This is one of those chicken egg thing discussions?
Old folks would be able to live more active risk free lifestyles, if they but had clearer arteries!
However, even quite modest exercise is off the menu for many.
People might safely perform some modest hydro exercise routines, if the fees to access local pools, weren't quite so steep. And the bulk of the medical profession, in their quite abysmal ignorance, deny oldies the one cost effective remedy for clogged arteries and fragile easily fractured bones, still relatively affordable Chelation therapy!
And while some might not see a sixty-seventy, dollar fee for a season ticket to the local pool as dear, particularly over rewarded pollies!?
It is, when you're on a single pensioner's entitlement, and having to cough up considerably more than your entire fortnight's pension for the quarterly electricity bill or the council rates or for a bedsit!
And isn't always the case, that those living on merge pensions, eat the worst most fattening, salt and sugar laden food, because it is invariably the cheapest, or all they can actually afford.
We who have already grown old, need a little more than a lecture on healthy lifestyles from our so called health authorities or self confessed experts!
Many of who, would prohibit cost effective chelation therapy if only they could, all while studiously ignoring other cost effective therapies for the elderly, like entirely non invasive hypabaric oxygen therapy, or ozone hydro therapy, or liquid nitrogen therapy?
We with our rather peculiar attitude to these very safe and cost effective strategies, have the highest rate of diabetes related amputations in the western world?
And that's hardly just a coincidence; but, I believe, a product of quite disgraceful and culpable neglect, and or the lack of, systematically withheld, REAL preventative medicine!?
Rhrosty.

< Australia currently stands at a demographic crossroads. >

Really Peter??

We should be…. But we ain’t!

We’ve just had the most excellent opportunity to reach this crossroads, with Labor being turfed out and desperately wanting to reinvent itself… apparently.

Although it seems that the reinvention bit was a complete furphy and that they couldn’t drag themselves one iota away from the same old approach.

Damn pity, that is. With Gillard’s ‘Sustainable Australia, not a big Australia’, Carr’s long history of lobbying for lower population growth and sustainability and the same from Kelvin Thomson, Labor could have…. and damn well should have, embraced a low-population sustainability-first paradigm.

If they’d done that, then this country would have been at the crossroads on this whole subject.

But alas, our way forward is crystal clear – very high immigration and rapid population growth with no end in sight, regardless of any of the numerous enormous negative factors.

No crossroads here! Just a very straight road, along which we are boring at great speed..... totally in the wrong direction!

A most interesting article. Some time ago I wrote a news story on the role GIS plays in analysing health outcomes in Pittsburgh. It's fascinating stuff.

Likewise for the 50+ in Oz, there will certainly be some major fiscal gap happening in the health and aged care budget as the Boomers move through time. I am not confident that the Government (past or present) has got a handle on this. The IGR's seem to get a lot of doom and gloom coverage and then disappear.

Ludwig and his mates tend to be 'numbers minded' and this case, they are probably right, but not for the reasons they think. Many older folk will need to work in to their late 60s as they lost a packet in super during the GFC. Women never had much anyway - about $110K on av.

So if they are sick with diabetes, depression, muscle-skeletal problems, etc, then they can't work. That's not good for tax revenue. You get knock on problems.

It's true that Oz's immigration program is fairly high although exits, especially in amongst permanents is growing. A little bird told me that we might not see so many numbers applying in the future, which is to be expected if we look back over the last 60 years.

This article raises some interesting questions. I do think, though, the Professor is wrong about some key data. He says: “Critically, within 40 years there may well be as many Australians aged over 65 as there are working age adults”. The ABS demographic projections suggest that, by the 2050s, about 25% of the population will be aged 65+ and about 60% aged between 15 and 65. Even in Japan and Korea – countries with the worst problems of aging populations in the developed world - the OLD AGE dependency rate is not projected to reach 100% (i.e. 1 working age person for each person 65 and over).

http://archive.treasury.gov.au/documents/1239/HTML/docshell.asp?URL=03_Part_2.htm

(chart 2.8)

Australia’s old age dependency ratio is projected to be about 40%. Its TOTAL dependency ratio (including 0-14 year-olds as well as 65+s) is projected to be about 67% - nowhere near 100%.

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3222.02006%20to%202101

Granted, these projections are often wrong (sometimes wildly so), but it would take a demographic revolution for them to be so far wrong.

Unless we take some steps to limit and control our out of control population growth nature will do it for us with a resultant BIG drop in our living standards.
Australia is a finite land and infinite growth in any way is a Ponzi scheme.
Destroy our environment as we are well on the way to and we destroy ourselves.
A one way road, the wrong way as a previous comment states, to extinction.
More people are not our future.
They are our extinction.

<< A little bird told me that we might not see so many numbers applying in the future >>

Really Paddy? Who might that little bird be, I wonder.

There sure as hell isn’t any sign of a significant reduction in numbers from Abbott….. is there?