Europe’s Demographic Time Bomb: The Challenge for Public Pensions

Abstract

On 12 October 1999, the population of the planet was officially declared by the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA) to have reached six billion. Since no one actually knows for certain when the six billion point was reached, this announcement was entirely symbolic. It was, however, symptomatic of a growing preoccupation among academics and policy-makers with demographic issues in general and the problems posed by an ageing population in particular. When addressing the theme of ‘people’, nothing can be more basic than to examine the demography of the EU and to do so within a global setting. Peterson (1999) suggests that demographic changes, of which the ageing of Europe’s population is but a small part, might actually represent a greater threat to the world than the proliferation of nuclear or chemical weapons or extreme climate change. For this reason, it is entirely appropriate that a book about the people of Europe should include a chapter about demographic change and its consequences for policy-makers.