engleski

Workforce and Financial Challenges of Population Ageing - A Regional Perspective

The majority of European countries are witnessing a population ageing process for several decades. This trend is rapidly transforming the age structure of society, resulting in a declining share of working-age persons in the total population. During the next three decades, the number of older people is projected to follow an upward trend. Population ageing has resulted primarily from a long-term fall in fertility rates and increased life expectancy. The growing number of older people (65+) within society leads to a range of economic challenges, such as pressure on economic growth, reduced labour supply, higher social and healthcare costs etc. Such negative processes call into question the sustainability of public finances. Namely, on the assumption that the old-age dependency ratio will continue to rise, a shrinking labour force may no longer be able to provide enough earnings for pensions and healthcare systems. One of the major areas of concerns for policymakers is the cost of providing adequate health and long-term care, as very old people consume proportionally more social services than other age groups. Demographic trends of population ageing in Croatia are rather similar to other EU member states. As the issue of population ageing is very important it is often present in scientific literature and theory and therefore it should be at least equally important to economic policy makers. The main analysis in the chapter includes relation between population ageing and potential pressure on the size of the workforce and financial challenges of our social systems. As the share of older people (65+) differs between the EU member states the regional analysis in context of median age of the population in each of the EU-28 member state is provided. Furthermore, overall scores of Active ageing Index (AAI) for EU-28 are presented, showing regional aspect of the population ageing. The chapter also explains potential financial products and services which can support solving the mentioned social and economic problems based on the analysis of contemporary financial systems, techniques and mechanism, etc., which should be implemented in observed countries.

working-age population ; older people ; financial indicators ; regional perspective

Indeksiranost: Econlit