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**anunitu** · 26 Jun 2015, 14:42

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

I had read somewhere that Millennial generation is bigger, more diverse than boomers. Us boomers are dieing off,so the millennial's are taking our place I guess.

http://money.cnn.com/interactive/eco...nials-boomers/

**Jembru** · 26 Jun 2015, 14:48

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

Originally posted by anunitu View Post

I had read somewhere that Millennial generation is bigger, more diverse than boomers. Us boomers are dieing off,so the millennial's are taking our place I guess.

http://money.cnn.com/interactive/eco...nials-boomers/

This is what the news story was covering this morning actually! Again, they only gave the statistics. They didn't attempt to explain the trend. It seems strange that growth is so different in the US. I'm fascinated to know what happened to make you all romp like rabbits while the rest of the West were settling for a cuddle. ^^

**anunitu** · 26 Jun 2015, 14:51

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

It was the booze and the drugs...and we just like to romp I guess...

**Hawkfeathers** · 26 Jun 2015, 15:34

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

The Duggar family skews the stats. LOL We do have a lot of religious cults that believe in having many kids, and there are some situations where people get more money from welfare than if they had a job, based on how many kids they have.

**Shinjin** · 26 Jun 2015, 18:19

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

I think it can pose a problem, but it's all in how the younger generations are going to handle the situations, that arise when a lot of the older ones are passing.

Also a lot of the elders have information on things we don't, them passing will erase a lot of it, unfortunately. I am not merely talking about the wars, but also about certain religious groups, and other important things.

The wars have brought forth great minds, some for "evil" some for "good" they brought this age of progress in the technological sense. If certain key figures didn't die, today would really be something different...

So in my opinion, it's very situational.

Now I am thinking about generations, I truly feel my generation is a double-edged-sword feeling for me. Gay Marriage is getting accepted after so, so, long... I can smoke weed legally, without some government trying to brainwash me thinking it's the devil's plant...

But, then there's the people of my age, being absolute idiots, acting with pure disrespect to elders, and anyone else. I am disgusted, but I digress, sorry.

I think this whole ageing populations "problem" has two sides, as everything else does. Someone once told me that living longer isn't necessarily better, or an enjoyable thing. For some, life, when you get to a certain age, becomes a burden.

I am scared of death, growing old, and losing the ones I love, for I know nothing of what comes next. I do however, tend to try and make the most of it.

I take it as it comes, and make the most of it, for that's what I am here for.

**DanieMarie** · 26 Jun 2015, 23:26

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

The cost of caring for the elderly is a huge deal, here, though. It's a big challenge we have to live through. It's not just the financial cost, either, it's also the human cost. We simply do not have enough nurses and doctors to care for the aging population. The birth rate has been very low for a long time, so it's not really a slight increase.

There are a lot of other issues related to this as well. Because there are so many old people compared to young people, public pensions will be a HUGE problem in a few years. They simply weren't designed to have so many retirees, and life expectancy has also grown beyond their original design. The government has tried to raise retirement age to 67, but it is hugely unpopular (this is one right-wing policy I actually agree with, btw). As it stands, and even with a slightly higher retirement age, the ratio of people working and supporting the social security system to people benefiting from the system is becoming increasingly lower. It's a huge strain. There are huge gaps in entire sectors of the working population already, and they're getting worse.

I think that a decreasing population isn't a bad thing, but a gradual decrease would be a lot better. Although I think we have too many people in Germany, we're still at a fairly sustainable population level if people start leading more sustainable lives (which is a much more important issue...even at the current drop, people are problematically wasteful). There are also HUGE inequalities here in terms of population density. Because industrial policy after reunification was so poor (and if you think otherwise, I bid you to go on a drive through a few small towns in Saxon-Anhalt), there are lots of virtual ghost towns there...half-empty small and mid-sized cities where people have no hope of gainful employment. In the meantime, former West-Germany is very densely populated, especially in the south and in the industrial Ruhr area. If the country could distribute opportunity fairly evenly around the country, it could also ease some of the strain on local infrastructure in those areas.

