Whether all that attention has translated into sufficient action is another question. Governments
in rich countries now accept that their pension and health-care promises will soon become
unaffordable, and many of them have embarked on reforms, but so far only timidly. That is not
surprising: politicians with an eye on the next election will hardly rush to introduce unpopular
measures that may not bear fruit for years, perhaps decades.
The outline of the changes needed is clear. To avoid fiscal (财政) meltdown, public pensions
and health-care provision will have to be reined back severely and taxes may have to go up. By far
the most effective method to restrain pension spending is to give people the opportunity to work
longer, because it increases tax revenues and reduces spending on pensions at the same time. It may
even keep them alive longer. John Rother, the AARP’s head of policy and strategy, points to studies
showing that other things being equal, people who remain at work have lower death rates than their
retired peers.
Younger people today mostly accept that they will have to work for longer and that their
pensions will be less generous. Employers still need to be persuaded that older workers are worth
holding on to. That may be because they have had plenty of younger ones to choose from, partly
thanks to the post-war baby-boom and partly because over the past few decades many more women
have entered the labour force, increasing employers’ choice. But the reservoir of women able and
willing to take up paid work is running low, and the baby-boomers are going grey.
In many countries immigrants have been filling such gaps in the labour force as have already
emerged (and remember that the real shortage is still around ten years off). Immigration in the
developed world is the highest it has ever been, and it is making a useful difference. In still-fertile
America it currently accounts for about 40% of total population growth, and in fast-ageing western
Europe for about 90%.
On the face of it, it seems the perfect solution. Many developing countries have lots of young
people in need of jobs; many rich countries need helping hands that will boost tax revenues and
keep up economic growth. But over the next few decades labour forces in rich countries are set to
shrink so much that inflows of immigrants would have to increase enormously to compensate: to at
least twice their current size in western Europe’s most youthful countries, and three times in the
older ones. Japan would need a large multiple of the few immigrants it has at present. Public
opinion polls show that people in most rich countries already think that immigration is too high.
Further big increases would be politically unfeasible.
To tackle the problem of ageing populations at its root, “old” countries would have to
rejuvenate ( 使 年 轻 ) themselves by having more of their own children. A number of them have
tried, some more successfully than others. But it is not a simple matter of offering financial
incentives or providing more child care. Modern urban life in rich countries is not well adapted to
large families. Women find it hard to combine family and career. They often compromise by having
just one child.
And if fertility in ageing countries does not pick up? It will not be the end of the world, at least
not for quite a while yet, but the world will slowly become a different place. Older societies may be
less innovative and more strongly disinclined to take risks than younger ones. By 2025 at the latest,
about half the voters in America and most of those in western European countries will be over 50—
and older people turn out to vote in much greater number than younger ones. Academic studies
have found no evidence so far that older voters have used their power at the ballot box to push for
policies that specifically benefit them, though if in future there are many more of them they might