ABSTRACT
The speed at which people change their fertility-regulating behaviour and therefore have fewer children affects the rate of ageing of the population. These demographic patterns are repeated in both developed and underdeveloped countries. Although of course varying in
specific detail, the ageing of the population is visible or predictable across most of the world, Japan being the country with the most dramatic and extreme pattern of ageing. In 1960, Japan had a situation of 9 people aged 65 and over for every 100 aged 15-64 (this is a standard formula used to calculate the so-called “dependency ratio” of elderly people to the “economically active” population). The comparable figure for the United Kingdom at this time was 17.9 per hundred “economically active” people. However, by 1980 Japan’s figure had reached 13.4 and is projected to reach 22.6 by the year 2000 and 32.9 by 2025. Figures for the United Kingdom for the same years are 23.5, 23.3 (in other words, a stable proportion in the last two decades of this century) going up to 29.7 by 2025 (Ermisch 1989:29). More recent population projections, taking into account the even greater than expected fall in the fertility rate, suggest even higher proportions of elderly people, but the comparative point about the less extreme character of the change in Britain compared to many other countries still remains.
