The ageing of the Australian population: triumph or disaster?

Many people are anxious about Australia's ageing population. Others are optimistic. So is demographic ageing good for Australia or bad for Australia? This paper considers the positive and the negative case under five headings: labour-force participation, baby-boomers (and agebased discrimination), the tax base and social welfare, health-care costs, and older people's voluntary work. It also contains a brief note on hyper-ageing, asks whether mass immigration can cure demographic ageing, and then explores the effects of the population growth that such immigration would induce on economic productivity.