Labour markets in an ageing Europe

The population of the European Community will fall by 2% from its current level by the year 2025, while the total population of Eastern and Western Europe taken together will increase by 3.4%. Between 1960 and 1990, the EC population grew by 17%. This contrast reflects both the dramatic growth of the population of pensioners in the total population and also the rapid ageing of the Community's working population. In this volume, based on a CEPR conference held in Munich on 23-25 April 1992, demographers and labour economists assess recent demographic and labour market developments in Western and Eastern Europe. They compare them with developments in the USA and Japan and assess the effects of ageing on European productivity, earnings, and human capital formation. They consider the relationships between ageing, unemployment, labour mobility and migration and investigate the policy implications of ageing for productivity, wages, mobility, unemployment, and educational activity. They consider possible policies to improve the quantity or quality of the labour force, including incentives to female labour participation, selective immigration policies, 'pronatalist' family policies, and measures to improve human capital formation through schooling and further education.