As it stands, the country is trying to solve the problems of the gaps in the working population by encouraging more women to stay in their jobs and trying to get immigrants into these positions. Traditionally, women in former West Germany left their jobs after having kids, so the system sort of works with only one working parent. Getting women to stay at work is a huge help, especially since women tend to be highly educated here. There are several programs set up to help newcomers to Germany learn German (a necessity for most work here) and to provide them with equivalent qualifications (when relevant...most degrees from Europe and the developed world are already recognized here). There is also a visa program set up that allows people who studied in Germany to stay here and seek employment after finishing their degrees (that's right...we offer you a free education AND let you stay here afterwards). In addition, there are a lot of programs out there to retrain unemployed or underemployed people (German or otherwise) to help update their skills in the current job market. I think these are good steps, because I'm all for anything that improves quality of life and work prospects for women, minorities, and the poor. However, it's probably not really enough. Despite these efforts, there are still major gaps and all the issues that come with them. It's increasingly the case that we just do not have enough people to run the economic powerhouse that is Germany. Sure, you can replace factory workers with robots (which they are definitely doing), but you can't replace engineers with robots. And Germany needs a LOT of engineers (if you are an engineer, come here. They will give you a job).

So, that's why we're at a point where even a conservative government supports policies such as handouts for kids, state-funded daycare, free post-secondary education, job retraining programs, and all that jazz. We need it.

And for the record, a lot of these people do NOT have a considerable amount of wealth in their bank accounts. Poverty among senior citizens is very common here.

**DanieMarie** · 27 Jun 2015, 00:40

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

Sorry in advance for the double post and for the length of both of these posts...I just have so much to say on this topic, especially because it concerns Germany and I live here and see the consequences of this on a regular basis.

To address Jem's post directly, I do think you're seeing it a bit rosy. I wholeheartedly agree that the capitalist culture of growth has to stop immediately. However, I don't think that population decrease is enough to achieve that. The growth culture goes so much beyond growth in population...when we talk about growth here, the big issues are the push for constant growth in sales, which leads to our current "throwaway culture." THAT'S what we need to get rid of. Our market is flooded with cheap goods that are designed to be thrown away after a few years. We are constantly encouraged to buy new phones and computers, sometimes after a couple of years. This is insane. A decreasing population in Germany has not fixed this problem at all...it has gotten worse over the years, especially as businesses such as Primark have moved in and food has become increasingly more packaged. We recycle a lot, but we're at the point where we have so much plastic recycling, we can't even deal with it. Germany isn't the best example of this kind of culture, though. I think Canada is a great example of how little a low population density can achieve in terms of a wasteful culture. Canada has one of the lowest population densities in the world, but still contributes a great deal to carbon emissions and global waste. In terms of total carbon emissions, it is not doing any better than the UK and France (in fact, it is worse than both countries), despite having a much lower population and a very low population density. On a per capita level, it is one of the top offenders.

In Germany, the drop in population hasn't really resulted in a rise in real wages. Real wages have stagnated and even dropped in many cases since reunification, even in sectors with labour gaps. The market view of wages doesn't really work all that well. We might have labour gaps, but that doesn't mean that employers aren't super cheap. We didn't have a minimum wage until this year, which contributed to the downward push on wages. The issues here are much more complex than the market view on labour would indicate. Policy and social attitudes play a huge role. Policy is helping in a lot of cases. We finally have a minimum wage and the government supports a variety of training and education programs to help people earn a better living. There are also big pushes to help women and immigrants in the workplace, who have traditionally earned far less than white German men. However, social attitudes are slow to catch up. We might -need- more senior care workers, but that doesn't mean anyone is in a big rush to offer them more money (barring cases where they have to, such as employers who previously paid their workers less than the new minimum wage). Childcare workers is another good example. In 2013, the government declared that every child over 12 months old in the country has a right to a place in a nursery, creating a huge demand for nursery workers. However, there are still plenty of nurseries that pay their workers terrible wages and have bad working conditions. Workers have held strikes in several parts of the country. In Berlin, demand for nurseries has always been high and they always seem to need workers, but the working conditions and wages can be pretty awful. I've had several friends who have worked in bilingual nurseries (it's a go-to job for many expats). Some have reported great pay and fair conditions. Others have reported the opposite. Demand for their services has had no affect on the availability of good, well-paid jobs in the sector. It tends to depend on individual employers and luck in finding those employers. I don't know anyone who works in senior care or nursing, but from what I hear, the situation is more or less the same.

