8/21/2019 Ageing Population Causes and Consequences

1/2

Q- What are the potential consequences of an ageing population in MEDCs?

A-

Cause of Ageing population?

1. An ageing population is caused by a countrys death rate decreasingthrough better standards of healthcare, increasing affluence and

industrialisation.

Countries that are burdened by an ageing population are generally in stage

4/5 of the Demographic Transition model.

2. Another reason for an ageing population structure is if a countrys birth rate

decreases either from higher status of women/ better education or through

population policies like in Singapore and China. Europe is the area that suffers

most from an ageing population:

23 of the worlds oldest countries are in Europe. However, it is a global

problem: in 2021, for the first time ever the percentage of people over 65 is

expected to be greater than the number of children under 5. Perhaps even

more worrying is the fact that the octogenarian age group (over 80s) is the

fastest growing age group in the world.

Consequences of ageing population:

1. Economic impact.An ageing population can have severe economic impacts. It would put a strain

on the national economy, with increased government spending for services

like care homes and medical care for the elderly. This may put a strain on

public services like the NHS.

2. There would be less people of a working age and more dependants. As well

as loss of tax revenue for the government and an overload of pensions, it

would place further strain on the so called sandwich generation; middle aged

parents who have to look after their children and their parents.

3. Needs of immigrants workers:

To try and ease the effect of an elderly population, some countries rely on

immigration to produce an influx of young people of working age to support

the national economy. As well as placing further strain on housing and public

services, it can have an impact socially too.

8/21/2019 Ageing Population Causes and Consequences

2/2

Environmental impact:

An elderly population can have an impact on the environment too. Many new

residential/ care home buildings would have to be built to accommodate the

elderly as well as single-floor housing (bungalows).

The designs of town centres/urban areas would have to be adapted as well to

make them more suitable for older people i.e. building more lifts and having

ramps for disabled people to use instead of stairways.

Social impact:

There may be racial tensions between the indigenous and migrant population

over employment and benefits. So called ghettos (which means in this sense

an area which is home to a certain ethnic group) may form which increases

the sense of separation even more.

Where occur?

Ageing populations generally do occur in MEDCs (richer countries) as these

countries have a higher life expectancy thanks to a good standard of

healthcare (the UK is a welfare state) and a reasonable quality of life.

LEDCs tend not to have an ageing population structure as they have high birth

rates and a young population structure (thanks to reasons such as religion and

lack of contraceptives).

In the immediate future, this will have a major impact of resources as there

will be more people to feed, house and sustain. In the next half-century

however as Countries enter stage 5 of the DMT; their population will start to

decline as their ageing population starts to die off. This will further exacerbate

the problem of an elderly population structure as the older dependency ratio

will increase further with the baby boom generation living longer than their

parents.

As this happens, replacement ratios will decrease even further leaving

governments crippled from loss of tax revenue. As a result of this,

governments might not afford to buy the resources its country needs because

an increasing percentage of its budget will have to be spent on care for the

elderly.