ABSTRACT
The ageing of the population is caused by people living longer as a result of improvements in health care (that is, a decrease in the death rate) and a decrease in the number of children born per woman (that is, a decrease in the birth rate). For example, the average family size has been falling since 1960s – in England the birth rate peaked at 2.95 children in 1964 and had fallen to a record low of 1.63 in 2001, though this is beginning to slowly rise. Alongside this, life expectancy rose to 67 for males and 69 for females, accompanied by a shift in population – in 1950 only 1 in 10 of the population was over 65, in 2003 this had risen to 1 in 6, while by 2007 there will be more people over 65 than under 16 (HM Government, 2005). This means family size has reduced and probably will continue to reduce, which increases the disposable income per household. Many other developed countries have experienced even more dramatic increases in the average age. In Japan, only 11.6 per cent of the population was 65 years or older in 1989, but over 25 per cent of the population is projected to be in that age category by 2030 (allrefer.com, 2005). The ‘age pyramid’ in developed countries is no longer a pyramid with the largest number of citizens being the youngest; rather, it is bulging around the middle years, as if to represent a stereotypical middle-age spread.