Unemployment is already very low in Germany, and youth unemployment is far lower than the EU average, yet wages have not improved for many workers. Although unemployment is high in the former east, it is practically non-existent in the former west. According to the market view on labour, wages in the former west should be high; however, in many sectors, this is absolutely not the case. Before minimum wage went into affect, supermarket workers were earning as low as 7 Euros per hour (minimum wage is still 8.50 and it is estimated that we need at least 10 Euros per hour to create a living wage for most workers), even in expensive cities such as Cologne. Airport security workers in Cologne went on strike last year to protest their wages, which were around 11 Euros per hour. That's a job that involves an apprenticeship, lots of training, and stressful working conditions, and they made the same as I did at a designer lingerie shop. A friend of mine got offered a job in a western city for LESS than minimum wage (the job required a master's degree). I don't even think that's legal, but obviously no one is checking. The line all of these employers (and many, many more) throw out there is that they can't afford to pay people more. Then they complain about the difficulty of finding and retaining good employees. Obviously, it's all crap, but that's how it's working at the moment.

Don't get me wrong...the work situation and wages are still way better than they are in the UK, but it's not exactly fair in terms of productivity, economic output, and profits either.

**Tylluan Penry** · 27 Jun 2015, 08:18

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

I love this idea of older people having all this money squirrelled away

Where's mine? No idea. Never had money, always had to manage on the square root of bugger all.
The trouble is that no matter what the population is doing, ageing, getting younger, throwing up in back alleys, someone somewhere always has something to say about it.
Personally I don't mind growing older as it's better than the alternative.
That said, there may come a time when it isn't.

**anunitu** · 27 Jun 2015, 08:35

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

Ahhh Ms P.,older is not what I had expected...the money part of having stashed a lot of it,I laugh in your happy face...And yes I expect there will come a time where the other option about being old,will gain appeal,perhaps when I can not think anymore...

**Willow** · 27 Jun 2015, 08:46

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

Originally posted by Tylluan Penry View Post

I love this idea of older people having all this money squirrelled away

Where's mine? No idea. Never had money, always had to manage on the square root of bugger all.
The trouble is that no matter what the population is doing, ageing, getting younger, throwing up in back alleys, someone somewhere always has something to say about it.
Personally I don't mind growing older as it's better than the alternative.
That said, there may come a time when it isn't.

This assumption, that everyone gains more and more money as they age and eventually have a pot of gold they're sitting on, is extremely common around here and where I lived in the UK. There are a lot of people around who have been able to save up a decent amount of retirement money (i.e. enough to be able to stay in their own house and pass it on to their kids), but I've only ever known two who were sitting on enough to take care of their great grandchildren financially (and only one of those two actually earned it himself). And honestly... what else would you use it for if you had that much money?

We assume it's been done, and that it's common. But I know that riches aren't in my future unless I somehow develop some keen business sense, a lot of connections, and a genius idea overnight. Not likely. But the truth is that the majority of people I know (or have known) who were right around retirement age had to either keep working to pay for food, or had some other kind of financial help coming in from whatever source.

Frankly, I'll be happy if I can one day afford a house that I'll be able to live in until I pass. Just so I can have a stable home that can't be wrenched out from beneath me again. But I've accepted that there's probably a 0.001% chance of that happening unless some things change in a major way.

I'm still mulling over this whole idea of economy and currency and standard of living stuff. I really feel like things aren't realistically locking together in that arena for most societies to really make any lasting and solid change in any of those basic needs areas. Something along the lines of how a lot of the upper middle class and higher feel that they deserve more, even though they're able to afford the house, the cars, the vacations, the luxuries; and those who are on the bottom rungs may be as qualified (or more qualified) than those making more, but are unable to find work or are severely underemployed for whatever reason. While there are people who are willing to give back (both financially or energy-wise) for no other gain than to give, if that were the norm I feel like there would be fewer people left wanting for basic needs (you know, medical care, food, shelter). I have no answers, just thinking out loud. But to me there seems to be something "off" about that equation.

**Jembru** · 27 Jun 2015, 11:10

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

Now wait just a minute. Be nice. I didn't claim that my information was accurate, which is why I wanted to start this thread.

Originally posted by Jembru View Post

I apologise if this is tragically uninformed, but I have tried to research the issue (okay, I've read Wikipedia), I've watched news coverage when it comes up and have discussed it with other, better informed people. So I did try.

