Ageing and Welfare Systems, What Have We Learned?

This document contains the proceedings of and
contributions to a CEPS/ENEPRI conference whose objective was
to take stock of developments on population ageing, to make an
assessment of the state of research in Europe and North
America and to outline a new research agenda for the coming years.

Abstract

During the coming decades the European Union and, indeed, large
parts of the world, will be confronted with unprecedented
demographic changes, generally characterised as ‘ageing of the
population’. In reality, ageing is the combined outcome of two
distinct phenomena: firstly the secular decline in mortality and
the resulting increase in life expectancy and secondly the
pronounced decline in fertility since 1970 in most European
countries and which followed the baby boom in the first post-war
decade. The decline in fertility during the recent decades is now
being reflected in a significant decline in the number of entrants
into the labour market, while the baby-boom generations are
approaching retirement age. Consequently the ageing of the
population will first and most importantly be reflected in a
pronounced ageing of the EU labour force. The purpose of this
ENEPRI/CEPS conference was to take stock of developments on
population ageing, present key papers in the field from inside and
outside the ENEPRI Network and, not least, to take stock of the
state of research in Europe and North America. The conference
therefore, in particular, devoted a part of the agenda to a general
discussion between key researchers in Europe and North America
concerning the present situation and to preparing an outline of the
research agenda for the coming years.

The Conference report, whose Editor is Jorgen Mortensen
of the Centre for European Policy Studies, can be dowloaded for
free from the CEPS website.