At present time, Canada is facing a significant demographic transition in its population. From last century, the decrease in mortality, fertility and the increase in life expectancy lead to vast changes in Canada’s population. Aging of Canada’s population becomes more and more severer. This research paper is to study the correlation between demographic transition in Canada and how does the transition impact on economic growth. To be more specifically, demographics variables can include life expectancy, fertility and mortality; economic growth variables can include labour force and public expenditure.
Recently, Statistic Canada has point out “Seniors are projected to become more numerous than children in Canada by 2017 --- a milestone in the country’s history.” (Statistics Canada, 2016) To discuss more in depth, according to the data collected from Statistic Canada, there is a post-war baby boom in 1950s, afterwards, there has been a steady decline in fertility. The median age in Canada was 27.2 in 1956 and climbed to 39.5 in 2006 (Statistics Canada, 2016). With the decrease in fertility and mortality, the problem of aging population in Canada occurs. In present time, those great number of baby boomers are now leave to workforce and begin to retire. It results in the rise of Canada’s elderly dependency ration. (National Seniors Council(Canada), 2011) For elders, the performance in many physical and mental tasks tend to decline with age, which
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The transition is from high-mortality high-fertility to low-mortality low-fertility. Since people’s life expectancy is increasing, this demographic change lead Canada become an aging population country. When elder people leave their working position, it results in a shortage of labour force. Moreover, after retirement, elder people begin to claiming pension, public expenditure will
Maturing of the population is likely a standout among the most examined and debated subjects in Canada today. While a few experts gauge the most noticeably awful as far as expenses to open administrations and work market deficiencies, others contend that Canada is very much prepared to face this social and demographic change - and that individuals shouldn 't stress that much over the developmental rate of seniors in the population.
But it only provides success to a small amount of smart businessman. Looked from the macroeconomics perspective, Canada is not in good shape for future economic development. There are too many old people existing the work force while the supply of young workers is not enough to offset. And the new workers entering the labour force are not well experienced and skilled as the exiting baby boomers. The losing of large amount of experts is not easy to solve. Government is also facing challenges to deal with the rapidly increasing demand for health care and social support services to the old people. Looking at Japan’s experience of demographic greying, they are now making little, almost no economic growth due to the large amount of old people retiring from jobs. Without immediate and correct policy regulation, Canada will be in the same or worse situation. Using immigration alone cannot solve this problem, Canada needs to find out more strategies to deal with this real problem, which is already
The first emerging trend is the aging population in Canada. Compared to 1971, in which the median age of the population was approximately 26 years, in 2011 the median age of the population in Canada was approximately 40 years. To put this into perspective, according to the 2011 data, half the population was older than 40 years while half was younger. Seniors currently make up the fastest growing age group in Canada. They also represent the fastest
Adults that work support the country and people who are not working. The dependency load is the people who are not working; ages 0 to 14 and over the age of 65. The dependency ratio compares the number of people not working to the number of people working. The more working people a country has, the greater the economical growth. With more money being given to the government, the effect is that the region could have better technology, transportation, healthcare, and food quality as the government has the money to buy, build, and repair. In Canada, because of our decrease in population, (figure 1.4) there future dependency load will be greater than our workforce causing economical problems. (Patterns and Trends: Although Canada’s population is decreasing over time, this could change as another “baby boom” could happen.) Since we have less people working, it will eventually cause problems such as our economy will go down. To solve a problem like this, the government could raise the taxes to keep the money going in, or increase the population by
According to a group of scholars, Canada can become an economically independent country once it reaches a population of 100 million.5 It is a common misunderstanding that immigration only leads to the loss of citizens' benefits. A study in 1975 states that an increase in population will rather bring out a greater outcome toward sustaining our economy.6 “Canada needs that much population for geostrategic, defense and diplomatic reasons. This population level would give Canada ‘new domestic structures coupled with growing international impact and prestige,’” (Global
Over the next 50 years ageing baby boomers will have great impact on the Canadian economy in the area of health care. Baby boomers who were born between 1946 and 1964 increased the demand for elementary schools, high schools, post- secondary education and family housing. By 2062 many baby boomers will turn 100, now that they are aging, the demand for health care, death services, retirement homes and medicine is increasing. From 2015 to 2062, there is a predicted cost of $7.2 trillion that will be spent in health care for senior citizens. For funeral services for the baby boomers in 2015, there is an estimated cost of $2.8 trillion, and old pension cost of $1.3 trillion. The senior
Canada’s birth rates are below replacement levels and its population is aging, causing a significant drop in labour force growth over the long term. By 2030, nearly one out of every four Canadians will be 65 years or older. Moreover,
“In 1971, there were nine people aged 15-64 in Quebec, compared to one person over 65. By 2013, the ratio had dropped from 9 to 1 to 4 to 1. By 2050, it will be 2 to 1.”(Simpson, 2014). Quebec’s greatest restrain is its lack in population growth. Due to its aging population and low replacement rate. Meaning we have a population that does not have enough people to replace those dying. But, also to a low acceptance of immigration due to its many red tape and laws. This has a great impact on future government expenditure and to the future of productivity due to a shortage of labour.
