Ageing in Australia: Population changes and responses

Abstract

Population ageing is the historical outcome of falling rates of fertility and mortality with fertility having the larger effect. While population ageing has only occupied the minds of policymakers since the 1980s, Australia’s population has been ageing continuously for over a century. Figure 1 shows that ageing accelerated in the late 1920s and the 1930s. This was because of the substantial fall in fertility that occurred during the 1920s and the sustained low levels of fertility during the 1930s as a result of the economic depression [Figure2).Counter to the long-term trend, the population stopped ageing in the 1950s and 1960s,