Aging Population Isn't The Timebomb Many Make It Out To Be

Aging Population Isn't The Timebomb Many Make It Out To Be

It’s long been conventional wisdom among economists and policy makers that most developed economies and some developing economies face a demographic crisis in the decades ahead, as the rising cost of providing pensions and health care for a growing cadre of older people overwhelms the capacity of a shrinking cadre of workers to generate the necessary resources.

But a paper published Tuesday by the British Medical Journal challenges that orthodoxy, and says that measured properly, the age dependency ratio is lower and falling in many countries. As the paper’s title puts it, population aging is “the timebomb that isn’t.”

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