Demographic Bomb Research Articles

From ‘demographic bomb’ to ‘silver tsunami’: Navigating global population shifts

Just six decades ago, the world was experiencing remarkably high population growth rates, which led to the coining of the term ‘demographic bomb’ to describe concerns associated with population size. At the time, the global population was three billion. Since then, an extra billion people have been added every 12 years. However, the pre-eminent demographic challenge of the twenty-first century is population ageing, a global, irreversible and unprecedented trend. The number of people aged 65 and over has almost doubled since the turn of the century and currently accounts for 10% of the global population. An extra billion people are expected to age into the older category within the next 35 years. In Europe, half of the population is above 45 years of age, and the number of those above 65 years old is greater than the number of children under 15. Commonly referred to as the ‘silver tsunami’, it is feared that the increasing number of older people will have a destructive impact on economies and social systems. Never before have our lives been longer, our families smaller and our societies more multigenerational. The new reality of longevity requires a shift in how we approach ageing. This article explores ways to cope with the challenges of the silver era we are heading towards.

The Pension Crisis and the ‘Demographic Time Bomb’: Perceptions and Misperceptions in Great Britain and Germany at the Turn of the Millennium

Abstract At the turn of the millennium, Germany and the United Kingdom experienced the most severe crises of their pension systems since the Second World War. In both cases, politicians reacted with extensive reforms. The political debates in each country revolved around the notion that demographic ageing was at the root of the crises. Hence, the call for greater intergenerational equity became the key justification of fundamental pension-system reform. But a comparative historical analysis reveals that it is a vast oversimplification to blame the pension crises entirely on demographic ageing. In fact, a combination of other factors—which varied widely between the UK and Germany—far overshadowed the ‘demographic time-bomb’ as the driving force behind the crises. A prime factor in the UK was the declining value of the Basic State Pension and the growing importance of means-tested benefits, along with the decline of company pension schemes. By contrast, the problems facing the pension system in Germany primarily arose from rising unemployment, the systematic early retirement of millions of eastern Germans and the high costs of German unity, which were largely borne by the social-security system. Furthermore, in the debate on Germany’s ability to remain a thriving centre for business and industry, rising pension contributions were widely held responsible for declining competitiveness. In both countries, politicians seized upon the explanatory model of demographic ageing because it made sweeping reforms of the pension system appear the consequence of a quasi-natural process, and created a welcome opportunity to divert attention from socio-political blunders.

Stop the postdoc treadmill … I want to get off

Julie Gould investigates how brain drains and demographic time bombs are forcing some countries to rethink the postdoc. Julie Gould investigates how brain drains and demographic time bombs are forcing some countries to rethink the postdoc.

The Effect of Migration Experiences on Wellbeing Among Ageing Migrants in Italy

Ageing and migration are two of Europe’s fundamental demographic processes, challenging a wide range of social policies. Their intersection generates a wide taxonomy of types of individuals, from the most well-off and active ones to those more deprived and marginalised and for whom being old and having a migration background represents a double jeopardy. Yet in discussions of the ‘demographic time bomb’ of ageing, the special circumstances of ageing migrants are rarely recognised. Thus far, in Europe, very little is known about ageing populations with a migratory background, and this is even more true for Italy, that turned into an immigration country only in the late 1980s and where older migrants are a neglected, although growing, group in the Italian population. In this paper, we unpack ageing migrants’ wellbeing by focusing on life satisfaction, as a broader indicator of individual’s wellbeing; in particular, we analyse the effect of migration experiences on migrants’ perception of the quality of life in old age. We use data from the Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens survey (2011–2012) and build several indicators related to different structural and socio-cultural dimensions of integration to analyse different patterns of association with life satisfaction among different groups of ageing migrants in Italy. Our study has important implications form both theoretical and policy perspective as it contributes to the advancement of original knowledge on the factors that shape wellbeing in later life in a context of migration.

