorted age structure. Their birth rate peaked after the Second World War, but soon declined to a low level and has remained there. The size of these large age groups is disproportionate in relation to the age cohorts that were born after them. During the next fi fteen years, the large age cohorts will exit working age. Younger age groups that enter working age are much smaller and thus the percentage of the working-age population decreases. At the same time, the size of the elderly age groups increases. The outcome is a demand pressure for services and income transfers which are too extensive for the public sector to respond to. This paper is strictly descriptive. Especially during the next twenty years the viability of advanced economies depends to a great extent on immigration but this issue is not the topic of this paper.