Aging population

Description:

The average age of the population in Western Europa will be increasing dramatically in the coming decades.

Aging population is the driving force which for example is driving Europe to accept Turkey into the EU. With the advances in medicine the population of the world is living longer which means that the world needs more resources to support this population. Although the birth rate is diminishing around the world. Resources are limited and therefore one day they will end.

Figure 1 gives the essence of the problem in the Netherlands. The same trend counts for the most of Western Europe. In the next 25 years, the percentage of people over 65 will explode and the percentage of people onder 20 will fall dramatically.

Enablers:

   -	Technogical advances in medicine

- Better living conditions in the Developing world - More health awareness

Inhibitors:

  -	Extending the retirement age another 10 years so people will have to work more & retire later

Paradigms:

There has been enormous concern about the consequences of human population growth for the environment and for social and economic development. But this population growth is likely to come to peak and then decline in the foreseeable future.

Experts:

United Nations US Department of Health and Human Services

Timing:

Improving on earlier methods of probabilistic forecasting, here we show that there is approximately 85 per cent chance that the world's population will stop growing before the end of the century. There is a 60 per cent probability that the world's population will not exceed 10 billion people before 2100, and around a 15 per cent probability that the world's population at the end of the century will be lower than it is today. For different regions, the date and size of the peak population will vary considerably.