Tourism, ageing and the demographic time bomb – the implications of dementia for the visitor economy: a perspective paper

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the development of research on ageing and demography and the implications for the study of tourism. It examines the demographic time bomb created by an ageing population and the implications of complex health conditions, such as dementia, for the visitor economy. Practical measures are identified with an example of a “call to action” for small to medium-sized tourism businesses.Design/methodology/approachThis review is based on existing knowledge of ageing and draws upon a historical timeline that stretches from the nineteenth century to 2100.FindingsThe impact of complex health conditions such as dementia will pose major challenges for the visitor economy and will require behavioural change within existing business practices to accommodate the needs of people with dementia and their carers.Research limitations/implicationsMajor changes in business practices and the development of more holistic views of accessibility will be needed to accommodate an ageing population in 2100. Some of the initial changes businesses can make are outlined in a “call to action” leaflet extract.Practical implicationsBusinesses will need to focus more on customer care practices to ensure that they can accommodate the complex needs of people with dementia and their carers as they continue to pursue the tourism and leisure activities that they have grown accustomed to.Social implicationsBusinesses will need to become more fully engaged with new agendas on accessibility, inclusivity and good business practice that raise significant ethical, financial and legal issues for the way they do business in the future.Originality/valueThe paper sets out an overarching grand societal challenge around ageing that is now confronting many countries worldwide. As part of that agenda, this paper raises the issue of hidden conditions such as dementia. The paper seeks to stimulate a wider debate for researchers and policymakers going forward, framed around the following questions which arise from the paper: How is dementia understood as a hidden condition in the visitor economy? To what extent is there awareness and action in the visitor economy sector? What can the visitor economy sector do to address issues of inclusivity and dementia?

Reform narratives and argumentative coupling in German pension policy: constructing the ‘deserving retiree’

ABSTRACTGerman pension policy experienced a shift in the early 2000s, when public pensions were cut back, the retirement age raised, and private, publicly subsidized pension provision stipulated. Within a coherent reform narrative, those reforms were grounded on arguments of a ‘demographic time bomb’, a no-longer-affordable public pension scheme, and the return potential of private pension funds. Yet this narrative was delegitimized quickly with zero-rate-policy, and increasing old-age poverty in a lean public pension scheme. In such a situation, it can be expected difficult to either adapt the old narrative or construct new ones. This makes an interesting case for this article to study reform narratives and argumentative coupling in recent German pension policy through two contrasting cases: A failed attempt at establishing a minimum-pension scheme; and a ‘successful’ reform package combining a ‘mothers’ pension’ and exceptions for a full pension at age 63. Findings illuminate how the contrasting success of those reform proposals can be understood in terms of narrative stories: The reform which – political-strategically – could build on the ‘deservingness’ of the target groups could be agreed upon comparatively easily. Possible beneficiaries of a minimum pension are of varying ‘deservingness’, though, and narrating a more ‘problem-solving’ story has proven difficult.

Japan’s declining population and demographic challenges

Japan is sitting on a demographic time bomb. The declining birth rate because of changing societal and economic factors impacting on priorities in human lives, and accentuated by a rapidly growing population poses a new challenge to policy makers. The governmental responses have been inadequate and need to be seriously addressed in the interests of the future of the country. Other Asian countries in the path of modernisation and fast economic growth are also falling into such trap. Like in the economic development Japan was the leader that led to the faster growth in other Asian countries, Japan ought to emerge as the new leader in addressing this demographic challenge so that other Asian countries could emulate Japan’s example.

How to defuse a demographic time bomb: the way forward?

How to defuse a demographic time bomb: the way forward?

Prefunded Pension Systems: Recent Developments

From the mid-1990s to the onset of the financial crisis, prefunded pension systems, based on individual retirement savings accounts, were spreading around the world. The UK was initially a world leader in this, due to the system of contracting out, which had allowed people to opt out of part of the state pension scheme and save for their own pension instead. Since 2008, there has been a global U-turn. Private pension systems are now in retreat and the old-fashioned paternalistic welfare state is reasserting itself. The UK is no exception. The contracting-out system, which worked so well for over half a century, has now been ended. Even in Chile, which has long been regarded as the ‘Mecca’ of private prefunded pensions, the mood has turned against that system. If even Chile has lost faith in privatisation and prefunding, what hope is there for an expansion of such systems elsewhere? It is therefore necessary for international observers to interpret the Chilean experience correctly. However unpopular it may be at the moment, it remains the case that Chile’s private pension system has been a success story. It has provided consistently high rates of return and it has been an active ingredient in the country’s rapid economic development. The reason why pensions in Chile have fallen behind expectations is insufficient savings, not any ‘failures’ of the system as such. Only one in three men, and one in four women, save regularly, and in addition, the contribution rate and the retirement age are set too low. The system offers decent pensions and excellent value for money to those who save regularly. But it cannot magically turn a record of sporadic savings into a comfortable old-age living standard – and nor could any other pension system. Whatever problems the Chilean prefunded system may have, these are highly country-specific, and not applicable to the UK. In order to defuse the ‘demographic time bomb’, the UK would do well to reanimate its successful system of contracting out, and promote private pension savings.

