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76] Zoltán Simon and Tamás Dezső Ziegler
projected to increase by 4.5 years, to reach 48.2 years, by 2050 - with a few
EU countries expecting a median age above 50 years by then, to be joined
by many others in the decades that will follow (EPRS, 2021).
An ageing society also means a shrinking working-age population. The
European Commission projects a decline of 15.5 per cent - around 30 million
people - in the Union’s labour force by 2070, the bulk of this in the period
after 2030 (European Commission 2021, 5). A decreasing labour force has
already been a main driver of immigration to - and mobility within - Europe,
and it is expected to remain a strong pull factor in the future.
Finally, ageing societies with a declining working-age population means
growing dependency ratios. From our European perspective, the evolution
of the so-called old-age dependency ratio is of particular importance. This
data gives us an indication of the number of economically active people
between the age of 15 and 64 for every elderly and economically typically
inactive person above the age of 65 in the same society - which is crucial for
the financing of pension and public health systems in particular.
The EU-27 old-age dependency ratio was at 23.4 per cent in 2001, which
climbed to 26.3 per cent in 2010, and 32 per cent in 2020, and is projected
to further increase to 39.1 per cent by 2030, before crossing the 50 per cent
threshold by the middle, and reach 57.1 per cent by the end of the century.’
This implies that the Union would go from about three working-age people
for every person aged over 65 today to only less than two by 2070 (European
Commission 2021, 4). Adding young people, this means that by 2080 there
would be around five economically active working-age (15-64) people for every
four younger and older citizens in EU-27 societies, creating a fundamentally
different reality for upholding and financing our welfare systems (EPRS 2021, 6).
c. Policy and political challenges
All these data have far-reaching political implications. In Neil Howe’s and
Richard Jackson’s view, “demographic change shapes political power like water
shapes rock. Up close the force looks trivial, but viewed from a distance of
decades or centuries it moves mountains” (Howe and Jackson 2012, 37). In
any case, we may agree with Jan Goldin and Robert Muggah that a coming
key challenge for governments in developed countries, and in Europe in
particular, in the coming period will be to learn “how to cope with 100-year¬
life societies” (Goldin and Muggah 2020, 290).
This will certainly require creative thinking, political courage, and solid
support among citizens - against the backdrop of shaken societies, which
3 See Eurostat data at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tpsoo198/default/
table?lang=en and https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tpsoo200/default/
table?lang=en (last accessed in July 2021)