Population ageing: the timebomb that isn’t?

Population ageing is a concern in all developed countries. For the first time, there are now more people over the age of 65 in the United Kingdom than there are children under 15 years.1 Over the past century, the proportion of over 65s has grown from about one in 20 to around one in six. Although declining birth rates and infant mortality formed the basis for this growth from the end of the 19th century until the second world war, since the 1970s increasing life expectancy has been an additional driving force (fig 1⇓). This population ageing has worried policy makers because for every worker paying tax and national insurance there are more older citizens, who make greater demands on social insurance, health, and welfare systems and have increasing morbidity and disability.2 3 4

The standard indicator of population ageing is the old age dependency ratio. It takes the number of people who have reached the state pension age and divides it by the number of working age (16-64 years) adults in order to estimate the proportion of older people relative to those who pay for them. Although the phased raising of the state pension age (from 65 for men and 60 …