Jul 252012
Average annual growth rate of old age pension expenditure in Italy from 2000 to 2007, net of inflation (click to enlarge)
Population ageing looks like something that is expected tomorrow but has happened the day before yesterday. Old persons don’t just pop-up suddendly, in case you wonder, and the alert about the sustainability of longer life ranges has been ringing for thirty years now – and particularly, the rate of growth for people aged 65 has hit its top around the eighties. The effect of the so-called ‘baby boom’ of the post-war period is already drying out, which to my simplistic way of seeing thing should give us more time for a transition to a more sustainable economy. Or we could go to war and restructure our population.
