Inequality (W10)

• population structure determines which segments of the population are growing/declining fastest
• Forecasting the future population: in terms of woman and birth: pre-productive, productive and post-productive
• population structure leads the directing public investment. Different age profiles require different combinations of public investment in services and infrastructure.
• Young populations - Early childhood, primary and secondary pathways; tertiary training and education. Maternal and child health, vaccination programs. Viable pathways from education and training into the job market
• old populations - AGED CARE FACILITIES As well as other social and medical services for older people, AGED PENSIONS superannuation scheme, aged pension scheme, BURDEN OFFSETS Through working-age labour migration
• population structure helps assess present, and potential future economic performance because economic productivity varies over the life cycle.
• Dependency Burden/Ratio = the proportion of people within a population who are part of the working-aged population, compared with those who are not. Expressed as a number per 100 working-age population.
• Limitations of Dependency Burdens - Economically instrumentalist (Frames those not contributing to waged labour as a ‘burden’ on society), Temporally provincial (Developed in a time and place when there was a set retirement age, national pension schemes, and legal prohibitions on child labour), Culturally provincial (They narrowly define economic burdens within the context of formal, waged labour)
• Temporally provincial - in many countries people work long after retirement or do work important in informal unwaged work, retirement schemes mean that some people fund their own retirement and are not ‘burdens’.
• Economically instrumentalist (Frames those not contributing to waged labour as a ‘burden’ on society)
• Temporally provincial (Developed in a time and place when there was a set retirement age, national pension schemes, and legal prohibitions on child labour)
• Culturally provincial (They narrowly define economic burdens within the context of formal, waged labour)
• The Age Transition (as a population transitions through the DTT) - The population transitions from a young profile (due to high mortality and birth rates) with slightly more males than females, to an aged population with slightly more females than males
• Since the 1950s, high income (and emerging high-income) countries have been experiencing the greatest population ageing while lower income countries tend to have more youthful population structures and will experience the most dramatic ageing in years to come
• 1950 median age globally is below 30
• age dependency ration looks at all of the population regardless of migration - gulf have low dependency due to high worker migration to country
• youth dependency burdens are much higher than old age burden - due to replacement migration and the median age in some countries being still within working age (eg. 50)
• over the coming decades, the majority of livebirths will become concentrated in areas of the world that are most vulnerable to climate change, resource insecurity, political instability, poverty and child mortality. High numbers of births in these regions will further strain all areas of vulnerability.
• addressing these challenges: Improved access to contraceptives, Female education and empowerment (skills to invest in the health of their children)
• The Demographic Dividend - The now large working age population are having children at a slower rate than previous generations, before the population begins to age. Great economic opportunity to propel it’s self forward economically (high pop in productive section, low dependency numbers)
• The Demographic Dividend occurred in China, Twain, South Korea (and Japan after ww2), but not in sub-Saharan Africa (due to slower decline in fertility, HIV/AIDs)
• Requires a well-developed productivity pipeline. Without a youth bulge emerges where there is limited job opportunity for the growing working population (depressed economic conditions)
• The youth bulge theory - A concentration of the population among young, working-aged people, when there are few economic opportunities can lead to civil/political unrest, upheaval and despair.
• The Second Demographic Transition - Below replacement fertility, Decline in the social value of marriage, Delayed childbearing, De-coupling of marriage and family formation, Smaller family sizes
• Trajectories of stage 4&5: Natural population (and productivity) decline, Pressure on health infrastructure (a need for larger aged care systems but less funding to support this because of an increase in dependency burdens), Dependency burden offsets (Through working-age labour ‘replacement migration’, AI and robotics.)
• replacement migration: Population structure will likely increasingly dictate the flow of international labour migration into the future: from ‘young’ to ‘ageing’ countries. Pro-natalist policies in ageing countries, fear of migrants on country.
• poorer countries will become old before they become rich

  • implications - inability to provide for the ageing population, inability to implement structural changes such as superannuation and health care, heavily burdening the younger population. delay in DTT transition