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New special issue on population ageing in Australia

May25
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Image: Logo of Australian Population Studies

Noted experts, including CEPAR Professors Peter McDonald and John Piggott, A/Professor Jeromey Temple and Dr Tom Wilson report on the latest research into population ageing in Australia in a special issue of Australian Population Studies.

“Population ageing affects all of us and it impacts many dimensions of our lives. From changed family structures, workplace cultures, through to retirement support and health and aged care arrangements, households are facing unfamiliar, sometimes irreversible, complex and critical life choices,” commented Scientia Professor John Piggott.

“It is exerting unprecedented pressures on traditional social institutions, both in Australia and around the world.

“Research is critically required to better understand how policy and practice innovation can ease our individual and collective paths through this transition,” he noted.

In the first decade of the 21st century, employment at older ages surged in Australia, benefitting the Australian economy. Subsequent to 2010, however, employment rates at older ages ceased rising for older men and the increases were much more moderate for women,” noted Professor Peter McDonald in his paper, which examines trends in more detail, particularly the association between older-age employment trends and the business cycle.

Other contributors examine migration patterns of the older population in Australia and outline how movements have changed over the past forty years in comparison to the total population, as well as analyse whether socio-economic and geographic inequalities in mortality of people under 75 years of age have changed in recent years.

“Most studies of population ageing apply traditional ageing measures, such as the number or percentage of the population aged 65 and above,” noted Dr Tom Wilson and Associate Professor Jeromey Temple in their paper.

“In the context of gradually improving health and mortality at age 65, the use of a fixed age cut-off to define ‘older age’ needs to be revisited,” they comment and re-assess the extent of population ageing in Australia and the States and Territories over past decades and in the future, as indicated by both traditional and alternative ageing measures.

“Special journal issues such as these serve to focus research attention on these questions, and in doing so, render us all a considerable service,” commented John Piggott.


Australian Population Studies, Vol. 4 No. 1 (2020) 4(1), pp. 1-3. Available at: https://www.australianpopulationstudies.org/index.php/aps/issue/view/6


Australian Population Studies is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal containing short, high-quality papers on Australian population issues.

The journal is supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR), the Queensland Centre for Population Research at The University of Queensland, and is published by the Demography and Ageing Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, at the University of Melbourne.