Assessment of the aging process of the populations of EU countries based on the beta convergence model

Abstract

The aging process of European populations is intensifying. The aim of the article is to assess this phenomenon in EU member states using basic demographic coefficients and to answer the question of how the Polish population is aging compared to the EU. The values of the coefficients were calculated on the basis of data obtained from the Eurostat database and cover the years 2010 and 2016–2019. The assessment of the analogy of the aging process between the populations of EU countries was based on the beta convergence model, determined for each of the analysed population aging indicators of the 28 EU member states. The results of the calculations show a convergence in the analysed period: countries where at the beginning of the research period the values of a given indicator were lower demonstrated a greater increase of this measure than countries for which the initial values of the given indicator were higher. This observation leads to the conclusion that the differences between EU countries in terms of the aging of the populations is decreasing.