The demographic prognosis for the twenty-first century is that all national populations
will age structurally and most in the developed world will ultimately decline in size.
Australia's structural ageing is less pronounced than that in many other countries, but it
will nevertheless experience reduced population growth a decade hence. One often
stated concern is that the social security systems of nations like Australia will not be
sustainable in their present form because the next generation will not be able to raise
sufficient taxes to support a burgeoning pension bill. These intergenerational financial
pressures are compounded by another trend, namely, that over the past fifteen years
employees have been leaving the workforce at ages well below the now-defunct‘official’ retirement age, 65 years. In Australia and other nations this decline in labour
force participation has been partly explained by generous social security provisions, but
also by redundancy- and retrenchment-driven ‘structural retirement’ (Jackson, Walter,
Felmingham and Spinaze, 2006).