Ageing​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ And Automation ​​​​​​​

- Jeff Youssef

The global labour market has endured a series of disruptions in recent decades – from rapid globalisation, to deep business-cycle troughs to battles for gender equality. Today, workforces globally are justifiably anxious once more due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) – a merging of the physical and the digital that hints at widespread future redundancies – as well as rapid societal ageing. Shrewd policy initiatives will be required to address the twin threats of ageing and automation, and to mitigate the associated fallouts. Job displacement at the hands of technology accompanied with increasing societal ageing could increase un- and under-employment, widen inequality, and exacerbate talent shortages for firms.

Increased life expectancies and decreasing birth rates around the world have dramatically quickened the global phenomenon of societal ageing. The global birth rate has flattened rapidly over the past five decades and will, according to data from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, decrease steadily until the end of the century. Meanwhile, upward mobility and increased access to quality healthcare has increased life expectancies around the world – the UN World Population Prospects projects that between 2015 and 2100, the average global life expectancy at birth will increase by more than ten years.