Ageing populations need not be disastrous for Western governments

Aged pensions are only one third of the total value of Commonwealth income support payments (1996-97 figures) and the proportion of self-funded retirees is increasing as superannuation becomes nearly universal. The greater problem that Australia should be facing is the increasing proportion of younger people who require support and are unemployable for many reasons, from minimal brain damage through drugs and accidents, to inadequate literacy. With so much youth unemployment, why is Australia unable to skill and train its own young people, rather than importing them from developing countries?

Most old people contribute to the community and the economy in inestimable voluntary work in every area, including as grandparents, who provided 68 per cent of all informal childcare in Australia in 1997. Today with better health, a higher proportion of older people are still capable of regular employment in many fields. The irony is that enforced retirement can now commence at 45 or 50: so much for the threatened shortage of workers.

On the other hand, the degree of total dependency of children is increasing. Their rearing and education costs far more in worker time and in expense than costs of the elderly. Fewer children and more elderly would be less burden on the 'workers' in between. The chief economic advantage is as a market for consumer goods and services that are greater than older people require. But who pays?

Why should populations remain constant at their present possibly unsustainable levels? World population only reached one billion in the 19^th century and it is now six billion and rising. Now there are now no more 'empty' continents to pour into, only more extending deserts. The greatest contributions to civilisation have been made by small cities no bigger than an outback country town.

There are good reasons for considering that the only good reason for immigration to developed countries is humanitarian. Since population problems globally are 'too many people' rather than 'too few'. It is also practical as well as humane to take international action about the growing millions of economic and political refugees by stopping the social, economic and political causes that are producing such distress, so that people can live prosperously in their own countries. Refugees in Africa alone now outnumber the total population of Australia.

The British government fears the solvable economic challenge of a stable population with a higher proportion of elderly, and the fatal flaw of global capitalism is the push for continually growing markets and cheap labor. But other bogeys are worse. The losses of fertile lands and seas, and escalations of economic refugees, animal extinctions, oil and water wars, and toxic pollution, are among the consequences of population pressure documented regularly in the pages of The Guardian. 

The greatest problem today is to find humane solutions to ghastly problems. The greatest problem for which humane solutions are most urgent and most difficult is that of population growth devastating the earth's resources and amenities.  Let’s remember that only one Western country has less population than it had in 1950.