Median Ageing Population

First of all, older people consume a larger proportion of public services. For example, they require more health and social

The Australian Government has identified that Australia’s population is ageing (Department of Health and Ageing, 2012). Rather than viewing this changing shift as an inconvenience due to the affect that ageing will have on labour supply, economic output, infrastructure requirements and governments’ budgets, the government has taken

This line chart illustrates the percentage of citizens who are older than 65 years old from 1940 to 2040 in Japan, Sweden and USA re?nospectively. Overall, the trends of the proportion of the elderly in these countries all increase, and the percentages are expected to be appmximately(?) 29% in 2040.

Figure 1, taken from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015), shows Australia’s demographic trend of an ageing population between 1995 and 2015. It can be noted that the proportion of Australia 's population aged 15-49 years remained fairly stable, however during the same period, the proportion of people aged 55 years and over increased from 11.9% to 15.0% and the proportion of people aged 85 years and over almost doubled from 1.1% of the total population in 1995 to 2% in 2015.

A well cared for geriatric population has many benefits on the economy as a whole. According to Project report from the Integrated Human Studies on the elder population of Australia, “The ageing population is often stereotyped as a burden and their detrimental impact on the economy is exaggerated causing their significant societal contributions to be overlooked. More precise analysis and research show that having an ageing population is often advantageous in terms of lower health care costs in later years of life and other beneficial contributions to the community.” Elderly people cannot withstand much excessive surgery and the shift of dependent elderly people from hospitals to residential and nursing homes will minimize health care costs as it transfers the expenditure from health care to social care funds. Since social care is increasingly becoming more privatized, elderly people are less likely to financially burden the government (Healy 2004). The older population contributes to a lower crime rate, and they support informal social networks, which in turn ties the community

They noted that, as Japan became an advanced industrialised nation, the transformation has been accompanied by a change in family values most similarly found in developed Western society. The shift from agrarian to industrial has caused the burden of elderly care to be handed over to the state, businesses and unions, in the form of care homes or nursing units. Ogawa and Retherford continue to suggest that the urbanisation of societies causes cohesion within the family to decrease. They hypothesised that in urban communities, families work away from home and often take up residence in different localities. Where coresidence arrangements do not exist, parental authority retains a social basis but little or no economic basis, thereby increasing the potential for intergenerational conflict.’ (1993:586). Providing evidence for this, the Office for National Statistics found that 60% of older people in the UK agree that age discrimination exists in their daily lives (Population Trends 42, cited in Later Life in the United Kingdom 2014:4) and that 76% agree that the government does not make use of the skills and talents of older people (One Voice: Shaping our aged society, Age Concern and Helped the Aged 2009 cited in Later Life in the United Kingdom 2014:4). These statistics show that in

The population of Japan is experiencing a ‘death by demographics,’ with the population predicted to diminish by one-third approaching 2060. The fertility rate (births per woman) of 1.4 is falling far below the replacement level for the population, while the proportion of those aged 65 or above continues to mushroom. Low fertility rates are also present in Australia, which has been falling short of the population replenishment level since at least 1976. In 2013, this stood at 1.88 children per woman. Worryingly, current trends suggest that growing numbers of young people are choosing either not to have families, or to have smaller

At this stage, their age has limited them to some of the things they were capable of doing. Some of the elderly find it difficult to depend on others with the notion they were once independent. The support to this aging population has put pressure on their families both physically and financially. As explained in (Hayutin et al. 2010), the ability of people to live longer through healthy lifestyle and proper care has double the aging population from 65 and over. Having the aging population in mind when developing policies, will help the focus to their changing lifestyle and manage their needs to prevent excess expenditures that with live the younger people stranded.

The first implication of an aging society is a reduced labor supply. The elderly dependency ratio in the US has increased from 1980 to 2013 significantly. In 1980, the ratio of elderly to working aged is 17 per 100, but in 2013 it went to 21. The more elderly that are being supported by the working class creates a larger burden on the government pension and healthcare programs (i.e. Social Security and

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projections illustrate that the total number of people aged 65 and over will almost double from 2.6 million in 2004 to around 4.5 million in 2021, and upto 7-9 million in 2051. Meanwhile, the ratio of those of workforce age (15–64) to old age (65 and older) will drop notably from 5:1 in 2002 to 3.4:1 in 2021, and 2.2:1 in 2051.These trends are predicted to make the increased demand for aged care inevitable, thus exceeding the supply. This workforce shortfall is further worsened by the fact that an ageing population increases service demand whereas an ageing workforce decreases service capacity.

geriatric age population are valuable to younger generations. For instance, in Japan, old age population is able to

Regarding a dearth in the working population, an aging population significantly reduces the size of the labour force in a city. With reference to figure 1, which is about the percentage of total population age sixty-five and older and age eighty and older in eight countries from 1980 to 2020, the table shown that the increasing percentage of old people among three countries: Japan, Canada and Australia raised highly than other countries in comparison. Japan had the highest increase by 89% and followed by Canada (36%) and 26% in Australia. The increasing elderly indicates a larger number of retired people. It implies that adults have to work even harder to financially support the entire population, resulting in an escalating dependency ratio in the sense that “an increase in the ratio is understood to mean a growing burden on each person in the workforce

At the outset, taking the example of a country of Japan.In Japan, 40 percent of the total population are old. This massive number of non-working, retired seniors, have put tremendous pressure on the existing resources of Japan. Nowadays, the import bill of Japan has surged enormously

Since the desire of immortality may cause economic problems for both people and countries, this idea must be given up immediately. Currently, one of the global issues that governments are striving is that the older generations become predominant numerically in the societies. Even though Japan, Australia or Scandinavian countries are the most developed places in the world, the main obstacle in front of the growth of these countries is the economic problems of having older populations (“Population Challenges and Development Goals”, 2005). As the number of older people increases, the economy is losing its dynamism since the

The Japanese population is rapidly aging and the number of elderly people will account for a large part of it. Some care problems will be heavy burden on young people. For example, it is possible that the young generation has to leave their companies in order to devote time to their older family member’s care. Furthermore, the shortage of young workers leads other problems such as the decline of business and the pension plan. Elderly people taking care of elderly people has also become an important issue today. Therefore, Japan has to find alternatives for making up for the caregiver shortages and improving the situation in aging society. Some kind of alternatives (e.g. introduction of foreign care workers) can be listed, but this