This week’s edition of the Economist has a frightening article about Germany and its aging population. You need a subscription to read the article, so I have cut and pasted the main arguments.
“At last, Germany's chattering classes are facing up to the country's biggest long-term challenge: an ageing population. In Germany, 2004 is the year of demography, says James Vaupel, executive director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock.
After half a century of obscurity, population issues are resurfacing in headlines, bestseller lists and talk shows. Germany's bestselling book is “Das Methusalem-Komplott” (The Methuselah conspiracy), an anti-ageism tirade by Frank Schirrmacher.
Some regions are in a death spiral of sorts and others may share that fate in years to come: their population is imploding, not just because of a lack of babies but because young, qualified people are moving away, making many regions even less attractive for job-creating investments.
Germany's ageing will affect not just pension funds, but the whole of society. What does it mean for entrepreneurship and economic risk-taking if more than one-third of the population is older than 60? How must firms reorganise to use old people's experience and ideas? How can immigrants be integrated?”
Many more questions than answers. Dick Stroud: www.20plus30.com
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