Aging Population Position Paper – United Kingdom

Being one of the world’s strongest economies and having one of the most important
stock exchanges, the United Kingdom certainly has its concerns towards the problem
of aging population. With a median age of 39.8 years old, a growth rate of 0.563%
and 12.34 births/1000 populations, the United Kingdom is suffering from an aging
population as seen from typical More Economically Developed Countries (MEDC).
With such a top heavy population, the UK economy is suffering from a reduction in
labour force and a severely high dependency ratio, which causes effect like brain
drain and increasing social liabilities. We fear that if the trend continues it might
cause a long term economic downturn due to the lack of labour.

This problem, however, has not been new, and the UK definitely has some counter
measures to this. For example, to prevent further brain drain, the UK has allowed
more migrants to come into the country as a source of labour: the net migration rate
from the 2010 figure is 2.61/1000 population, ranked 32 in the world. This, however
is only a short term measure, and UK is definitely looking for more concrete solutions
to solve this matter.