The Ageing of the Population in Developed Countries – the Economic Consequences in the Czech Republic

Abstract

IntroductionOne of the tasks of economic sciences is the endeavour to estimate the economic consequences of current development trends on the future - among other things, on the forthcoming living standard of inhabitants, but also on issues of cooperation among individuals, corporations, states and continents. A truly fundamental trend at the turn of the 20th and 21st century is the of the population in developed countries. In the following text, we will attempt to explain certain consequences of this development and make certain deductions which attempt to describe the probable impacts of this on economic systems which we usually label as democratic and market, based on private ownership.For this reason, we define the term ageing per se in the way it will subsequently be worked with in the text, i.e. not as an individual question, but as a social and, understandably, an economic problem.In order to be able to express the question of ageing as a crucial question of future economic development, it is necessary at least partially to deal with certain traditional concepts of collisional situations of economic development in the next decades. In respect of the fact that it is not the aim of the work to refute or confirm this theory in the given context, but only to set it into the correct context with the theme, we can assert after a relatively general analysis of the problem that, from the perspective of current knowledge, the of the population is truly the main problem of the world economy of our century.A decisive aspect of the problem of the ageing of the population in the 21st century is not the danger of inhabitant decline on a global scale; in this sense, there is no reason not to believe expectations that the population as a whole will increase to a level higher than ten billion people (from the current approximately seven billion) within the next decades. The decrease of numbers of inhabitants will, however, concern developed countries, despite considerable migration. Most importantly, however, a fundamental generational change of the population will occur, the impacts of which will be extremely broad on the economy. We will attempt to describe them at least schematically in the environment of the Czech Republic - for instance, for the area of industrial production or for the area of education.1. The issue of ageingEurope is overall and it is threatened by a real reduction of the original population and the national and cultural definition thereof. This fact is irrefutable; it is practically pointless to prove it statistically. Journalists (e.g. Steyn, 2006), demographers (e.g. Arltova, Langhamrova, 2010; Fiala, Langhamrova, 2009, 2010), sociologists (e.g. Scholefield, 2001) and, last but not least, we too (Smrcka, Arltova, 2012; Arltova et al., 2013) have drawn attention to this issue for several years. As Mark Steyn precisely put it, we are living in a time when children are decreasing faster than oil. The problem, however, is for the most part viewed from the political, cultural, often religious, social, sociological or anthropological perspectives. These approaches have appeared in various constellations, for instance at the close of the First and Second World Assembly on Ageing in Vienna in 1982 (United Nations, 1982) and in Madrid in 2002 (United Nations, 2002). Only exceptionally, however, is it viewed as a highly economic issue, and if so, then rather in connection with the problem of poverty in old age (Walker, 1981; Phillipson, 1991), or in connection with the necessity to reform pension systems (Pinera, 2001; Peterson, 1999; Van der Noord, 1993; World Bank, 1994). Only singly is the matter treated from the perspective of the problem of and inter-generational exchanges of information, experience and skills.As it is known, the concept of ageing generally has a clearly defined individual significance. In dependence to the number of years passed from the birth of an individual, population path from birth to death marks a certain phase. …