Longer Life and Higher Fertility in an OLG Economy with Production

This paper investigates the effect of a change in life expectancy (i.e., longevity) on fertility in a standard OLG economy. The main result is that, in contrast with other papers, an increase in the longevity rate may increase the fertility rate as well. It is shown that such a result holds when the cost of rearing children in terms of goods and services (rather than in terms of forgone wages) matters. In particular, such a result depends on the relative “strength” of the capital in the technology as compared with the “strength” of the parsimony. Moreover it is shown, again in contrast with other papers, that with an unfunded social security system it is more likely that a longer life may increase the fertility. The latter result is even more likely in the presence of child subsidy policies, which are widespread in developed countries. In conclusion, we argue that in countries having a population with a high longevity, a high capital share, a large unfunded social security, and child subsidy policies (such as Italy), a further increase of longevity may increase fertility in the long run and thus partially alleviate the peril of the so-called “demographic bomb.”

The 2022 GP: addressing the demographic time bomb

Recent publication of The 2022 GP 1 coincides with one of the most volatile moments in the 65-year history of the NHS: unparalleled pressure on resources and finance; sweeping government reforms; rising public expectations with yet greater need as we all live longer; respect and love for the NHS questioned as never before following high profile failures of care and compassion; and a GP workforce shouldering 90% of patient contact on 9% of the NHS budget, feeling battered, overworked, and with no prospect of an end to the growing demands. The far-sighted 2022 vision sets out a clear action plan for developing general practice over the next decade of unprecedented change. It was never more needed, both for GPs, who have always been the cornerstone of community medicine and for patients, like Colin, who is representative of the growing millions we care for, needing compassionate, complex, and long-term medical support. We met over a 6-week period as I studied his healthcare journey …

Temporary labour migration and care work: The Japanese experience

Around the world, advanced industrial societies are facing a demographic time bomb that has enormous implications for the workforce in general, but for workforce planning and industrial relations in the health sector and related industries in particular. Japan, which has traditionally resisted structured forms of labour migration, has responded by establishing labour migration schemes for nurses and other care workers from selected South and Southeast Asian countries. This article examines the responses of different industrial relations actors to the first of these schemes. It begins by describing the opening up of hospitals and residential care facilities to temporary labour migrants from the Philippines and Indonesia, before turning to a discussion of the roles played by trade unions and employers and an evaluation of the outcomes of the programme to date. The article demonstrates the potential pitfalls of trade-driven labour migration schemes and their implications for the sector and the migrant workers concerned.

BJOG Editor's Choice

BJOG Editor's Choice

Samantha Velluti, New Governance and the European Employment Strategy and Stella Vettori (ed.), Ageing Populations and Changing Labour Markets: Social and Economic Impacts of the Demographic Time Bomb

Samantha Velluti, <i>New Governance and the European Employment Strategy</i> and Stella Vettori (ed.), <i>Ageing Populations and Changing Labour Markets: Social and Economic Impacts of the Demographic Time Bomb</i>

Fertility and PAYG pensions in the overlapping generations model

This article analyses how long-run pay-as-you-go public pensions react to a change in fertility in the Diamond overlapping generations model. While it might seem well established both in academic and political debates that the decline in fertility represents a “demographic time bomb” for the sustainability of public pensions, it is shown that a falling birth rate need not necessarily cause the fall of pensions in the long run.

