Age structure to change

Press, 18 February 1984, Page 30

Age structure to change

Wellington reporter Changing population patterns during the next 20 years will have significant effects on social services, housing and consumer demand, according to the report of Population Monitoring Group of the Planning Council. During the next 20 years, the total population growth should lie between 13 and 22 per cent but, within that increase, the older age groups will expand rapidly. For example, the 25 to 44year age group was predicted to increase by 43 per cent, the 45 to 59-year age group by 51 per cent, the 60 to 74-year age group by 33 per cent, and those aged 75 years or more by 77 per cent (87,000 people). For the aged population, a number of important ser-

vices were involved, the report said. The overwhelming majority of old people lived in their own homes. Support services which used to be provided by family members, usually daughters, were now in shorter supply because the number of such family members was now generally smaller, more geographically mobile, and more likely to be in the work force.

Those aged more than 75 years were considerably more dependent on the health services than younger age groups. As their numbers increased at a proportionately higher rate, the demand for health services would increase at a greater rate than the growth in the aged population as a whole, the

report said. As a consequence, greater reliance would fall on the State, voluntary and private support services.

Greater State involvement would raise the per capita cost of elderly people to the taxpayer, as well as requiring the systematic planning of institutions. These costs would be additional to the dependence on work-force participants posed by the unemployed, and those supported by other social security benefits.

The report said that the projected rapid increase in the size of the labour force suggested that unemployment would increase in the near future, specially if the recent experience of substantial net immigration was maintained.

Any increase in the rate of unemployment made it extremely unlikely that there would be any deviation from the long-term trend towards larger numbers being supported by social welfare benefits.

A declining birth rate, the changing age structure, and a rapid increase in the number of single-person households, had contributed to a decline in the average size of households over the 30 years to 1981.

A continuation of this trend, together with the big section of the population entering the stage of forming a household during the next five to 10 years, meant that the demand for new dwellings would increase sharply in the near future, the report said.