Professionals and Power Vacuums on Demographic Change

Aging populations across advanced industrialized countries are expected to have a great impact on a range of socio-economic policies, ranging from welfare and pensions provision to industrial, labor market and financial policies. While populations are aging there has also been a drop in birth rates. Demographic change is acknowledged as a policy concern within many advanced industrialized countries, but discussions about low fertility are not explicitly expressed in terms of policy objectives. Governments, sensitive to the authoritarian implications of prescriptive natalist policies, focus instead on programs that aim to enable choice about childbearing; in concrete terms this means measures such as one-off payments, improving childcare availability, and addressing worklife balance concerns.1 As an issue, low fertility is seen as a particular problem for a number of European and East Asian advanced industrialized countries. Germany and Japan stand out in having experienced especially low fertility over a sustained period of time, while countries with an established and generous welfare state or long traditions of migration appear to buck these trends among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)