When we talk about our aging population are we expecting to be a smaller nation?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Something I have never gotten about the whole Baby-Boomer retirement, aging population thing...

Since "everyone" around the world supposedly wants to be an American we should have an endless supply of Americans of whatever age we wish.

(People living longer will skew the population older but I am assuming we can increase our population to reintroduce more balance. If we fixed our population at eactly 300 million we could not change the mix.)

Do we just assume that dying Baby-boomers will not be replaced (via immigration) and that the economy will just shrink accordingly? Are there not enough "productive" (however defined) folks seeking citizenship here?

That seems odd to me.

Thoughts?

[phantom power]

1. I actually thought the "aging population" meme refers to...

people living longer in general. Due to improved geriatric care, etc.

Although that meme itself has come under attack, vis a vis the point about increasing life span stats skewed by lower infant mortality, etc.


:shrug:

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. Right you are.

I probably didn't phrase it well.

There is living longer and also a demographic baby-boomer hump and they are acting in tandem.

I changed the OP to note that I am thinking we can *increase the population* via immigration.

As people live longer any fixed population will trend older, but if the population can expand we can bring in more young people to restore whatever the desired balance is.

[LiberalFighter]

4. How about skewed in Japan lack of tracking of their citizens?

They found many of their over 110 citizens actually dead. In some cases many years.

[zipplewrath]

3. You are right

The concern about boomers effect on our demographics is often overstated. The generations that followed the boomers weren't nearly as large, so there will be a TEMPORARY shifting of our population in age upward. That combined with noticably (if also overblown) increases in life expectency, will mean that we'll have a larger than normal geriatric population (some of them will be immigrants by the way). But ultimately they'll start to die off, no one gets out alive. And the demographics will begin to shift a tad.

The real concern is less about the fact of their existence, and more about the fact that the generations that will follow probably won't be as prosperous as they were, but will be the labor source that will be expected to bear the cost of their social security and health insurance. We've trashed our jobs market and now the jobs that the boomers had don't exist anymore. Should be good ones in health care though.