IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/vid/yearbk/v7y2009i1p123-147.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can the rising pension burden in Europe be mitigated by immigration? Modelling the effects of selected demographic and socio-economic factors on ageing in the European Union, 2008-2050

Author

Listed:
  • Fernando Gil Alonso

Abstract

Demographic change, and more specifically ageing - defined here as the increase in the numbers of retired people - is one of the main challenges which European societies must face. Although this challenge cannot be reduced to the demographic factor alone, the construction of highly sophisticated models to analyse the social and economic impact of ageing introduces problems of data availability and comparability between EU Member States. The approach used in this paper to overcome these obstacles is different. A demography-based model (inspired by Gérard Calot's previous work) which uses some simplified assumptions, has been defined to assess the implications of ageing for the 27 EU countries over the period 2008-2050, and the relative impact of a series of alternative measures which could be implemented to counteract ageing. Though the analysis will focus on labour supply growth through foreign (extra-EU) immigration, other actions like the increase of the average effective age at which the labour market is left or employment rate growth will also be taken into account. Results show that immigration by itself cannot counteract ageing in the European Union as the number of immigrants needed to compensate for the increasing number of retired people would be so high that no country could assume the social and political costs of such a process. However, it can play a complementary role if it is combined with other measures contributing to both increase labour participation and delay retirement. This policy mix should be different in each EU Member State depending on the initial specific situation of each parameter of the model.

Suggested Citation

  • Fernando Gil Alonso, 2009. "Can the rising pension burden in Europe be mitigated by immigration? Modelling the effects of selected demographic and socio-economic factors on ageing in the European Union, 2008-2050," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 7(1), pages 123-147.
    • Handle: RePEc:vid:yearbk:v:7:y:2009:i:1:p:123-147
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://epub.oeaw.ac.at/0xc1aa500d_0x0022ebe3
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joëlle Gaymu & Peter Ekamper & Gijs Beets, 2007. "Qui prendra en charge les Européens âgés dépendants en 2030 ?," Population (french edition), Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED), vol. 62(4), pages 789-822.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:vid:yearbk:v:7:y:2009:i:1:p:123-147. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Frank Kolesnik). General contact details of provider: http://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/ .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.