Weekend edition: Live long and prosper
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Why does the episode open with William Shatner’s longevity and the ‘Silver Economy’ theme?
Remember the Vulcan motto, if you're a Star Trek fan, live long and prosper? Well, it's working for William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk. He is 93 years old and he's still working. In fact, he's talking about making a new series of Star Trek with him in it. So is that part of the answer to Australia's ageing population? Is the problem of our reliance on those of working age for more older people to work? Or is that just a peripheral solution to a bigger problem? And how do we make it happen anyway? That's this week on The Weekend Edition. The Morning Call from NAB with Phil Dobby. The weekend edition. The challenges of a growing population is not unique to Australia, of course. The IMF, in their most recent World Economic Outlook, devoted a chapter to the implications of an ageing global population.
But here, not only is the population growing older, it's also getting bigger. The latest numbers from the ABS show that Australia's population grew by 1.7% last year. None of this will come as news to you, of course. 340,000 people came from net migration. 105,000 came from the natural increase, so births minus deaths. The growth, interestingly, has been highest in Western Australia, 2.4% versus just 1.3% for New South Wales. But is that growth enough? Remember how Kevin Rudd argued the case for a big Australia pushing the population to 36 million by 2050? Well, I think we are actually heading for that big Australia. But is that a sustainable level of growth? And is a lot of new people coming into the country enough to counter the impact?
of an ageing population. Well, Jessica Garrity is a Senior Associate for Economic Prosperity and Democracy at the Grattan Institute. Jessica, let me tell you, when I first set foot in Australia... I don't know how old you were at the time. It was 1986. Maybe you weren't even born.
How fast is Australia’s population growing and what does the ABS data reveal?
The population was 16 million. From then to 2050, in 64 years that would be, from 16 million, if we do reach that 36 million by 2050, that means an average growth rate of just under 1.6% per annum on average over that whole period. So how does that compare with elsewhere? And is it enough? Is it going to be enough to counter that impact of an ageing population?
Yeah, so the Australian population has grown quite a bit, as you pointed out, and we have had higher growth than many of our OECD economy peers. So the average population growth is about 0.5%, but for us, as you said, it's about 1.7%. But even that aside, our population is still ageing. So we've talked about this for a long time. It's appeared in many an intergenerational report, the fact that the population is going to get older. So the rate at which it's getting older is slow, slower than we expected because of this strong population growth that we've had, particularly strong migration. But nonetheless, between now and 2063, the average or the median age in Australia is expected to increase by about five years nearly.
And the share of the population that's aged 65 or older is going to increase from about 17% now to about 25% in 2070. So even with our strong population growth, we're still aging.
Right. But not as much as we would be, presumably. And do you think as part of the government's policy, various governments' policies, that if we can increase the population, we'll at least slow that aging of the population and increase the size of the working population?
Absolutely. So we do see that an objective of our migration program is to try and slow the ageing of our population, and that has been effective. So we see that when migrants come to Australia, they're typically younger than the average Australian. So I think the average or the median age of a migrant arriving last year was about 23 compared to our median age of about 38. So So it does mechanically slow the ageing of the population, but it's not a silver bullet. It won't completely counter the ageing of the population. And there's a couple of reasons for that. So if we think about the two arms of our migration program, so the permanent program, that's the program where we tend to have really quite significant economic dividends.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does the episode open with William Shatner’s longevity and the ‘Silver Economy’ theme?
0:01–1:45
2
How fast is Australia’s population growing and what does the ABS data reveal?
1:45–5:28
3
What impact does migration have on Australia’s ageing workforce and dependency ratio?
5:28–8:30
4
How can higher‑skill migrants boost productivity and fiscal outcomes?
8:30–12:27
5
What lessons do Japan and Singapore offer for healthy ageing and community‑based policies?
12:27–15:30
6
How does improved health and longer working lives offset the decline in traditional working‑age numbers?
15:30–18:38
7
What fiscal challenges arise from an ageing population and how might tax reform help?
18:38–21:21
8
What are the key take‑aways and next steps for Australia’s silver economy strategy?
21:21–21:43