Karyotyping couples experiencing recurrent miscarriage really is worth the cost

Sir, We thank Knibbs et al.1 for their response to our paper2 and believe that they are right to be concerned that an estimated cost of between £817,280 and £1,021,600 per unbalanced pregnancy might lead to a reduction in the karyotyping service for couples with recurrent miscarriage; one of the intentions of our brief audit2 was to raise exactly this possibility. This is not because we do not appreciate the real distress caused by recurrent miscarriages but, rather, because it was difficult to justify continuing to offer this test in the UK ‘free at the point of delivery’ at the same time as Commissioners were unable to fund major new developments in genetic testing with far higher detection rates and recurrence risks. We also appreciate that the identification of a balanced translocation is useful for the 2% of people tested who are carriers. However, we do question how continuing to offer a test for obstetric referrals that will give a normal result in 98% of tests, and a typical imbalance recurrence risk of between 10 and 25%, can be supported at the same time as Commissioners are unable to fund the testing of paediatric referrals of children with congenital abnormalities using array comparative genomic hybridisation with a detection rate of over 17%3 and a recurrence risk that is frequently as high as 50%. It should also be noted that alternative more cost-effective technologies are now available to test miscarriage products directly,4 thus ascertaining whether the pregnancy loss was the result of a chromosome imbalance and hence of a parental translocation. We acknowledged that ‘we have relied on laboratory records which may not include couples who choose not to avail themselves of prenatal diagnosis after a balanced translocation has been identified, couples who decide not to get pregnant or aborted early, or couples who had a stillbirth without prenatal diagnosis’ but question the claim by Knibbs et al. that this is a ‘potentially large proportion’. Knibbs et al. are also wrong to claim that we believed our large sample size negated what they term the ‘skew’ resulting from the exclusion of such alternative pregnancy outcomes in translocation carriers; our claim was only that testing 20 432 parents who had had miscarriages from four different regions made it unlikely that we had failed to ascertain many chromosomally unbalanced pregnancies as a result of couples moving out of the areas concerned and being lost to follow up. The wider implication of our audit is to question whether each new test (or assay) should always be offered free at the point of delivery or charged for. This is contrary to the spirit of the National Health Service in the UK but we believe that it is time to surrender the notion that everything can be provided free for ever and to embark on the hard task of deciding which tests and services are of such importance that they must be provided free at the point of delivery and, if necessary, which tests and services should be charged for in future. We hoped that our brief paper might stimulate others to produce a more detailed cost–benefit analysis, prompt professional bodies to review their best practice guidelines and contribute to the debate about how best to allocate dwindling resources at a time of technological advance, the demographic time bomb in the West and the spiralling costs of healthcare services.

Miriam Bernard and Thomas Scharf (eds.) (2007). Critical Perspectives on Ageing Societies. Bristol: The Policy Press, Ageing and the Lifecourse Series, 200 pp. ISBN 978-1-86134-890-6 (paperback)

The first in a new series of Ageing and the Life Course texts by Policy Press, Critical Perspectives on Ageing Societies, edited by Miriam Bernard and Tom Scharf, brings together some of the leading experts in the field of gerontology from Britain and North America to consider how the current context of critical gerontology has developed over the last 25 years and discuss the future challenges it faces. In the foreword, Chris Phillipson reminds us how, with its roots in political economy, feminist and humanist foundations, critical gerontology has brought a greater appreciation of the links between ageing and cultural and economic characteristics in later life and the impact of social policy. He continues that this was particularly important during the Thatcherite regime with the emergence of ‘‘an ideologically driven critique of demographic change, with the labelling of older people as a ‘burden’ and ‘cost’ to society’’ (p. vii). This was combined with a reduction in the quality and scope of services. These debates still continue to permeate social policy (and wider society) with concerns about increasing longevity, rising pension deficits and a potential ‘demographic time bomb’. It is within this context that critical gerontology has so much

Migration, law, democracy: identifiyng where the risk is

- This paper focuses on migration, law and democracy in order to identify where risk lies. The author concentrates on studying a recent case, the Directive on the Return of so-called illegal immigrants (sans papiers) approved by the European Parliament on 18 June 2008. The usual point of view, that of the dominant discourse, maintains that today's migratory movements constitute one of the structural factors that justify the definition of our societies as the "Risk Society". According to this point of view, the migratory flows entail a risk for social cohesion and even a destabilising potential for both democracy and the rule of law. The risk is illustrated by the menacing image of invasion threatening at our doors, hence the classical argument of the "demographic bomb" as the resource of poor countries. The author's thesis sustains that it is precisely our responses, in the form of migratory policy tools, that constitute a risk factor. Some of these tools, including this Directive, have become destabilising elements of the rules of the game and, moreover, of the values of the rule of law and of democracy.

Ageing and work

HR managers have known for many years about the demographic time bomb, and more recently have been urged to take age positive1 approaches to the management of their organisations. However, conversations and seminars with many of those who devise and steer human resource management policies in organisations, suggest that understanding of demographic change is sometimes limited and coping strategies often absent or inchoate. This paper will briefly explore the demographic context and comment briefly on the main policy responses in relation to workforce issues. It will then consider the sorts of measures that might be needed to make work compatible with a significantly older working population. Taken together, these strands will hopefully weave a picture that meets our purpose of forward looking conjecture.

Cognitive dysfunction in cats

More of Britain’s cats (and dogs) are living to a ripe old age and are increasingly prone to the same dementia-type diseases as their owners. How is the veterinary profession dealing with its own demographic time bomb?