Older but any wiser?

We’re living longer and staying healthier than at any time in history. Between 1870 and 1970 our lifespans more than doubled In the 1840s people did not live much past 40 on average. But then improvements in nutrition, hygiene, housing and sanitation during the Victorian period meant by the early 1900s life expectancy was approaching 60. As the 20th Century progressed, with the exception of the war years, further gains were made with the introduction of universal health care and childhood immunisations. From the 1970s onwards, medical advances in the care of stroke and heart attack patients in particular, saw big strides continue to be made. So much so that by the start of the 21st Century, life expectancy at birth had reached 80 for women and 75 for men. And so it continued, with an extra year of life being added every four years or so. If you make it to 65, you have a 50 per cent chance of living another 20 years. And future generations seem likely to do even better: a third of all babies born in the West in 2016 will live to see their 100th birthday. But then it rapidly slowed. On current trends, it will take more than 12 years for people living in the UK to gain an extra year of life.

There is ample evidence to suggest that the UK's population should not have reached its limit on lifespan. Japan, for example, which already has longer life expectancy, has seen bigger increases in recent years than the UK. Out of the wealthier nations the ONS there was only one country which had a significantly worse record than the UK - the USA.

The evidence shows that poorer people have seen the biggest decline in improvements - and the fact they would be more affected by a squeeze on care, health and welfare spending "could indicate" government spending has played a role, Public Health England said. The impact of austerity is something former World Health Organisation adviser Prof Michael Marmot has already suggested is playing a role.

In Canada, the average age of the population is moving up as life expectancy increases, birth rates decline and the baby boomer generation ages. Canada hasn’t had a replacement rate fertility level — defined as 2.1 children per woman — since 1971. The fertility rate today is estimated at about 1.5 children. The baby boom generation defined as anyone born between 1946 and 1964, makes up the majority of seniors, and as they retire in increasingly greater numbers, an imbalance in the labour workforce will continue to grow, creating all sorts of pressure on governments and businesses. Canada over the next decade will experience a steep increase in its retirement rate.

“The front-end boomers have started to retire,” said Pedro Antunes,chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada. “But the biggest portion of the baby boom generation is the tail end, and they’re not retired yet.”

By 2040, 25 per cent of the population will be at least 65 years old, up from 17 per cent today, according to projections. In 2017, health care accounted for 35 per cent of provincial spending on average and is projected to rise to 40 per cent by 2040. Its May 2018 report — Canada 2040: No Immigration Versus More Immigration — found that scaling back immigration rates would ultimately raise health-care costs.

The impact of having fewer Canada Pension Plan contributions from workers and more payments going out to beneficiaries is also straightforward: Either workers contribute more or beneficiaries get paid less.

“That’s where immigration plays into it,” said Keith Ambachtsheer, director emeritus at the International Centre for Pension Management. “We need immigrants for a lot of reasons, but one of them is to become future contributors.”

Economists generally agree on one simple point: Immigrants are a necessary component to achieve economic growth and keep the systems of pensions and health care stable and balanced . During the next two decades, 13.4 million people are projected to exit the workforce, but only 11.8 million people will finish school and join the workforce.

“Without growth in the workforce, and a declining number of people in the labour force, it’s going to create labour shortages, and it’s going to affect economic growth,” said Parisa Mahboubi, a senior analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute, which has also studied the economic consequences of immigration. Currently, there are just under four people working for every senior, Mahboubi found, but under a medium-growth scenario, there would be just under three people working for every senior within two decades. This statistic is known as the old-age dependency ratio. The old age dependency ratio is already increasing, as a result of greater life expectancy and declining birth rate.