Demographic change: will we run out of workers?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Saturday 19 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Population ageing is rapidly becoming a prominent issue in many countries. Whether resulting from falling fertility rates, declining mortality, or increased longevity, older populations are thought to be another huge challenge facing the modern world. When declining birth-rates portend smaller populations, demographic fears amplify.

The World Bank explains that, more often than not, ageing populations are a source of concern, given the potential for higher health care and pension costs, unsustainable fiscal deficits, and intergenerational tensions. Most think tanks seem to concur that ageing is bad for economic growth. Older populations are believed to be less innovative, representing another barrier to reviving productivity growth in the advanced industrialised countries.

Meanwhile it is thought the shrinking proportion of the population that is working will be unable to sustain growing numbers of retired dependent people in reasonable comfort. Other commentators go further to claim that shrinking populations herald societal collapse.

One solution is to bring in workers from overseas. But immigration raises issues of its own, from strains on housing supply and public services to the potential for future liabilities as immigrants themselves grow old. Alongside rising immigration, however, is a rise in worklessness, with millions of working-age people unable to work through ill-health or because they are unable, or perhaps unwilling, to take on paid work. Some have suggested that the government should focus on pro-natal policies, making it easier for people to start families and have more children.

Contemporary demographic trends are frequently viewed as unstoppable and as an inevitable cause of increasing economic costs. Yet, the steady rise in life expectancy can also be viewed as one of the great human success stories. Just 120 years ago, half the population did not live beyond 32 years. Today, half the population is expected to live beyond 70.

How should we approach the consequences of demographic ageing? Is it an inexorable economic and social burden that we need to find ways of adapting to? What is the connection between population structure and size, and a country’s growth potential? Would it help if more policies focused on supporting healthy and active ageing? Can societies survive a decline in their population?

SPEAKERS
Dominic Frisby
writer; comedian; author, Bitcoin: the future of money?

Phil Mullan
writer, lecturer and business manager; author, Beyond Confrontation: globalists, nationalists and their discontents

Hilary Salt FIA, FPMI, FRSA
deputy leader SDP; actuary; partner, First Actuarial

Charlie Winstanley
public and social policy specialist; author, Bricking it (forthcoming) on the UK’s housing crisis

Chair

Rob Lyons

science and technology director, Academy of Ideas; convenor, AoI Economy Forum; author, Panic on a Plate