{"id":30254,"date":"2025-09-19T05:00:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T05:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/30254\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T05:00:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T05:00:07","slug":"our-changing-demographics-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/30254\/","title":{"rendered":"our changing demographics \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every minute in Japan<\/a>, three people die and 1.3 people are born. That means the population declines by 1.7 people every 60 seconds, by 2,448 every day and by 893,520 every year.<\/p>\n

The official statistics show Japan\u2019s population declined by 908,574 to 120 million last year. On current trends, it will fall to 87 million by 2070 (a 27 per cent decrease).<\/p>\n

A cycle of fewer babies and longer lives is skewing the population older and older with far-reaching consequences for the country in terms of dynamism, labour supply, pension<\/a> coverage and healthcare provision.<\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s restrictive immigration<\/a> regime, which favours short-term skilled workers, combined with a concentration of the population in Tokyo, compounds the problem. <\/p>\n

Japan is the canary in the population coal mine, the Department of Finance<\/a>\u2019s chief economist John McCarthy said at the launch of the Government<\/a>\u2019s \u201cFuture Forty\u201d report last week, a document that assesses how various population trends will impact the Irish economy over the next 40 years.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ireland\u2019s ageing population \u2018standstill costs\u2019 reach extra \u20ac3bn a yearOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

McCarthy noted that Japan\u2019s population super cycle, while more advanced, is beginning to play out in Europe and will soon become Ireland\u2019s demographic fate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy does that matter from an economic and financial perspective? Lower population equals lower labour force, equals lower employment growth, equals lower tax revenue,\u201d McCarthy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the other side of the equation, an older population means increased pension spending and healthcare spending,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

In 1980, Japan spent 4 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product) on pensions and healthcare. It has now mushroomed to about 10 per cent. <\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s demographic footprint is entirely unique in European terms because of a cataclysmic famine in the 1840s. It is the only European Union<\/a> state to have a population that is smaller now than it was 180 years ago. <\/p>\n

In the 1950s, when the rest of Europe was experiencing a postwar population boom, the Republic\u2019s population continued to fall, leading to speculation that the island might soon become uninhabited.<\/p>\n

The \u201cVanishing Irish\u201d was serious theme.<\/p>\n

Even in the early 1990s when our European peers were experiencing net inward migration, we still experiencing mass emigration, a reflection of limited economic opportunities.<\/p>\n

The Republic\u2019s population is not expected to eclipse 6.5 million, its pre-Famine total, until 2050, making the Famine a 200-year event in demographic terms.<\/p>\n

The fertility rate, the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime \u2013 needs to be 2.1 for an indigenous population to replace itself.<\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s was as high as four in the 1960s and 1970s but has now dropped to 1.5, meaning our population would decline without an influx from abroad.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0State\u2019s population could hit 7.6m in four decades, department estimatesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In its report, the department projects the Republic\u2019s population will rise to somewhere between 6.77 million and 7.59 million by 2065 but because of waning fertility rates, most of the growth will come from net migration.<\/p>\n

But the population will \u2013 on average \u2013 be older with an increasing ratio of retirees to workers, resulting in the same problems currently facing Japan.<\/p>\n

The State\u2019s old-age dependency ratio (the number of retirees to workers) is projected to increase from 23.1 per cent in 2022 to 55.2 per cent in 2065.<\/p>\n

Put simply, instead of having three to four workers for every retiree, we\u2019ll soon only have just one, creating a financial black hole at the heart of the exchequer.<\/p>\n

Europe is in the grip of a populist backlash against mass inward migration, one that has created a deeply fractured politics. And yet it badly needs migrants to address the problem of ageing. <\/p>\n

The Government here is hoping to build up excess corporation tax receipts in a new national wealth fund to help pay for the future costs of an ageing population.<\/p>\n

The aim is to have a \u20ac100 billion war chest by the middle of the next decade. But this won\u2019t be enough to pay for Ireland\u2019s demographic time bomb and will need to be supplemented.<\/p>\n

The Government has a narrow tax base and has essentially sat on its hands in the face of calls to broaden it. The billions flowing in from corporation tax has probably driven this inertia.<\/p>\n

But, as the department\u2019s report highlights, the State urgently needs to plan for an older population. Part of this means attracting high-skilled migrants and keeping them here.<\/p>\n

It noted that 60 per cent of high-skilled immigrants tended to leave Ireland within five years, which had negative implications for productivity and for the Government\u2019s fiscal position as they pay more tax.<\/p>\n

Officials linked the trend to the quality-of-life issues including the current housing<\/a> shortage, which is itself a product of the State\u2019s failure to plan for a bigger population. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every minute in Japan, three people die and 1.3 people are born. That means the population declines by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24463,1398,5148,1523,3662,61,1629,60,582,43,1612],"class_list":["post-30254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-corporation-tax","tag-department-of-finance","tag-european-union","tag-government","tag-housing-crisis","tag-ie","tag-immigration","tag-ireland","tag-japan","tag-news","tag-pension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}