As a general rule, I don't like to research online. I don't really trust it (less so on anything to do with diet and nutrition but that's another grumble), because there are too many sites set up to pump out article after article to grab those clicks and rake in that lovely advertising money (I don't have ad blocker at work, and you wouldn't believe how many links I click on on PF and get a full-screen advert blocking my view.. leading me to then comment in a thread before being able to read all the 'facts' being discussed.. a habit I'm trying to get away from). Anyway, on the flipside, I didn't want to post without at least showing that I had attempted to look into this, so I spent 10-15 minutes looking at the first few pages that popped up in a search, one of which spoke about the differences in spending habits of the older generation. I can't find the exact article, but this is basically spouting the same kind of story; how spending habits change with age

**DanieMarie** · 27 Jun 2015, 11:53

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

Well, you don't need a visa to stay in Germany as a British person. You have the right to live and work here as a UK and EU citizen.

I'm very surprised that no one suggested getting work in a retirement home. You'd probably have to become very fluent in German, but if you could manage that, I think you'd probably find a job. There may even be a few that would hire you based on your skills and certification alone and give you part time or less skilled work while you worked on your German. I'm not sure how UK qualifications in that field transfer, but there are programs to help people transfer their skills and qualifications.

The issue probably is that a lot of people don't know about these things. I know about them because I'm close with someone who works at a Job Center and also probably because I'm in the capital (there aren't more opportunities here, but I'm closer to the source of info). I guess that's the biggest issue associated with all of this. The government is pumping major money into trying to get people into work where there are labour gaps, but I think a lot of people still don't know about all of these opportunities and services. Probably because most of them just started within the last couple of years, though.

Anyway, I wasn't trying to be mean or rude, btw. I can come off as a bit aggressive sometimes (so says my BF), but it's actually just passion

When I really care about something, I tend to use a lot of strong words, capital letters, raise my voice (in real life) and make huge hand gestures (in real life).

**Jembru** · 27 Jun 2015, 12:11

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

No worries. I know you're a kitty cat DM! I just noticed we'd started rolling into dangerous territory so i thought I'd step in before the torches were lit. ^^

I applied for a care home, but as few of my colleages spoke English, and none of the residents, I was told it wasn't viable for them to employ me. It might also be worse in Bavaria, they have their own laws and a uniqueness that makes them somewhat different from the rest of Germany. I'm pretty sure you'd even said at the time that if I were to move to Berlin, my chances of finding my chosen work, that is, as an English teacher, would have been far better.

Improving my German may have been an issue though. I'm really bad with languages. Something just won't quit click in my head. This means that I'm able, with much effort of course, to reach a point where conversation is quite possible, but it's always labored. I have to think while I speak. I don't think I'm capable of reaching that point where I just speak with grammatical accuracy without thinking, and that's the stage I'd need to reach if I wanted to work in an all-German environment. Otherwise, I'd be too busy concentrating on what I'm saying, and not on what I'm doing. I was probably right to come home in the end.

**DanieMarie** · 27 Jun 2015, 12:42

Re: Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

Even Bavaria will have to yield one day! More people move there from other parts of the country because the employment situation is so good, but they'll feel the crunch sometime too. Berlin can be a lot better and is definitely an easier place to be if you do not speak German fluently. The unemployment rate is much higher, but I think they're a lot friendlier to foreigners here. I also wonder if there are more programs here to get foreigners into skilled jobs than in other parts of the country, just because there are more foreigners here.

It could also be because you were here a few years ago, though. A lot of the stuff I'm talking about is very, very recent. For example, the visa granted to non-EU skilled workers after they finish university here was introduced pretty recently, and the EU blue card (another visa for skilled workers that's EU wide, which I'm pretty sure was designed to target engineers) wasn't introduced until late 2012. The law that created the sheer demand for nurseries passed in 2013. A lot of job training and skills equivalency programs are very recent. And I've noticed that far more employers have become open to employees learning German on the job than they were a few years ago.

It's not totally rosy. I mean, it can still be tough to find work if you don't speak German, and you'd get a lot of "nos". But things are changing and they're starting to realize they need people. The government even has an entire website dedicated to how to live and work in Germany now, if you or anyone else is interested: http://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en

PS, here is a page that briefly outlines the need for retirement home caregivers in the country, and how to get qualifications recognized: http://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en...qualifications

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Consequences of ageing populations: is it really so bad?

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