population
Population growth and change has long been a source of stormy debate in the Lucky Country, Australia. Is bigger better? What should Australia's population mix look like in 2050? How will we pay for our ageing population? Should we claim our super later? Can we change our tax system? Can we learn from Europe's mistakes?
AS
government planners and academics warn of a coming population crunch,
these questions are critical for business owners looking to, and planning for, the future. How will these profound demographic changes affect the bottom line? Analysts warn that companies that fail to plan
for demographic change—those that don't address changes in the workforce, new growth sectors and ways to market to older consumers—may miss out on profits. With the United Nations forecasting that the world's population could reach 10.5 billion by 2050, Australia could find itself with about 40 million people by 2040, says Professor Ian Lowe of Griffith University in Brisbane, the author of Bigger or Better—Australia's Population Debate. "The decisions being taken now about our
population are literally determining what Australia will look like in 2050," Lowe told ABC radio this year. "So we should be making informed choices about our future." Australia's problem is that there will be too few
workers to pay tax to support the ageing population, which will impose greater burdens on government budgets for health, pensions, aged-care services and infrastructure. Nearly a quarter of the population will be over
the age of 65 by 2050, almost double the proportion we have now, according to the federal government's third Intergenerational Report, which was released in 2010. In the Asia-Pacific region the picture is similar, with the number of elderly forecast by the UN to triple by 2050 to 1.2 billion, when one in four will be aged over 60. The question is: Who will be working to support
these older people? By 2050, there will be only 2.7 working-age Australians for every citizen aged 65 or more, the report says, down from five in 2010. Four decades ago, there were 7.5. Citizens aged 65-plus will jump from 14 per cent of the population in 2010 to about 23 per cent by 2050, the report predicts. A radical change to the tax system may be
needed, says David Gallagher, a professor in management from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney. He says the GST rate should double and that income tax should be greatly reduced. "The GST is an efficient type of tax that you pay from when you are a kid until when you retire,"
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