The Role of Australia's Extended Baby Boom in Past and Future Population Ageing

How has the baby boom affected Australia’s population ageing up to the present, and how might it affect it over the rest of the 21st century? The baby boom is viewed as a deviation from an alternative trajectory in which Australia follows the textbook demographic transition model and maintains low fertility from the 1930s onwards. Thus the boom is seen as an extended baby boom from the mid-1930s to the mid-1970s. This research note uses some simple cohort-component scenario projections to illustrate the role of the extended boom generation in population ageing and what ageing Australia would have experienced had it followed the demographic transition model uncomplicated by a fertility rise. It provides answers both in terms of numerical ageing and structural ageing. The scenario projections demonstrate that the boom caused a permanent upwards shift in numerical ageing and a long-run, but ultimately temporary, change in the development of structural ageing.