Look at the population difference from the 1800's to the 21's century. Look at the increase of Canada's changing population.
The number one concern of governments is to ensure that they stay in office. In order to do this, they must secure votes. A government who is looking at voter turnout statistics will notice that individuals of older generations are significantly more likely to vote than those of younger generations (The aforementioned 70% vs. >50%). This means that a government most interested in securing votes and support for the next election will look to do so from the largest voter base. In other words, the government will take into consideration the wants and needs of the aging members of the population before the rest of the population. This may cause more government emphasis on securing a better pension plans (CPP, OAS, or GIS), better health care for seniors (as will be discussed later on), and on other issues which are important to this population. For instance, in 2009, OAS (Old Age Security) cost $27.1 billion, and GIS (Guaranteed Income Supplement) cost $7.7 billion. (http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/lop/researchpublications/cei-07-e.htm) This major government emphasis on the needs of the baby boomers costs Canada money that may’ve been used in a more productive way to benefit the entire nation, such as improving our degrading infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.)
High population in Canada is very good especially for the economy but, there tend to be a couple of factors where the population poses a threat to Canada. Firstly there is the aging baby boomers. The baby boomers were born after world war 11 and currently they are at working age and soon to be at retirement age. The Baby boomers have improved our economy by a lot but, since they are becoming older and older they will need more support. This poses a threat to Canada but then there will be a huge drop in our economy be all of the sudden a large portion of Canada’s workers will retire. Then Canada will start to need more elderly homes and more medical care etc. The next big population issue we have in Canada is immigrants. Immigrants come to Canada
Canada is experiencing a rapid growth in aging population and it is not going to slow down anytime soon. In 1851 there were about 65, 000 seniors in Canada and the number in 2014 is 5.57 million.[1] In 2036 the elders will be over ten million and by 2051 one in every four Canadians will be a senior [2].
The OECD anticipates that Canada will experience a decline in it's population growth percentage of its residents, who are less than 15 years of age to decline from 16.5 to just 15.6 percent from 2010-2050. Mr. Sakir states that this will spur many both social and economic implications that could put a permanent stop to the country's growth.
As Nicholas has mentioned currently, Canadians 65 and over represents 16% of the population, however, the ratio is expected to grow to 24% in the next two decades according to the report by conference Board of Canada. With average birth rate of 1.6 per woman in Canada (according to Central Intelligence Agency) and longer life expectancy impacts on labour force, government expenditures for health care and old age security benefit. All these factors
Demography is the study of the components of population variation and change. Death rate and birth rate are two determinants of population change. Theory of Demographic Transition is comparatively recent theory that has been accepted by several scholars throughout the world. This theory embraces the observation that all countries in the world go through different stages in the growth of population. A nation's economy and level of development is directly related to that nation's birth and death rates. Population history can be divided into different stages. Some of the scholars have divided it into three and some scholars have divided it into five stages. These stages or classifications demonstrate a