The OECD is the principal organisation for advanced economies — such as most countries in Western Europe, the USA, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Its latest short-term population projections indicate how quickly such economies are going to be hit by the falling ratio of people in work compared to those in retirement.
Between 2015 and 2019 the number of people aged 15-64 will grow by 0.65%. However the population of those aged 65+ will grow by a staggering 9.8%. As a result, although there are currently 4.02 people of working age to each retiree, this proportion will fall to 3.68 in the next four years. This means that, to maintain the status quo, OECD countries must find an extra 77 million working-age people — around 20 million per year. Moreover, this figure will be even higher if we take into account emigration out of the OECD.
Changes in the birth rate will not affect this imbalance in such a short period and therefore the only readily available source of economically active people are immigrants. Yet instead of encouraging immigration, OECD governments are tightening up immigration rules and filtering out the most qualified immigrants. This creaming off process will also deprive the poorest countries of the world of the talent they need to develop their own economies — economies the advanced countries need to provide export markets for their goods and services.
Sadly, recent terrorist attacks will only aggravate the situation still further by encouraging governments to shut down borders. In addition it is almost certainly increasing the incidence of racial prejudice across societies — particularly in the west — which places a further drag on economic growth. This, coupled with the rising burden of economic dependence, will almost certainly throw the advanced economies into a further recession by 2019, if not before. The solution lies in immigration — but only statisticians and demographers can see how stark and urgent that choice has become.